Baba Ksenya and Love for Jesus

Baba Ksenya was about 90 years old when I met her. She was a tiny woman walking around slowly bending over her stick. Her gray hair was neatly gathered in a small knot. She moved around her tiny apartment. In spite of her age her blue eyes were still clear and they expressed calmness and kindness.

Baba ksenya had only 3 dresses: two of them were for daily use and the third one, a dark brown with a white color was for the church and for holy days. It was hung on the door covered with a white sheet. Her place was always clean and tidy and cozy the same way she was herself.  There was only a simple bed, a table with chairs and a small chest in her room. Her tiny kitchen with dishes clean and shined evoked surprise. How could she do that if she hardly moved.

Long time ago before the revolution in times of Tzar baba Ksenya was a young pretty woman. She lived with her parents and 5 sisters. Her father was a postman, so their family wasn’t rich, but they lived pretty well financially. Every holiday all children got new dresses, toys and delicious food.
Young Ksenya had a good voice and she sang in a church. There she was noticed by a priest. He fell in love with her and in awhile they got married. Ksenya was much younger than her husband, but she adored him. He was a decent person, intelligent, well mannered, kind, honest and fair.

They moved to a small town, bought a house and there their two sons were born. But their happiness did not last. The new Soviet government decided to put an end to different religions and established one religious for all-the Soviet one. One after another “servants of God” were sent to Siberia. Ksenya’s husband wasn’t an exception. It happened that a neighbor asked him for dinner and offered a glass of wine in honor of comrade Stalin.The priest refused to drink referring to his sick stomach. That night he was arrested. Ksenya remained alone with two small children, without any means of support.

Nobody was willing to give her any job as she was a wife of an exiled priest. They almost starved, but Ksenya lived with the hope of her husband returning and expected him every day. Instead she got a letter informing  about her husband death. She sold everything she had and went to far away Siberia to bury her husband. It was an awful journey and she paid a lot to dig frozen soil for a grave. She did everything she could, so her husband was buried as a human being in a separate grave and according to religious law.

Then Ksenya moved to a city where her relatives lived. She cleaned offices for a small payments and raised her children. Her sons grew to be very good young men-tall, handsome , kind and loving. Both of them very young when were taken to WW2 and killed there. Baba Ksenya was left alone.

When I first met baba Ksenya she occupied the smallest room I’ve ever seen in a big house of her nephew. The nephew and his relatives were drunkards. There were perpetual feasts and quarrels in that house. Baba Ksenya used to take their small daughter to her quiet tiny room where was only a bed, a small table and the icon on the wall. She told her stories about Jesus to that little girl and taught her to love him. But the nephew and his wife didn’t like it and baba Ksenya was in trouble if they caught her doing that.

After many years of patient waiting baba Ksenya finally got her own separate apartment from the government  in a building next to ours and I visited her often. We spent a lot of time there in long conversations. Often she didn’t remember, who I was, but always remembered my name. However, her memory about  past life was amazing. She told her stories with so many small details as if it had happened only last week.

At that time I was a Soviet pioneer believing in justice and tried to convince Baba Ksenya not to believe religion as religion was “opium for people”,churches and priests were deceiving people. Baba Ksenya calmly objected that didn’t care about that, but she believed only Jesus. She had a few old notebooks where in small accurate handwriting were written stories about Jesus's life and sometimes read some of them for me.

In spite of horrible life conditions baba Ksenya went through she accepted everything without any protests. About people horrible attitude or behavior towards her she used to say “they don’t know what they are doing” as if it was small kids. I never saw her angry or frustrated with anybody. She always looked satisfied peacefully accepting everything  what was coming her way

Sometimes she told me how much she tired to live and asked God to take her to him and her prayer was heard. One sunny day baba Ksenya cleaned her apartment, went to bed to get some rest, read a newspaper, folded it up, closed her eyes and died. Her face expressed light and peace