Journey to the light
The life story of Kamila Martinova

Slovak version

I was born the illegitimate child of an unmarried mother in 1964. My mother wasn’t exactly religious, although she belonged to a generation of people who, ever since their schooldays, had felt the full force of the Christian faith everywhere. I think that she considered having me at all, albeit out of wedlock, to be God’s blessing. That was probably why she liked to tell me stories from the Bible when I was a kid – especially those that dealt with Jesus’ resurrection. For me it was an exciting and bizarre story which must have aroused my interest in the supernatural.

I remember ”prophesying” as an eight-year-old, and whenever my mother asked me how did I know, I would point upwards, saying, ”From Him.” I also recall a stick I attributed great power to. Furthermore, I have a recollection of a time, much later, when I was praising Allah.
I don’t know how that came about; I had probably been inspired by some film or other. What I do know, however, is that from time to time I would devote myself to ceremonies characteristic of Muslims, thinking of Allah as being my God.

Officially, though, I was considered to be a Christian. And since, as was right and proper, I had been christened, it came the time when my mother wanted me to have first Communion, with prospects for confirmation. This evoked terrible sensations in me – comparable perhaps to a piglet having a foreboding of its own slaughter. I pictured myself with a bunch of flowers, wearing a starched white dress and reciting some learned phrases to our priest – and I remember running around like crazy and screaming. However, for my mother I had been an atheist since then. Luckily for me, at least Allah had sympathy for me. And so, aged thirteen and out of gratitude, I ended up purchasing a German-language book on the Quran, which incidentally I never did read because it seemed too complicated to me.

Just around the same time, I fell in love with a woman for the first time, a wonderful woman teacher adored by all. At the time, I broke with my faith for the first time. I loved that woman to the extent that she appeared to me to be simply ”divine.” I therefore didn’t need some illusionary God anymore. I came to the conclusion that we should love humans instead of God, and I retained said view, it being the fruit of my first love, for a very long period of time.

In grammar school, I was constantly having to fight off a female fellow student’s attempts to proselytize me. I once got a copy of the Bible from her for my birthday. But no matter how hard I tried to read it, I couldn’t seem to understand the archaic and, for me, distorted, enigmatic language in it. Therefore, I wasn’t able to conceive of what it was in those texts that people admired so. As a result, I relegated the Bible to my shelves where it sat for years gathering dust...

Furthermore, I recall meeting a Jehova’s Witness. When she tried to convince me of the need to believe from across the street, I responded by telling her curtly, ”Faith in God is only for the weak. Strong people don’t need anything like that.” The Jehova’s Witness woman was astonished, and merely said, ”Nobody has ever told me anything like that.” At the time, I was approximately 25 years old and, despite several disappointments in love, still feeling strong enough.

Yet more disappointments lay ahead of me, and my self-confidence slowly but surely began to dwindle. In 1990, after a number of unpleasant experiences, I recognized that I would be able to find a partner only in those circles where lesbian women conscious of their orientation met. So I got up the courage and made up my mind to go to Prague in order to attend the first meeting ”with my own kind.” I didn’t want to tell my mother just why I was going to Prague. As a concerned mother, she simply couldn’t let things slide, so she started to search after the truth – until she came across a letter in which a girlfriend had invited me to said meeting; a letter that was most telling...

Needless to say, there was shock and consternation on both sides. Mother reacted in a hysterical fashion, while I didn’t have the slightest idea of how to defend myself. I packed my bags and went off to Prague just the same. However, during my entire stay in Prague, I kept wondering what would be in store for me on returning home. And on my way back home, on the train, God appeared to me for the first time in my life in the form of an angel. This angel was a fourteen-year-old girl who was sharing the same compartment with me. Normally, I’m not very talkative under similar circumstances, and at that particular moment I didn’t feel like talking at all. Somehow we did end up talking to each other, though. It turned out that she was traveling from Prague to Brno in order to bear witness to her faith in God in front of an audience of strangers.

My conversation with this girl was an incredibly strong experience for me. Despite her young age, a profound faith in God as well as great devotion, peace and wisdom emanated from her. I could hardly comprehend that such a young person could be so devoted to God. Sensing that she must have had some traumatic experiences as a child, I finally addressed her, asking her directly about it. My assumption was confirmed: she had lost both of her parents due to their addiction to alcohol. I remember telling myself at the time, ”Of course, how else would it be possible for her to believe in God?!” And yet, meeting her didn’t leave me indifferent.

Upon getting back home, I frequently suffered anxiety attacks, because my mother would, at times, still get into a panic. I decided then to try out using prayer. Each time I felt seized by fear, I inwardly began reciting the Lord’s Prayer. At first, it was difficult because I didn’t know it by heart. After all, up until then we had only said it once a year, on Christmas Day. Gradually, I managed to put all the words together, soon to discover its wonderful power. A few days went by, and such an incredible peace spread itself on me that even mother’s panic ceased. Thus I learned that I had found a remedy for all of my sufferings...

Soon my balance and self-confidence were restored again – and I gave up praying. It was good enough for me to know the remedy just in case I should have any more problems again. Yet problems didn’t fail to materialize for a long time. My first love relationship began to disintegrate, and I felt as if I was walking in a daydream. Feeling utterly miserable, I ran into two evangelical proselytizers one night while on the town, a man and a woman from abroad. In poor French we spoke about God, and I was able to explain to them that I knew that God helped those who prayed when suffering. In response, they lectured me by saying that we shouldn’t just pray when feeling down, but all the time and each and every day.

At the time I couldn’t imagine having such an intimate relationship with God. I had always had doubts as to whether He really existed. And then one day, I had a strange kind of experience. I went to the market to buy fresh radishes, all of sudden feeling very much like bargaining. Battling with the greengrocer, I achieved the better deal and, proud of myself, moved on to a shop with the two crowns I had saved in my purse. On my way there, I was stopped by a foreign woman. She asked me for a crown, claiming she had to make a phone call. Assuming she needed to exchange smaller coins for bigger ones, I generously gave her two crowns for change. The foreign woman gratefully accepted my money and walked away. I found myself thunderstruck, and the only thing that crossed my mind was, ”Today no one can convince me that God doesn’t exist!”

Shortly thereafter, my second love relationship fell apart. As we parted, my then significant other gave me this piece of advice: ”You should read the Bible.” What she was trying to say was that I was unfeeling, suffering from a lack of emotion, and that I should improve. But I didn’t think there was anything in me that needed improving... Another two years went by, with my Bible gathering more dust.

I spent those two years (day)dreaming of the greatest love of my life up to then. I would send her letters to the office where she was working, longing for her answers which never came. My love for this woman kept on growing, and so did my yearning to be with her, until one night, I sent a prayer straight to heaven, shouting inwardly with a mighty voice, ”Oh God, please give her to me!” The next day, I found her private address in the new telephone directory. So I sent her another letter right away. After a few days, she called me on the phone, which was exactly what I had imagined in my mind at least a thousand times.

Eventually, I ended up spending a mere three months with this woman, but the whole thing was the work of God anyway. As it happened, when we first met in person, I learned that she wasn’t even lesbian and that she had never yearned for another woman. Nevertheless I managed to convince her of my love for her, and so we built a relationship which was short-lived if unforgettable. Unforgettable mainly because I loved for the very first time from the bottom of my heart, understanding what true love is all about.

I was all the more disappointed when she finally left me after all. I’ll never forget how desperate I felt, cursing God. I was terribly mad at Him, reproaching Him with taking her away from me when He had given her to me in the first place. It took me a while to understand that God only makes our own wishes come true. Both living with this woman and parting from her were something I had wanted myself except that I hadn’t been aware of it before.

Over the next few years, I calmed down, my relationship with God growing more intense. It came the time when I decided to pray daily. I began to feel the effect it had on me even at a physical level. For instance, there was this strange warmth in the area around my heart. My understanding of God’s impact on our lives filled me with a deep love for Him. Yet I still wasn’t entirely His. One of the most difficult and profound periods of my life was to take place at a later stage.

In 1997, I started work for a foreign company. In this way God fulfilled my strong wish to prove my managerial skills and to earn a large amount of money. However, right from the start, I had a great number of difficulties to deal with while working at this company. I didn’t understand what was going on, so I asked God what awaited me there. He answered me through the Bible: ”Jesus’ death.” When I fell in love with my (female) superior, and she with me, I thought everything had taken a turn for the better, yet the opposite was the case. Just then God appeared to me as clear and unambiguous as never before. At a most difficult moment, filled with dread, I inwardly heard His thunderous voice: ”Are you questioning that I am with you?” ”No, I’m not,” I answered immediately, and I really wasn’t questioning, didn’t doubt Him anymore... This happened a few more times. However, since His voice sounded less thunderous, I thought it was my own inner voice speaking to me, so I didn’t take it that seriously. No wonder then that everything this voice had warned me of came true. The lesson this experience taught me was that we should heed God’s advice and take Him seriously at all times.

One day this voice told me: ”Tomorrow she is going to kill you.” It wasn’t until the following day that it dawned on me what was going on: my beloved boss most dramatically dismissed me without notice. It was a Friday afternoon. I went home where I had a nervous breakdown. I swallowed some pill or other and drank a lot of alcohol. I didn’t plan on killing myself, but, looking back, I realize that I must have been awfully close to death. During the whole of Saturday I was completely beside myself. Having come to on Sunday morning, I went to see my mother, weak and hungry. At her place, I ate – and began to live again. It wasn’t until later that I saw a significant connection: Jesus too had been killed on a Friday, he was dead on Saturday, only to be resurrected on Sunday...

What happened in said company – the problems and the clear presence of God – served to deepen my relationship with Him. And then it was the Bible’s turn. I left Bratislava, and in the stillness of the mountains or with the roaring of the sea, I read the Book of Books. Its strange language began to make sense. All of sudden, I could look behind the words, only to discover the astounding depth and truth hidden therein. I read it all the way through, realizing at once that I would always go back to it. The Bible became a valuable model guiding me through life.

While the wounds I had sustained were healing, I began, for the first time in my life, to see myself as a sinner. Standing in front of a mirror, I saw my own lack of emotions and inconsiderateness. So I decided to do penance – to live in such a way as befitted a good Christian. I turned into the kind of tame, humble lamb that submits to each and everyone because that’s the way God wants it to be. For years and years, I would be accommodating even to people who clearly hurt me, deeply believing that my humility would disarm them and that they would change their behavior toward me. However, I was to learn that I had gone from one extreme to another, and I didn’t want to stay there either.

What followed was a time in my life when I withdrew, when I’d rather avoided other people because I sensed danger emanating from them. Most importantly, however, I needed to put my inner self in order, and to find my own system of values. I realized that I wanted to strike a happy medium. That I didn’t want to be neither too egoistic nor too selfless. And, finally, that I didn’t want to follow the Christian teachings exclusively...

So I wound up picking up various esoteric books, reading both the Tao te ting and the Quran all the way through. Also, I started taking courses of the Sahaja Yoga. Once again, I opened up to life and returned to the people around me. And God didn’t reject me. On the contrary, He blessed my activities, strengthening my sense of satisfaction as well as my inner calm.

Meanwhile, I don’t feel the need to judge and classify other people anymore. I don’t even judge and classify myself anymore. I am not unambiguously Christian, nor do I want to be. I am not an unambiguously good person, nor do I want to be. I am not unambiguously lesbian, nor do I want to be. Instead, I embrace every corner of my heart. I am simply religious, I am simply a human being. I also know that my present state is bound to change. And that is just as well, for life isn’t static. Life is constantly changing. Life is a journey. A journey to the light.

Translated from German into English by Klaus Braun, Germany

The story was published in the book
Randi O. Solberg "Let Our Voices Be Heard! Christian Lesbians in Europe Telling their Stories".
Mein Buch, Hamburg, 2004.