Leaving Everything Behind.....

It was a freezing cold day when my family and I boarded the big, old ship. We had lived in Russia our whole lives until this moment but now we had to leave for good. We had no other choice. We had to run away. England was as cold as Russia but only regarding the weather.

As we set off on our epic journey, we couldn't hold back our emotions. It was as cold inside of us as the freezing cold weather outside the ship. We tried to chat and laugh but we couldn't really laugh. It was hard to leave everything behind, our whole lives behind, and head to an unknown future full of hope. I had with me the most important thing inmy life: my family. We were everything we had.

We travelled light, we left everything behind, we took just the essentials: our holy prayer books, our holy objects, our holy books. We took them because they were part of us. Like fish couldn't live outside the water, we couldn't live without them. And they were something like our treasure.

After the first few days sailing in the ocean, the seascape around us and the weather began to change. From freezing cold and rainy it wasn't as cold and rainy as in the beginning of the journey.

Unexpectedly, we came accross some apparent strangers, but then we realised our family had just got a bit bigger. We shared our stories about what we had and what we didnt have. We shared our faith. We shared our trust. They comforted and encouraged us and we comforted and encouraged them. We were a family, we became friends.

We had to face a great hardship on the journey, we were lacking food. The food we had brought went bad and we were running out of food. Our strictness couldn't last. We had to face the only choice we had. We had to accept things the way they were.

Despite everything we continued doing the best we could, until we finally arrived in England. Then we had to face a brand new challenge: the acceptance. We felt exausted and tested but our trust was stronger than ever. We had never been so united. In the end, the miracle happened: we finally could be who we were, freely.

And the story of our epic journey ends with the continuation of our family and of who we are. Our descendents are giving us much pride and we rely on them to continue this journey.