To celebrate Valentine’s Day we will tell you a love story, that of Oreste and Luisa of Busto Arstizio, in the Varese Province. Since last September, they have been part of the group of families supporting the Loreto School.
During that holiday, Oreste was always surrounded by many girls, like “a swarm of bees around honey” and for this reason, Luisa avoided knowing him immediately. “Every morning, when he entered the breakfast room, I would look down. I couldn’t stand the effect it was having on me, and I didn’t want him to see me blush.” Oreste, every day tried to greet that little girl who didn’t go around him like the others. She didn’t seem to care about him, and that’s why she intrigued him. So, one day, he approached her and tried to get to know her.
“We played ping-pong! He was nice, kind, and I could tell he was interested in me. That filled my heart with so much joy. During that vacation he asked me if I wanted to be his girlfriend and, on the day of the Assumption, we had a kind of first kiss,” recalls Luisa.
Their relationship continued even when they returned from vacation but when her father saw them together, he forced them to separate: “You go this way, and you go that way…”, he told us, pointing us to two opposite directions!
So, Luisa and Oreste lost sight of each other for a couple of years. She started playing in the village band, met another boy much older than she but again her father took her away from him, taking her out of the band: “I was so sad! At that point, I went down. I remember that one evening in September, my mother suggested that we go to the parish party together. I accepted out of love for her, to make her happy.” And there, surprisingly, thanks to a friend, Luisa met Oreste again: “We found ourselves alone talking, and he, out of the blue, asked me what I was going to do the next day. and I told him I was going to mass even though it had been a lifetime since I had been there! I was 17 and he was 20. After three years we got married.”
Years went by, to be precise, seven. “As expected, with the seventh year, we had a major crisis. I was attached to him like a clam. I had no identity – without my way of being or willing. Who was I? Why was I laughing? I had put everything in crisis: I was wrong to get married!”. Oreste, for his part, held on, even though he suffered, he left Luisa free. They went to a lawyer, and as a consequence, Oreste left their house. It seemed all over.
“I wanted to live free of the bonds that held me captive. Having filled the gaps, I had nothing left and I was desolate. I asked God for help: ‘If you are there, help me…’, I said. Only God could help me. What relationship could I have with this God?” From that cry for help, Luisa rediscovered the power of prayer, and that distant God, in some way, now began to feel close to her, present in her life. And there was room again for Oreste, and hope for their marriage.
“When we went to the counseling center, it was like marrying him a second time: it was like my real marriage began, finally free from my needs. Now, I realize that I had to go through this “narrow door” because it was necessary to build everything “on rock”. Previously we had built everything empty of love…”.
After some time, they got to know the New Families Movement, and after two little girls, a little brother was born. The network of families supported them and their experience became a gift: “Ours is an experience forged in pain. Now, it seems we can understand someone who tells us that he or she no longer feels anything for the other… And we recognize this state as part of our experience. But we have experienced too that you can rise above it.”
What about the Loreto School?
“We got there in September, after 37 years of marriage. In the last two years, we have seen how God has opened the way for us to get to Loppiano. And now we are living this experience of openness, which puts the world in one’s heart, and it is so fulfilling! How true it is what someone told us: one city is not enough for our family! ».