Many years will pass, and the famous professor of surgery, standing at the operating table, will suddenly remember that bright evening when he first saw this wonderful woman. He met her in the temple... and fell in love; she sang in the church choir. She was extraordinarily beautiful, with natural kindness and tenderness... and faith, very sincere faith. She left everything for him, her patron angel, and at the call of her heart set off on an unknown path. She completely trusted the man who promised to carry her in his arms.
Looking at his native and extraordinarily beautiful, even in an unconscious state, face, he suddenly realized how dear this woman was to him. There, in the operating room, it even seemed to him that he heard her voice, and that she heard and saw everything that was happening around. He experienced a union with her again, inexplicable by reason, as it had happened before, during their first meetings... He performed many operations during his practice, but this had never happened before. And he had never experienced such extreme trepidation before. The famous surgeon had to operate on his own wife, this was her final wish: “I want my husband to operate on me, he knows my heart better than anyone…”.
He will never forget these words, they will help him perform the most complex operation on his woman’s heart; an operation for which no one expected and for which no one prepared. There, in the operating room, he truly realizes that in his hands he holds not only a scalpel, but also life itself, including... his own. And the inexorable voice of conscience, sounding in the hidden layers of the subconscious, will remind him that, perhaps, it is also his fault that the fragile heart of his woman failed - she was tired of being strong. What will strike him most of all is his wife’s unconditional trust, her willingness to once again, as it was in the years of their happy youth, completely give him her feminine heart. Kneeling at the operating table, the professor will pray as he has never prayed before... And when he rises from his knees to begin the operation, his face will radiate such peace and light that everyone in the room will retreat for a moment.
It so happens that it is our earthly cross that becomes for us the beginning of heaven, this cross cleanses the soul and softens the heart. If only our spiritual eyes would open, and our hearts would see the Lord, Who is always nearby... The thief, crucified to the right of the Savior, humbly and meekly gave himself to “the power and truth of the sufferings of Christ” (Dmitry Shakhovsky), and heaven touched his heart. In the agony of his death throes, the robber suddenly woke up, and the cross of suffering became for him a mortally bitter, but healing medicine for eternal death.
The respectable man spoke without pretentiousness or pathos, conveying the breath of his healed soul to me: “When we met, she was, as the Russian poet said, “unhurried, not cold, not talkative, without an arrogant look for everyone, without pretensions to success, without these little antics, without imitative tricks - everything was quiet, it was just in her” (A. Pushkin, “Eugene Onegin”). She didn’t ask about anything then and didn’t ask for anything, she gave me all her femininity. She became the dearest and closest to me, revealing to me previously unknown facets of life. God, love and life - these words were synonymous for her. “Love is when two hearts are together, the Lord dwells there, and other hearts are born there,” she said mysteriously and smiled at the same time, she smiled very beautifully. We comprehended the art of life and thanked fate for the meeting.
Our student life then passed in modesty and peace. And we were not embarrassed by our simple existence, because “better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble with it...” (Prov. 15:16). They humbly trusted the Lord, enjoyed their youth and dreamed about the future. Without words or rules, we shared the difficulties and family worries, because that’s how it should be when you truly love, right? Is your wife happy that she is married to you? Do you know her heart? No, don't answer me... answer yourself.
…First child, initiation into the mystery of life. The inexplicable joy of holding a tiny baby in my hands... When my son woke up at night and started crying, I, very carefully, so as not to wake up my wife, got up and calmed him down. An unearthly feeling filled my heart just from this small act of caring for my beloved woman... and our baby. You know, at first we were not afraid to seem sentimental and did not refuse even “minor” manifestations of attention, tenderness and care for each other. A certain subtle neatness filled the entire atmosphere of our home. Perhaps that’s why every day, even the most difficult day, was interesting and always new. Both over our common joy and over our sorrows, we performed the “labor of love” (1 Thess. 1:3) together.
As time passed, we had other children... I worked hard and gained recognition as a successful surgeon. Unnoticed, life settled into a routine, and my career began to absorb me more and more. There was not enough time for church, God’s great goals and ministry faded into the background, only self-realization and careerism took hold on the throne of my heart. But in every soul there is an irresistible thirst that can only be satisfied in God. And the most terrible temptation that men (and women) are exposed to is the temptation to break away from God. All other temptations and falls are consequences of the main one. But I didn’t think much about the disastrous consequences of my isolation from God and His Church.
Excessive workload, psychophysical exhaustion and spiritual weakness made me irritable and careless in my relationships with the people closest to me. In fact, I began to live with my mind and not with my heart. Negligence in relations with his wife and children led to the whole family plunging into some kind of vicious circle of everyday boredom. Subtle emotional connections were torn, we communicated less and less. “You say something important in response, but I can’t hear you, you can’t hear me” (Bella Akhmadulina, 1977). And our hearts closed off from each other, and they were overcome by spasms of loneliness “together.” Cold protocol began to take over our relationships, including intimate ones; the first grievances and reproaches appeared. Regular kisses during meetings and partings, unspoken agreements... - all this has become part of our outwardly prosperous existence. The tree of our family life began to wither, at the root level it became sick...”
“A string broke, and I realized my loneliness,” Leo Tolstoy frankly admitted after his relationship with his wife broke down. As a result of a severe postpartum illness, Sofya Andreevna was afraid to have children, and Lev Nikolaevich could not imagine life without having children. He somehow didn’t think much about the possible death of his wife in the event of a concession to his principles. “Suddenly I felt that he and I were on opposite sides... And if I don’t occupy him, if I’m a doll, if I’m only a wife and not a person, then I can’t live... Why can’t these great people calmly enjoy life and please their loved ones? It’s scary to live with him,” Sofya Andreevna wrote in her diary... Time will pass, and that terrible hour will come when the wife of the great writer of the Russian land openly admits: “Twenty years ago, happy, young, I began to write this book, the whole story of my love for Levochka... And now... I sit alone and read, and mourn my love... Today he cried out loudly that the most his passionate thought about leaving his family. I will die, but I will not forget this sincere exclamation...”
Poetry and prose of family life, such different and completely incomprehensible destinies of men and women. The mystery of life is inexhaustible, “there are many sounds in the depths of the heart” (A. Tolstoy); in the secret cells of our eternal soul they are kept until time. A man’s path to a woman’s heart is also incomprehensible (Prov. 30:19), and a woman, sometimes “obedient to the attraction of feeling... and a fiery and tender heart” (A.S. Pushkin), gives herself completely to her beloved man with the hope of an eternal, reverently bright unity. Man and woman, attraction and repulsion, the desire for unity and the conflict of separation, the happiness of “one flesh” and the tragedy of loneliness “together”.
Standing at the operating table, the famous heart surgeon will remember not only the romantic moments of his youth. He will also remember the first time his wife’s heart failed. It happened in an ordinary provincial school, a six-year-old girl suddenly became ill, she was literally suffocating. They called a paid ambulance from the capital, but the doctors... categorically refused to hospitalize the child, citing the fact that these were the duties of the local ambulance. And then they started calling everyone, including him, the famous doctor. But he didn’t come, asking his wife to sort out the “misunderstanding.” She literally “flew” to the school, the local ambulance team was already on the spot and tried to save the child, but... time was lost. The girl died from laryngeal stenosis (an attack of suffocation) in her arms.
The absurd death of a child due to the indifference of “elite” doctors will strike her to the very heart. “These are not doctors, these are people with hardened hearts!” - she will pronounce this phrase with unearthly power, and then look at her husband with such a pure gaze that for the first time in his entire medical practice, he suddenly becomes ashamed not only of his personal medical cynicism, but also of “those doctors.” She will dream about that girl for a long time; she will wake up and cry more than one night. Crying because I couldn’t save someone else’s child…through no fault of my own. That was the kind of heart she had...
“Everyone carefully fulfills the requirements of the hostel in relation to outsiders... They do not stand on ceremony with friends” (A. Pushkin). “I took my wife’s love and loyalty for granted and over the years I also stopped being on ceremony with her.” Carelessly and freely treating your wife has become the norm; I considered myself uncomplicated in everything; there was no topic that embarrassed me. You know, I even lost the ability to blush from contemplating and hearing indecently vulgar things. But it is precisely reasonable taboos (prohibitions) and restrictions that protect society from moral decay, protect the innermost sphere of the intimate, and support the sacred order of life...
For obvious reasons, I have always been polite and helpful to others. After all, relationships in business and society require maintaining decorum. And I strictly observed social etiquette, my reputation was impeccable. I relaxed... only in my own home. Why bother among your own people? Do they really need my helpfulness and gallantry, compliments and aristocratic manners? That’s what I thought then... and suddenly I noticed that my wife also “accepted” new manners of relationships, and her sweet habits began to disappear. She used to dress as if every day was a holiday, and it even seemed to me that she wore the most beautiful clothes at home... But that was how it used to be...
Gradually, our seemingly cozy house began to be filled with a strange, oppressive atmosphere. No, we didn’t shout at each other, on the contrary, we were more and more often… silent. And in our case, silence turned out to be not gold, but a serious illness that gradually led us to an emotional break. Intimate conversations stopped, everyone lived “on their own,” we moved away from each other on an internal, spiritual level. Then my human image fully corresponded to the portrait described by Nikolai Gumilyov: “Marked with the sign of the highest shame, he never talks about God... In his soul are centuries-old grievances, in his soul are sorrows without a name.” True, I experienced periodic surges of passionate attraction to my beautiful wife, but then cooling set in again, because there was no main thing between us...”
“The true drama of her soul, human and female, was that Tolstoy, while leaving her mentally, did not leave her physically. Mentally, he pushed away from her, but physically approached her... And Sofya Andreevna, with the horror and despair of a wife, a woman, a person, saw that any change in her husband’s attitude towards her, i.e. every period of his attention, delicacy, respect, affection towards her was only... the approach of a physiological phenomenon” (Dmitry Shakhovsky). Leo Tolstoy’s wife had her own life drama; the lack of spiritual unity created a void of alienation between her and Lev Nikolayevich, and the two of them fell into this void.
“They say that if a woman is silent, it means she has something to say. Are you ready to listen to your wife’s heart, to hear the whole truth about you? Are you ready to find out about her mysterious desires and dreams? You know, only when I began to see clearly, I began to understand that the main thing, without which a woman will never find complete happiness in marriage, is emotional intimacy and kinship of souls, the tenderness of relationships and the feeling of being the most loved. But tenderness cannot be confused with anything, and there can never be too much of it. And men are cold-bloodedly silent not because this is part of their masculine character, and “with many kind words” you can captivate them, and with “softness of lips” you can master them (Prov. 7:21).
Someone said that “love is measured by the measure of forgiveness, and affection by the pain of saying goodbye.” Now I understand that then my soul, burdened with the “sound” of fame, simply could not enter the graceful silence of another heart. My wife strove for a simple human life, but I “flew” high and ended up at my “pole”. And at the pole, as you know, the compass does not work - “magnetic storms” rule there. Spiritual storms plunged us into a crisis invisible to prying eyes. With material well-being and external structure, we experienced a split in “one body.” After all, “spouses who approach each other without forgiving something, hiding a stone in their bosom, practice fornication in marriage,” wrote Sergei Averintsev (simply this fornication is “legalized,” Author), “any lack of connection, any non-absolute fusion of two into one... strikes us like lightning...”
“How to please your wife”? (1 Cor. 7:33) I didn’t think much about this at the time. We can’t get away from each other anywhere: we have children, and family dignity cannot be disgraced, and divorce is a sin. That’s what I thought then, not noticing that my wife’s subtle soul had long since broken; that, like smoking flax, her affection and respect for me faded away. Many years ago God gave me the woman of my dreams. She loved me extremely reverently and strongly, and agreed to follow me “to the ends of the world.” But time passed, and next to me was a woman who was always sad, tired and irritable for any reason. And even in society, among friends, she objected to me at every opportunity... In the first years of our family life, she was a cheerful young woman, and her beautiful face literally shone with happiness just by looking at me. She sincerely laughed at every joke I made, she admired me... Aren’t you afraid of losing your wife’s heart? No, I’m not talking about divorce... You know, the worst thing is probably losing the heart of a loved one.
The mystery of love is great, people change because of love. And the soul freezes spiritually when love is crucified. I was not mistaken in my predictions: my wife really did not leave me and did not “disgrace” my reputation. Due to her decency, she chose a more “decent” way out of the situation for the companion of a successful and always busy surgeon: she plunged into the world of her female loneliness, into inner monasticism. And she bore her godmother’s burden without outward discontent or grumbling. Only now it seems to me that it was then that her feminine heart, already fragile, began to give another failure, it was tired of being lonely. After all, a healthy heart is a heart that you don’t feel, that feels like it doesn’t exist. What burns, worries and hurts speaks of a need for help, a need for healing. And she cried, her woman’s heart, and split in two “under the saw” of loneliness together, suffocating from the lack of love and spiritual oxygen...”
“Tell me, do seagulls also cry when the sea betrays them?” – listening to the man’s frank confession, I suddenly for some reason remembered exactly this phrase, somewhere I accidentally heard it, and it involuntarily surfaced in my mind...
Returning home from another scientific conference, openly enthusiastic and excited about his achievements, the professor-surgeon found his wife in an unusual state. It was already late, all the children were asleep, and she was sitting on the floor... and almost didn’t cry anymore, but in a strange way she was holding her heart. And she didn’t notice that her husband was standing next to her, and she was no longer interested in his scientific exploits, and she was no longer afraid of anything... After all, what could be worse than the loss of the most precious thing in life - the heart of a loved one.
She was sitting on the floor And I was sorting through a pile of letters. And, like cooled ash, She took them in her hands and threw them away. I took familiar sheets And she looked at them so wonderfully. How souls look from above The body thrown on them... Oh, how much life there was here, Irreversibly experienced! Oh, how many sad moments Love and joy of the murdered! I stood silently on the side And I was ready to fall on my knees, And I felt scared and sad, As from the inherent cute shadow.
