Seeking the Light, 

With the Heart of a Child

In 1982, Romania was a place from which Valentina and Ruset Patrascu escaped none too soon. It had become a hot spot of abuse, a place where civilians chafed under political repressions. In a word, Romania was all about control. Religious freedom was unknown, as was creative expression.

For a little girl named Valentina Luminita, this cultural cauldron bubbled over with long lasting trauma. Years later, she would feel emotional and spiritual torment from the circumstances surrounding her father's birth. He had been abandoned on the steps of a church. Unanswered questions about the identity of his parents and the reasons for his orphanhood tortured him, and they filtered down into the next generation.

There were other traumas for Valentina. She was just a child when her palms were burned nearly to the bone. As an adult, Valentina carried the vestige of trauma from that accident as well as from three separate occasions when she nearly drowned. Equally disturbing was the botched surgery that nearly killed her at the age of fourteen. In what should have been uncomplicated surgical procedures to remove her tonsils and some polyps in her nose, she lost enough blood that her life hung in the balance. Afterward, she suffered nerve damage that affected the right side of her body as well as her speech.

In 1980, Valentina's mother died at the age of 43, a victim of cancer, and Valentina began to sense that darkness was descending upon her homeland. She and her husband were fortunate to be able to emigrate to Germany before the lid blew off of a Romanian revolution. Though grateful for their safety, Valentina found it difficult to leave family and friends, and ached most of all when she was unable to attend her father's funeral services.

Born on April 11, Valentina's father had named her after Russian astronaut Valentina Tereshkova, who became both the first woman and the first civilian in space. Valentina has taken from this namesake a sense of limitless soaring. Her second name, Luminita, means "little light". It was given her by her mother in the hopes that her daughter would be a shining light for God's lovingkindness. 

Indeed, Valentina's world is filled with light. Her arms sparkle with iridescent crystal bracelets; crystals are embedded in her eyeglass frames; and her home twinkles from the light of crystals at every turn of the head. Yet even without jewelry or china cabinets in which crystal is beautifully displayed, Valentina conveys a sense of glitter and sparkle. Her eyes dance, and her face lights up when she spots someone she loves. To strangers, too, she is unfailingly warm and welcoming. In her dreams, she sometimes sees herself as a crystal being. Her soul seems to be reaching for the Source of light itself and, in that quest, she sometimes transcends the human form; she becomes crystalline. Valentina's dreams reflect a pure soul that is struggling to break free of common self-absorption so that it can lift other souls and help propel them toward the same Light she seeks.

Though decades may have rolled by since she lived in Romania, there remains about Valentina something pure and trusting, as though the untainted spirit of a child thrives within her. Certainly, she looks at the world with childlike innocence.

"I've been told I'm too open," she says. Eyes wide, she muses, "What does that even mean? We are all on different levels of spiritual evolution, but if we have love and compassion, we can do something good for humanity. And that is what I am trying to do." This quest pretty much defines Valentina's focus and purpose in life. 

The hand of God moved Valentina's life in such a way that it was arranged to put her in the right place at the right time, and she would meet someone who could help her in this mission. And so, in 2007, God placed Valentina, with all her unresolved trauma and sorrow, and Ruset, who was struggling with many serious physical challenges, in a cozy condominium in a high rise tower located in Rocky River, Ohio.

Their home was less than two miles from the medical offices of Dr. Issam Nemeh.