One year.
12 months.
52 weeks.
365 days.
It doesn’t even seem real that we have been in Ukraine for the aforementioned length of time.
I woke up this morning to an average, cold, February day. I went to the gym, had a Russian lesson, hosted my father-in-law, ate dinner. It was all so…normal. So average. And in a lot of ways it has become typical. These days, not one like the other, that has rapidly become “life in Ukraine”.
So many days I still feel so foreign. So many times culture-shock comes out of nowhere. So many times I smile and nod at the woman in the store even though I have NO idea what she’s saying. In so many ways I am still so foreign.
But it’s home, too. My subway station is so familiar, I know exactly which elderly woman will be selling her home-grown vegetables in exactly which spot. I know which of my friends prefers Russian and which prefers Ukrainian. I can travel, shop, go, survive.
The last few weeks have been full of nostalgia for me. After my first trip back to America, the holidays came up quickly and then this “anniversary”. So in a lot of my free time I catch myself lost in thought. Thinking and remembering. Mostly remembering.
I remember when I thought this dream God placed in our hearts was a far-off fantasy that would never come true. I remember thinking Ukraine felt so much more than 5000 miles away. I remember sitting in my college classes, distracted, thinking about what was happening in this part of the world.
And after that, I remember one of the hardest years of my life unfolding, every layer darker than the last. I remember the unspeakable horrors that crashed around me, threatening to bury me. Most of all, I remember that darkness. I remember choosing my pride over the loving embrace of God. I pushed everyone, everything, so far away that no one around could hear me scream. I crawled through that desert on my hands and knees, dying of thirst and all the while refusing the Living Water.
I remember that anger. I remember that rage. That feeling that God had ripped everything from me. Because he did. He wrenched it all out of my blackened, pride-filled grasp, begging me to reach instead for him as I fell so far. It’s terrifying to realize how easy it was to direct my rage at God. He was the only thing in my life strong enough to withstand that sheer hate-filled rage. But really, truly, the anger was just a more dignified way to cover my all-consuming pride and lack of trust.
By the time we moved to Kansas City, I was so defeated and broken, I couldn’t sing worship songs. I distinctly remember trying to read my Bible one day and throwing it at the wall in disgust. As I look back now, the only thing that disgusts me is my sin.
I won’t say there was a “moment” in Kansas City that God broke through to me. But somehow, through those amazing people, at that amazing church, he chipped away this stoney wall I built up so high until it was a flimsy pile of scattered bricks. I began to learn how to open up again. I began to learn how to be vulnerable again. There was a shift. A beautiful, slow, unexpected shift.
I won’t say when we moved to Ukraine that I “had it all figured out”. I won’t say I was out of that desert. I won’t say I was “right with God”. I will say, God knew exactly what he was doing.
I left my spiritual desert of America and entered my new, cultural desert in Ukraine. God slowly, lovingly, tenderly, broke me down, until I was flat on my face, prostrate in front of the cross. He was just whispering softly, R, I brought you where I always wanted you, can you just please trust me?
The first week in Ukraine, I sat in my bedroom, ugly-crying as God calmly opened up my tightly-clenched, stone-like heart and fists and patiently scooped out so much of my gangrenous pride. I was so tired of fighting Him. ‘Just let it go, daughter’. And I did. One by one I gave them up. The hatred for the man who hurt my mother. The death of my grandfather. The pain of betrayal for my previous church and youth group from a man we trusted. The list seems endless. I unclenched my stubborn, child-like grasp on sin and I blindly, through tears and fear, reached out to God. and he came running. Like the father in the story of the prodigal son, he ran to me and embraced me like he had wanted to do the entire time I strayed from him.
God led me from one desert to another. He led me from my twisted, hand-made desert of pain and anger and into this new, foreign, cultural desert. But he is the oasis. And when I stay near him, the oasis, I want for nothing. The difference in these deserts is enormous but the biggest is my heart.
I don’t feel the heat of this desert. I don’t feel the dryness, see the emptiness around. Because now my eyes are fixed on my oasis. My lifeline in this crazy, wild adventure. He is my endless supply of water and I know what it means to refuse it. I know the dryness of a parched throat and pushing away the canteen because of pride. I know the ugly pain of slow deterioration, alone, after you’ve run from all those who tried to point the way to life-giving water. And I won’t refuse it today. I know more deserts will come. Each time I will trek through these deserts, sun-blistered, bleary-eyed, weary. But I can choose the Living Water, or I can choose pride. I know now what the cost is to choose wrong.
I won’t say that this last year in Ukraine, I have done amazing feats. I won’t say I have brought the Gospel to thousands. I won’t say I have been a 100% effective and perfect soldier for the Lord. I won’t say I have made history. I won’t say I have been a fantastic missionary. I won’t say I have changed many lives.But what I am learning through this journey is that God has changed my life. He has changed my heart. He has brought me out of one desert and into another just like in Hosea and he has spoken tenderly to me in the wilderness and he has told me exactly how much he loves me and what he is preparing me for. I hope I have changed lives so far in Ukraine, but I can’t say for sure. But what I do know for sure is that through this time in Ukraine, God has irrevocably, impossibly, changed my life and maybe for now, just maybe, that is enough.
On a Mission 