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Chapter 1

From Death to Radiant Life

I was born in Romania (a country in Europe) and grew up there until the age of 15 when me and my family moved to the United States. My 3 brothers, sister, myself, and my parents, left everything behind and made America our home in 2004. I often look at my life as being split into two periods- the time in Romania and life in the United States. Even though I remember my life back in Romania, there is also a lot of my experience growing up that I have separated myself from. Somehow, we seem to leave behind mentally something we have left behind physically. Moving to a different country is a major life event that deeply impacts and changes someone’s life, so, my life was definitely altered by moving. We knew we were blessed to be able to move to the US, a country that others would only dream to visit. In time, however, as we started experiencing the hardships of starting life over on another continent, we lost our enthusiasm and focused our attention on making our lives fit into a puzzle that looked so foreign from what we were used to.

My mother, Anna, struggled throughout her pregnancies, especially during giving birth. When she was pregnant with me, I came close to being aborted by the doctors without her knowing it. She was experiencing some problems with her health and decided to see her gynecologist. Upon medical examination, she wasn’t told that she was pregnant but that she needed to have a surgical intervention regarding issues unrelated to pregnancy. Thinking that all she was doing was following professional advice, she decided to go ahead, which would have put my life in danger because it would have interfered with the pregnancy. The night before the procedure while my mom was in the hospital, she heard what appeared to be the voice of a child crying, “Mama, your place isn’t here; don’t leave me here!” In those very moments, she became aware of the fact that she wasn’t supposed to have surgery the next day and that something wasn’t right. She courageously left the hospital and headed for home, being fully convinced that she was pregnant and going ahead with the surgery would mean aborting the baby that was growing inside of her. I now realize that there was a serious battle against my life even before I was born. The enemy fights viciously in order to destroy God’s plans for each one of us. Every life is precious and God has a special destiny for every soul that is born on earth. I’m not sure if what happened to my mother was a medical error or if it was a carefully devised plan by the doctor that she saw but I am thankful that my life wasn’t snuffed out. Oftentimes, I find myself overwhelmed with gratitude at the fact that I exist on earth and that God empowers my existence to make a difference for Him through the way He touches the world around me.

At times, I wish that I never had to face another battle, but the fight for my life continued. My mom had a very long and very hard labor when giving birth to me. She was in complete agony and went through some serious complications. I will never be able to express the depth of my appreciation to her for preserving the pregnancy and for going through so much pain and suffering so I could be born. The older I get, the more I realize the depth of her sacrifice, which continued long after I was born and continues to this day. My mother is a very important piece in my coming to know and experience God for myself. She is a prayer warrior and a brave intercessor who continues to pray for us children. I know that in many ways, my life is a fruit of her labor- not just her pregnancy, but also her continued care and concern for me. Many of the blessings I experienced in my life were birthed in God’s love as well as my mother’s. God has a purpose for our lives but we will encounter much opposition to living that destiny. He chooses people not based on merit but based on His sovereign will. Those He sets apart He empowers in special ways and He calls all of us to be set apart for His purposes. Even though the battle against God’s plans for us is fierce, God ultimately has the last word! Our part is to seek Him wholeheartedly and to humbly yield our will to His. Our beautiful God has a gentle and unique way of helping us grasp the things we need to understand about Him and His desire for our lives. He will highlight special things about our assignment as the years go by and when the time is right, He brings His purposes to pass in our lives for our highest fulfillment and His ultimate glory.

I moved to Australia at the age of 26, after 11 years of living in the US. However, I moved back to the United States in 2023. Australia was a country I didn’t know much about before visiting, but it was the place God spoke to me about through a prophecy years before in which God was saying, “I have prepared a place for you.” I met my husband Raul there a year before we got married. A common friend of ours visited the country for the very first time after God spoke to him in a dream to visit his relatives in Australia. There, he met my husband but had no intention of telling him about me. I wasn’t even on his mind but he was prompted by the Holy Spirit to do so through a remarkable experience. One afternoon as he was resting from the day’s activities, he heard a voice that spoke my name, so he was certain that he needed to speak to Raul about me. He would’ve never made the connection all by himself. I am amazed by how these things played out and so blessed to have given God the opportunity to orchestrate my future. During my single years, I somehow always knew that God was preparing someone for me and that it was worth leaving the choice to Him. The Creator knows best and He delights in making our dreams come true. Despite great opposition from the enemy in more ways than one, we got married on April 25th, 2015. Our wedding was a heavenly gift for us but also for those that were present. God showed His fingerprint in a special way in how He weaved every detail, from floral arrangements, to my dress, but more importantly- through His undeniable presence during the religious ceremony. It was something out of this world! I was so humbled to be able to sing a song in Romanian that expressed my love for Christ as the Lover of my life and celebrated the beauty of His covenant with me through His blood. We also recited the poems we wrote about each other.

My father passed away from cancer when I was 23 years old, a period of my life that is marked with much pain and uncertainty. I watched my dad fade away from a strong man into someone who could barely eat by himself. Even though his passing left a hole in my heart, I have found God to be a Father figure to me. Time and again, I’ve been brought to tears as I experienced His compassion for me through emotional healing but also through His miraculous provision for my life. I have witnessed what it means for God to address the very problems that mattered most to me because they cried out desperately for His touch. Some people say that God no longer does miracles today but He is still the God who heals! He heals our body and our soul, which oftentimes share an intertwined process in the journey of healing. I have seen with my own eyes how God can take the deadest places of my existence and bring them back to life! NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR GOD.

I would like to travel back in time and to tell you the story of the adolescent me and how I came to know God as “my God” in 2008. During my childhood years, I used to be very ambitious and I used most of my time studying. I loved grammar, languages, even math, and excelled at everything I did. I always applied myself fully and poured my very being into my studies. School in Europe has very high requirements, so I would often find myself praying to God to help me retain the large amounts of material that I had to study. Even though I didn’t have a personal relationship with God then, I would always turn to Him for help. It was during this time that I saw what it really means to live a life of self-denial through the life of my mother. She used to listen to Christian music on an old cassette player we had and would sing along joyfully, no matter how hard life was sometimes. I remember her praying in a soft voice and with a pure and humble heart. She is now in her sixties, a dark- haired woman with soft waves, who, despite working hard throughout her life, still carries herself with strength and dignity. Though very honest, she always taught me how to be gentle and humble and to put others first. She is the embodiment of forgiveness and faith to me and a vivid picture of what a woman who fears the Lord looks like. My mom chose to serve in obscurity through prayer and the hidden beauty of a servant’s heart. No wonder God endowed her with various spiritual gifts! Thank you mom for staying true to God’s will for your life through it all…

Since we moved to the United States during my teenage years, the transition took a toll on me. I often felt lonely and confused, and even though I spoke the language well, I found myself closing off inwardly. At the age of 19, while studying in the college library, I had a horrifying experience. It all happened very quickly. In a moment, I felt as if the deepest darkness engulfed my life. I suddenly felt taken away from everything beautiful and good in life and it was something I couldn’t explain to anyone. Not even to myself. This was clearly not depression but a severe attack of the enemy to destroy my life. Yet, it was something that God used for my good and for His glory. It was the scariest experience of my life and it lasted about 6 months. It’s hard for me to explain but the experience was so real! Intense fear gripped my mind and heart very often with no logical reason and I felt like I was slowly fading away from the normal world. At times, I would even fear losing my mind and that caused me to cry out to God often and it led me through a deep process of repentance. The thick darkness that descended upon my life made me run harder towards The Light. During that time, God would answer me in miraculous ways by gently carrying me through this traumatic experience while teaching me who He truly was. I knew He could free me but He allowed this to go on for a specific season because He was perfecting this initial chapter of His work in me. After half a year that seemed more like an eternity, God supernaturally delivered me!!! Coming on the other side of that dark tunnel made me realize the love and power of God, as well as His jealousy for our souls. It caused a deep sense of repentance in my life and the strength to acknowledge God as My God, and the source of everything good in this life! I found so much joy and peace in Him and I felt as if I was a child again. It was so beautiful! Looking back I am so grateful for this tragic experience because God used it in such a powerful way to draw me completely away from the world and to Himself. He is greater than any force of darkness! He is at work in every aspect of our lives. He loves us with a Holy jealousy and wants us completely set apart for Himself. He definitely has a plan for our lives and fights to bring it to fulfillment. He is worthy of our everything!

I have found such true love in the arms of Christ and I’d like to share with you something I wrote years ago as a reflection of what was happening in my heart during the beginning of my journey with God. I wrote it in a fictional way but I know you will understand the meaning.

It all started on a cold January day. The sky was clear and the air was fresh. Something was different about this day, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. All I could tell was that change and hope were slowly starting to come alive in my heart. Life was up to something and my heart was a little hesitant as I opened my eyes to greet the new day that was before me. Could this be real? Just a few months ago, my heart was completely shattered and I was still trying to put the pieces back together. My life fell apart in so many ways and hope was such a forgotten word for me. Did I even remember what it felt like to experience it? I smiled just by thinking about the possibility of it and it made me excited, but I quickly brushed off the illusion and tried to wake up. Reality was something much more different than the dreams of a 20 year old girl, lost in the uncertainty and pain of a dangerous, unwelcoming world. Walking fast on a busy street that day, I ran into him. I could’ve easily missed him in the sea of faces moving too fast for me to keep up. Yet there was something about his face that made me stop and pay attention. Have I seen him before? Why did I feel like I knew him from somewhere or that he knew me? I wanted to pick up my pace again but I just couldn’t. He looked at me with the most loving eyes I’ve ever seen in my entire life. “Good morning,” he said. His voice was strong, yet full of gentleness. I didn’t know what to say back and it almost felt like I didn’t need to have this conversation with him but the way he looked into my eyes made me feel at ease. I let out a shy “hello”, and right after I said it, I looked down- ashamed. I remembered now, he was the one who told me a long time ago that he loved me, but my heart was someone else’s when that happened. I didn’t push him away once, I did it again and again. Did he still care about me after all these years? I just knew he wouldn’t anymore as soon as he found out that I gave my heart away so easily, so many times. He told me he just wanted to walk with me for a little while if I had a minute and he said he’d never forgotten about me. I didn’t say much at all that day but he didn’t pressure me into saying anything I wasn’t ready to say yet. Looking at my watch, I realized that I was almost late and knowing I had such a busy day ahead of me, I told him I needed to go. Not wanting to keep me any longer he said “goodbye”, but before that he told me how happy he was to run into me and how eager he was to see me and talk to me again soon. I waved my hand and quickly got lost through the narrow streets. I saw him again the next day on that same street, where he was patiently waiting for me with his back against an old building. “I missed you,” he said, looking into my eyes, but I didn’t dare speak a word. He truly cared about me! How could he? I could hear my mind wondering aimlessly. I saw him again the next day, and the day after that. Slowly we began to share more and more. I thought that my vulnerability to him would cause me to feel unsafe, but the more I shared with him, the more protected and safe my heart felt. One day, he asked me to tell him about my past and I told him everything. Lovingly, he listened and waited for me to get through the whole story.

As soon as I finished, I looked down…tears were streaming across my cheeks and falling against the pavement. He slowly raised my chin and looked into my eyes. To my surprise, he was crying also. “I’m so sorry.” That’s all I could say. Without a doubt in his tone, he said he forgave me and he will never stop loving me. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and I was afraid I would soon wake up from such a beautiful dream. He told me that there is such deep beauty I didn’t even know existed but that I had to be ready to discover it. I told him that I was ready and I did want to be a different person, but it just couldn’t be this easy. Could it? I struggled in doubt. He told me that all I had to do was take his hand and never look back. Whispering, he said, “I love you.” My heart stopped and I still couldn’t believe it but I knew it was real. Extending my hand, I said it back to him and he took my hand and held it close to his heart. How could I have been so wrong all these years? How was it possible that I was so deceived? I’ve been longing for a love like this all of my life, but I looked for it in all the wrong places. Yet, he’d loved me all along and sacrificed so many years waiting for me!

You might be wondering by now, who is this guy she’s talking about? His name is Jesus Christ. He rescued me from the mess I used to call my life and made everything new. I haven’t been the same since the day I met Him face to face. There’s so much more about Him that I didn’t know or just dismissed because I didn’t understand the truth. In His loving mercy, He made it possible for me to have another chance, a new beginning. Nothing has been the same ever since. His love changed me from the inside out. He showed me that I am a treasure in His arms because He shed His blood to forgive me of my sins. Now I know what true love really is. Now I know who I am in Him. Now I can love another human being because He has taught me to love and accept myself. All this wouldn’t have been possible without Him! He gave me a new heart. A heart that knows Him and sees the truth. Praise be to God for His infinite love and mercy! Praise be to Him for making all things new! I will never cease giving thanks to my God!

God wants to bring you out of darkness and into His radiant life. He has a specific and purposeful plan for your life. He knows you and has been watching over you since you were being created in your mother’s womb. No life is an accident and every life matters! He desires so strongly for you to know Him as the Lover of your soul and a true relationship with Him brings you into His glorious destiny for your life. No mistake is too big and no sin too great for the blood of Jesus Christ! He is more than able to empower you to live a victorious life and to turn what satan intended to use to destroy you into something that will empower you to walk with favor into your destiny! God never left your side and has been there through it all. He knows every detail of your life and wants to write your story. God can be trusted! The dreams He dreams for you are so much greater than what you could ever dream on your own.

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