Where in the world is the Johnson Fam?  Are you finding it impossible to keep up with all our comings and goings and craziness?  Yeah, me too.  🙂  I did a big catch-up post here, for the curious.

I’m sitting in the Houston Airport, on my way back to Ukraine for adoption court. YES!  Jed is already back in Ukraine working away with our Boys, moving out of our house, and spending lots of quality time with our soon-to-be-son.  Our other kiddos are back in Salem at some wonderful friends’ house.  Grammy (Jed’s mommy) flew to Oregon from Montana to care for them while I’m gone for court.  So, we’re all spread out for now, but it’s all gonna be worth it, because soon our son will be OUT forever!!!  I hope and pray all goes well at court on Monday and I can do a big, fat introduction/birth announcement.

We arrived in the US as a family on August 11th and had the most wonderful 10 days together before Jed flew back to Ukraine.  It was just pure awesomeness.

We only pack the necessities

Ol’ Faithful mustache tape has served us well

At the airport in Kyiv!

You know, I had read lots of missionary/expat tips on how to re-enter the US after being away for a while, and they all recommended heading someplace that is not your home base and just being together as a family before seeing family and friends.  All the recommendations talked about how it is helpful just to decompress as a family, get over jetlag without demands on your attention and all that.  I thought it sounded like a great idea, but not great on the ol’ budget.  Well, God totally took care of that!  A wonderfully generous couple from Ventura, CA whom we had NEVER MET gave us their house for 5 days.  They left and just let us take over their beautiful home and it was the hugest blessing ever!!!  We went to the beach (where Jed and I proceeded to win the worst parents in the world award by letting our kids get completely fried…oops #babylobsters), we watched tons of movies, we oogled over Target and Trader Joes, I read and read and read some more, and the icing on the cake: Jed and I got to go see my brother star in a musical in La Jolla.  It was AWESOME.  Thank you Dan and Jeannie for blessing us so completely.

Jet lag is a beast!

I’m so proud of my brother!

After our 5 day rest, my family drove down and we all met in Anaheim for 4 days of Disney!!!  My heaven!  Haha! My parents had been saving and planning for this family trip for 2 years and it was absolutely perfection.  Seriously.  It could not have been better!

We did two days of Disneyland and two days of California Adventure and we loved every second of it.  My parents rented a house with a pool so every day we would come back in the afternoon and the kids would swim with their cousins.  Best.trip.ever.  Thank you Mom and Dad for that most wonderful, memorable gift!

Gotta represent Wide Awake! 🙂

Jed flew back to Ukraine on our last day of Disney and the kids and I flew up to Oregon.  Then it was school registration (EEK!) and school supply shopping and embassy document notarizing and health insurance document mailing and doctor’s office calling and soon-to-be-son clothes shopping and back-to-America-culture-shocking (more on that later).  I pretty much ran around like a chicken with my head cut off, so it’s lucky that Grammy arrived when she did to save my children from their crazy mommy! 😉

Seth forgot about booster seats. Ha!

My kids were FASCINATED and in awe of the cereal aisle

A once in a lifetime experience: they each got to pick out their own cereal.

We’ve been so busy we even lost a tooth!

The kids insisted we walk to the library instead of driving. “We don’t want to lose our Ukrainian legs Mom!”

We are so blessed and SO excited to be just about done with this legal stage of the adoption.  We’re ready for the family stage now. Our mommy and daddy hearts are positively busting at the seams.  We are so close!  The kids are doing amazing.  They are so flexible and adaptable and brave.  They want their brother home super bad too.

Soon, baby soon!!

Today is Day 3 of Romaniv Day Camp (if you follow Wide Awake on Facebook I’ve been posting pics) and I’m home on the couch in a semi-reclined position, trying hard not to move.  It’s nothing serious, I just tweaked my back at Romaniv last Friday and it’s not too happy at me for continuing to go and lift wheelchairs and wrangle Andriy and stuff like that.  So, I’m taking a break today and resting my back so I can hopefully finish the week strong.  

Since I’m bound to the couch, per Dr. Jed’s orders, (well, as bound to the couch as I can be with three out of four kids at home) I thought I’d beat the boredom and write a blog post! There is a lot I could say.  I have A LOT rumbling around in my brain right now.  But I don’t feel very deep at the moment, so I’ll just give you a sneak peek into the craziness that is my brain right now.  

*Addy went to Romaniv in my place today.  We have been pretty short on volunteers this week due to university exams (booooo).  I knew my back needed a break, but wasn’t sure how the team would manage with one less body, so….Addy to save the day!!!  She likes to go to Romaniv occasionally, but sometimes it scares her a little bit.  Understandably so, I mean, Romaniv scares plenty of adults!  But, she really does love the boys very much and tries to stay up on all the details of their lives.  🙂  She is a great help when she comes, it’s actually pretty amazing!  She just dives on in with no fear and does what needs to be done.  Watching Addy with the boys is so sweet…Jed better take pics!

*We want our kids to be involved in the work God has called us to here, but sometimes (aka, always) I question how to best do that.  What does it do to our kids to expose them to such suffering, such darkness?  How will this shape the way they see the world?  I know mostly it will shape them for the good, but what about their coping skills?  How will they cope with being exposed to such trauma?  Sometimes I can’t even bear the weight of it.  Is it fair to expect them to?  We never ever make Addy and Ezra go.  Hava and Seth are too young, although they always beg to go.  They so want to be involved, but it’s just not safe for them there.  I wish we had someone to help guide us through this.  

*We desperately owe our supporters a newsletter.  Oy.  I try to stay very faithful with Facebook updates and blog updates…but somehow newsletters get left in the dust.  If you are waiting on pins and needles for a newsletter from Wide Awake…it’s coming!  I promise!!!  😉 (another task for my couch-bound day)

*Did I already blog that our adoption dossier has been submitted to the Ukrainian government?  YES IT HAS!!  That means if it is accepted “as is”  then we should have an appointment to begin the in-country adoption process sometime next month!  I’m so excited I can’t even bear it.  Please pray with us that the government will easily accept our documents and that they won’t require anything extra from us because of our living situation (US citizens with temporary residence here).  THANKS! 

*Seth is outside playing with the hose wearing Havalah’s bathing suit.  Whatevs.  

*Seth is going to be 5 next week. FIVE!!!!  I don’t know how that happened.  For his birthday he has requested hockey gear, a motorcycle, and a bobsled.  Ummmm….yeah, he’s probably going to be disappointed.  😉

*Still praying every day for adoptive parents to step up for our boys.  Please, don’t be afraid.  It will be hard, but it will be worth it.  

*Ezra is outside reading right now.  By choice.  I had nothing to do with it.  Sure, it’s a Minecraft book- but it’s a BOOK.  I am astounded and a little afraid to blink, hence this magical moment disappear forever. 

*Next week we will be hosting our first short-term medical team.  Eek!  I’m nervous, but excited.  It is a team of 4  medical professionals from Germany.  They are being sent by Humedica, a German relief organization.  They’ll spend every day at Romaniv, helping us to do baseline assessments of each boy’s functional skills with our new assessment tool.  The team will be here for two weeks.  I hope they will enjoy their time here!  I kinda have butterflies about it.  

Welp, that about does it.  That’s a small portion of the things I’m thinking about as I sit here today.  Don’t even get me started with thoughts on homeschooling and language learning and our visit to the US this summer and how our adoption fits in to all this.  Multi-tasking, anyone?

It’s a full life.  It’s a wonderful life.  Thank you Jesus for this crazy life you’ve given us! 

Spring has sprung!  I know, I know, I said that before- but then it snowed a couple days later.  I think I can say it with confidence this time.  SPRING HAS SPRUNG.  I declare it!

This is one of those weeks when so much happened that I don’t even know where to start.  I don’t think I’ll try to describe it all, I’ll just put it out there and maybe the descriptions will come out over the next couple of weeks.  

-Grammy and Papa are here visiting from Montana.  YAY!!!!  They leave on Wednesday.  BOO.

-We drove to Lutsk last weekend (a town about 3 hours away)  to visit some of Grammy and Papa’s friends who pastor a church there.  It was fun to take the van on our first family road trip.  🙂

-A team from Hull Vineyard in the UK came to Ukraine for a Vineyard conference and spent a few days with us here in Zhytomyr.  They got to meet our Boys, encourage our church, and just be all around awesome.  Their visit was such a HUGE blessing to us as a family.  We were so sad for them to leave!  We posted an awesome video of the team on our Wide Awake Facebook page.  Check it out!

-One of the Vineyard team members was a speech and language therapist and she and I got to spend two days at Romaniv observing meals, helping with feedings, and advising the staff.  It was a very valuable time and the staff seemed very receptive.  Follow-up will be key.  Being at Romaniv for meals and in the early morning hours was very insightful for me, personally.  Peeling back the layer of what makes our boys and that place who they are and what it is.  I’ll probably blog about that at length on another day.

-We had a super fun game night with the young adults with disabilities.  How awesome to be able to meet outside in the sunshine!  Our pasty white skin needed that!

-My fingerprints were rejected again for our adoption- this time they were rejected for US immigration approval.  SO FRUSTRATING.  So, now I might be flying to London to get them redone.  Grrrrrrrr.  Apparently women who do a lot of dishes and nurses have a higher likelihood of having poor quality fingerprints.  Double whammy for me. 🙁

Now for pics.  If you have any questions, of course you know you can always ask!  🙂

The secret is out!

The Johnson family is expecting!

We are so happy to share the wonderful news that we are pursuing the adoption of one of our Boys!  This is something that God has had in the works for about 5 years, unbeknownst to us.  We’ve been working fast and furiously since January, and if all goes well we should have a new son this summer!

Due to the nature of adoptions in this country, and because of our unique living situation and relationship with the insitution, we can’t announce publicly who we are adopting until the judge makes it final.  What a glorious day that will be!

Right now we have compiled our dossier and it is here in country being translated.  All we are waiting on is USCIS (US immigration) approval and then our dossier can be submitted to the adoption authorities here, and we pray pray pray they will accept it!

Everything about this situation is unique, so we just aren’t sure what will happen.  All we know is that God said to step forward, so that’s what we are doing, and it is our joy.  (Not to say there haven’t been a few sleepless nights during this process!)

Hands of Hope, our friends, and wonderful partners of Wide Awake, have supported our Boys for many, many years.  They were loving our boys before we even knew they existed!  They have been such a support to us during this process, and now they have gifted us with a $4,000 MATCHING GRANT to help with adoption costs!  We are so thankful!!!  YAY YAY YAY!!!

Adoption is super stinkin’ expensive and so many people already support our Boys so faithfully, so it felt a little strange for us to ask for help with adoption costs.  Then Hands of Hope came along and offered this help.  Wow.  God is so amazing.

Would you like to help us get one of our Boys home?  You would?????  Fantastic!  Here’s how:

An adoption fund/account has been set up for us by Hands of Hope, through Lifesong for Orphans. If enough people give donations to total $4,000, then Hands of Hope will donate another $4,000 for a grand total of $8,000!!!!!
*donations are tax-deductible and 100% of all donations go toward this adoption*

Hi Friends!

I hope this finds you well, with a smile on your face and a spring in your step.  🙂  Things are chugging right along around here.  We’ve had a great week so far.  Lots of normalness, lots of laughs, a few tears, and plenty of coffee to fuel it all.

Last week we celebrated Seth’s Adoption Day!  The actual day was while I was in America, so we held off on the festivities till we could all be together.  Every year we take a day to celebrate that God brought Seth in to our family.  He’s only 4, so in the past we have done it more for our other kids, so that they would see the value in adoption and understand how special it is.  This was the first year Seth cared about it.  He still doesn’t fully understand what it means, but we often tell him the story of how he came to be our son, so it’s just a matter of time before he “gets it”.  All he gets right now is that it’s a special day just for him.  He chose to go out to pizza and bowling, so we did!

Oh how I love our boy.  Sometimes I can’t believe he didn’t grow inside my belly.  Just like our bio kids, I feel like Seth is an extension of me, like a piece of my heart is walking around outside my body.  I love my baby.  🙂

Funny Story:

Have you ever heard of “No-Poo”?  Despite it’s name, it has nothing to do with toilets.  “No-Poo” is a method of hair cleansing without shampoo- get it, no “poo”?  Shampoo strips the scalp of much of it’s natural oils that are so good for your hair.  When you strip your scalp of it’s oils, then it thinks it needs to produce more oil, then you strip them all again, then your body makes more, and on and on.  Anyway, I have been a no-pooer for a couple of years now and it’s the best ever.  I use baking soda to wash my hair, and apple cider vinegar to condition it about once a week.  It works well for me, but sometimes I feel like the soda is a bit harsh on my scalp.  In fact, hardcore no-pooers will never recommend baking soda.  But honey and aloe and all those expensive treatments aren’t realistic for me.  Baking soda is cheap and accessible, so there. I read somewhere that washing your hair with egg yolk once a month is a good way to give your scalp a little break.  So, being the weirdo/fierceless warrior/hippy that I am, I decided to give it a whirl!  Why not?

I read in the instructions that you need to make sure to only use the yolk and not the white, and to make sure the  water isn’t too hot.  Wellllllll….yeah.  I separated the egg well, or so I thought.  The water wasn’t tooooooo hot, or so I thought.  I got out of the shower and yeah, scrambled egg head.  There’s nothing more romantic than a husband who will patiently pick cooked egg out of your hair.  I’ve got a winner, folks! Now if the Denny’s jokes would just stop.  “Oh sweetie, you smell so good, now I just need a side of bacon!”  Ha.Ha. Shut up.  😉

I may smell like a diner, but my hair is soft and shiny, so I wouldn’t call it a complete failure…not completely.

We are so thankful for new volunteers! Praise God!

Sweet Aaron needs a mama. Do you know her?

Sweet Ben also needs a mommy and daddy. He is not thriving. Please share our boy!

Stephen is waiting for a family too. Oh my sweet boy. He loves to run and spin. Treasure.

Addy is such a great helper at Romaniv. The boys love her! The feeling is mutual.

Hava took this last picture.  I just like it.  I love cuddling in with my kiddos and reading a good book.  I’m not a “playing” mom.  I don’t like to play toys with my kids.  I’ll play Just Dance on the Wii, or jump on a trampoline, or bake cookies with you,  but please, for the love, don’t ask me to play Barbies.  I just.can’t.do.it.  What I love most, is reading to my kids.  Find us a good read-aloud and it’s all over.  I hope they will treasure the memories of us all cuddled up reading a good book.  I know I will.  🙂  (I hope they won’t mind the mild scent of brunch)

Last week Ezra and I were in the good old US of A! We had to go there for some document stuff and had a grand time!  It was the first time either of us had been back since we moved to Ukraine 17 months ago.  I was nervous to go, wondering if I would feel out of place, or too “changed”, but all my worries were for not.  It was a special time and our love tanks were absolutely filled to overflowing.  

*I was horrible about taking pictures.  My bad.*



I felt a lot of feelings throughout the trip.  Some were expected, others were not.  At church on the first Sunday I was so happy to be there I could have cried- and maybe did, just a little.  There were so many mixed emotions coming and going that my insides felt like a huge tangled up knot.  Then a wise and wonderful friend came to me and wisely advised me to stop telling myself what to feel and what not to feel.  

“If you keep telling yourself what you should and shouldn’t feel you’ll miss out on all that God has for you this trip.”  

Truth.  I decided in that moment to just let myself feel what I felt and to let go of the reigns just a bit.  I’m a control freak and I avoid vulnerability, but letting go of that control made for a much cooler trip.  





Curious things we noticed while in America:

-The streets are HUGE. Wowzers.  The lanes are so ginormously wide!!!  It felt like every street was a freeway.  

-Driving is amazing.  I forgot how freeing it is to get behind the wheel and go wherever you want to go. 

-The sidewalks are empty.  Ha!  On our first full day Ez and I walked to the DMV because I needed a replacement drivers license (my wallet was stolen last summer).  After I got my license we walked to my friend’s house who was generously loaning us a car.  As we walked along in the beautiful sunshine Ez said “Where are all the people?”  Haha.  Seriously though, walking along a sidewalk totally alone in Ukraine is a very rare thing.  

-The DMV is more efficient than I ever realized.  Don’t agree?  Just try to get a document replaced in Ukraine and you might change your tune.  🙂  

-Everyone is SO FRIENDLY and SO SMILEY!  Woah Nelly.  It felt like every barista and every gas attendant and every cashier was my new BFF!  Sooooooo not Ukrainian.  When we were going through customs in Portland, the lady who was taking the declaration sheets asked Ez “What grade are you in, buddy?  Hey, do good in school, okay bud?”  He barely nodded.  I reminded him not to be rude and he said “But, Mom, I don’t even know her!  Why was she smiling so much????”  Oy.  Ha.  Seeing all the smiles was AMAZING.  🙂 🙂 🙂 

-Everything is sparkling clean.  Serious.  You could eat off the floor of Target.  I didn’t, but, yeah the cleanliness, wow.

-People  popped out of the woodwork to tell us they pray for us every day.  I had no idea.  Blessed my socks off. 

-So many people love our Boys fiercely.  The Boys are like rockstars.  I pray God speaks to their spirits and gives them even a glimpse of how deeply they are loved by multitudes of people.  Thankful. 

I think the biggest thing I felt on the trip to America was a feeling like I was letting all my breath out.  It felt like I’d been holding my breath for the past year and a half- without even knowing it, and I finally just exhaled.  You see, in America I undestand EVERYTHING.  I understand every conversation, fully.  I understand every sign, completely.  I understand every bit of culture.  I understand the body language.  I understand cultural jokes.  I understand family norms and social norms.  I understand traffic laws.  I understand what is expected of me in just about every single situation.  In the whole two weeks I was there I never had one bit of tension  inside like “Uh oh, what am I supposed to do here….?”  

Not so in Ukraine.  I think when people think of living in a different country they mostly just think of the spoken language  issues- like vocabulary.  I know that’s all I thought of!  And yes, of course that is a HUGE HUGE HUGE learning curve and a HUGE HUGE HUGE obstacle.  But there is even so much more that has to be learned than just how to say words.  You have to learn the systems of how things work.  

How do you buy food at a store?  How do you buy food at a market?  How do you do banking?  How does the transportation work?  How do I behave when I enter this public building?  What do I do when I meet a new person?  What is expected of me?  How do I read that sign?  And if I can’t read it, who do I ask for help?  How do I send and receive mail?  How will this social gathering go, and what will be expected of me?  What if they ask me something and I don’t understand?

Sure, you can ask questions, but often you don’t even know what questions need to be asked.  There is so much that is unspoken in culture.  I can’t even tell you how much that affects daily life.  Culture is everything.  People don’t explain certain things to foreigners because it is such a cultural norm that everyone conforms without a second thought!  Everyone except us.  🙂  We don’t even know what we don’t know.  Sure we know more than we used to, but I’m still terrified of the post office.  So yeah, we’ve got a ways to go.



I realized that I have become so used to feeling unsure (about what to do, what to say, how to act), that the insecure-pit-in-the-stomach feeling I get when I go most places in Ukraine has become normal to me.  Oh guys, I feel dumb so often.  Hahaha.

BUT, in America I remembered that although I often feel dumb and unsure and not confident, that is not who I am.  I am bold.  I am strong.  Christ in me is bold.  Christ in me is strong.  He made me brave.  I’m actually a fairly smart person! 🙂  I can’t even tell you how that felt- to be able to turn off the insecurities and just BE ME.  I saw it changing Ezra too. 

We both came back to Ukraine reminded of who Christ is in us.  We came back braver and stronger.  We needed that.  

So yeah, it was awesome.  Part of me didn’t want to leave, but another part of me couldn’t wait to get back.  I have a feeling that is a tension we’ll live with as long as Ukraine is our home.

We have people who love us on both sides of the world.  We have home on both sides of the world.  I can love both places and long for both places.  I’ll just go ahead and stop telling myself what I should feel.  🙂





If you’ve been reading this blog long enough you know that learning how to mother my kids in a new culture has been a big fat challenge for me. It was something I worried about before we moved, and it was THE something I worried about once we landed. Isn’t worrying awesome? It’s just so productive! Not.

It’s just that parenting is hard enough, and then you throw in lots of factors that make our family really “different” and things get downright confusing! I’ve found that we don’t really fit anywhere these days, when it comes to parenting. We don’t fit Ukrainian standards because, well, simply put, we aren’t Ukrainian! We can speak the language (work in progress) and buy the right clothes and eat the right food, but at the end of the day, we’re still Americans. We think differently than Ukrainian parents and we were raised differently than our Ukrainian peers. Culture is so HUGE. There are things we do similarly to Ukrainian parents, but we are also quite different. We could try to be the same, but at our core we’ll always be different- and that’s okay.

But- now we don’t really fit American standards either! For one thing, we don’t live in America, so that changes a whole heck of a lot right there. Many things that are expected for a “normal” childhood in the US just aren’t available or possible here. Our kids are having a completely different childhood than Jed and I had. It’s difficult not to have the same expectations in my heart for them, because all I know is a typical American childhood…yep, not gonna happen for our crew. And that’s okay!

It can feel very “Lone Ranger”ish, parenting so far away from our home culture. I don’t have mom friends I am close to here who are parenting kids around the same ages of ours. I miss the support of others who were going through the mothering stages alongside me. I miss bouncing ideas off each other over coffee and gaining wisdom from others. I miss my kids having friends. I miss having moms around me who are “one step ahead” on the journey. I miss watching them and learning from them. Most mothering and parenting books are really hard for me to read here. It can be discouraging because so much of what is written is based on the assumption that you live in America and have all that is available there, or that the mom’s only focus is on the home and she has no outside responsibilities.  It’s hard to explain, but when I read those books in the middle of this life we are living, it almost seems like they are books from another planet.

Honestly, parenting in this situation (or any situation) is just stinkin’ hard work.  Awesome, but still stinkin’ hard. Am I right?  People ask “How do you do it all?” Um yeah, I don’t. I can’t. Things fall by the wayside. My house is messy. I just paused writing to tell Seth not to throw knives- truth. My kids get lonely. Laundry piles haunt my dreams. I lose my patience daily (or hourly). Homeschooling can get sporadic and is often unorganized. I get lonely. I read mommy blogs (why do I do that?) and feel guilt that I don’t do crafts with my kids.  I want to get up early but instead I stay up too late at night.  I don’t follow through. And on and on and on.

So, yeah I can’t do it all, but I’m sorta, kinda starting to come to grips with the fact that the Johnson family is on our own journey and ours doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s journey. There is beauty in this particular journey and it’s pointless to waste time wishing it looked differently. I mean, this is the journey God created us to walk. Sooooo I should probably learn to be good with it.

Our kids are loved.
Our kids have each other. They love each other.
Our kids are learning to love and value those who the world has cast aside.
Our kids are learning a new culture and a new way of doing things- and their world is bigger because of it.
Our kids are learning what it is to say YES to Jesus.

I finally feel at peace in mothering, probably for the first time since we moved! I have seen little glimpses lately of the fruit and I see that our journey is beautiful in it’s own way.

-Addy announced to me yesterday “Ezra and I are just best friends lately! We just love each other! We’re hoping to keep this going on for as long as we can.”
-When it was dark out, Seth reached out to help Hava down the stairs to our yard. “I know the dark steps scare you Hava. Hold my arm.”
-Hava asked “Mom, which Romaniv boy would you choose first to come live at our house? I couldn’t choose, they’re all just so cute!”
-Every time we come home from Romaniv Ezra wants to see the pics of the boys right away. He loves them.
-Seth said “Mom, I can share Boris with daddy because he needs a daddy too.”

I write all this to say, own your own journey. God’s Word and God’s grace apply to every life situation- regardless of location. Parenting books and parenting seminars are great (I would love some of that right about now!)- but what is the greatest is saying YES to God when it comes to your children. Don’t compare your journey to your friend’s or your neighbor’s or some random blogger’s. The details of their lives are not the details of your life. Their journey is not your journey. Their kids are not your kids.
(Preaching to myself, FYI)

Teach your kids to say YES to Jesus by saying YES to Jesus yourself.
The rest is sprinkles on top. 🙂

Eleven days since I last came to this space. Wow! Days are flying by.

Since I wrote the last post about being still and trusting that God is on our side we’ve gone through some stuff that made living out those words pretty stinkin’ hard. Sheeesh. This fighting for the orphan thing is rough stuff! But, worth it. But still rough. 🙂 There are seasons of heartache and seasons of joy in every life, right?

Our family as a whole is doing just fine. Our work may be heartwrenching at the moment, but our family is good.

Here’s what’s been up with us:

• This is the last week of school for Addy and Ez, and then Christmas break! Their schooling plan will change after the new year, so stay tuned!
• Havalah and Seth go to a private little kindergarten (Hava won’t let me call it “preschool”) twice a week while Jed and I are at Romaniv and they love it. Today when I picked them up the teacher said they understand her so well and that Hava speaks a lot of Ukrainian in class. Yay! Comin’ along, comin’ along.
• We are right in the middle of renewing our registration. We have to renew every year in order to keep our temporary residency. Stamps, stamps, and more stamps…woot! Ukraine loves stamps.
• My cousin, aunt and uncle will be in Uzhgorod (a city in western Ukraine) this weekend and we are trying our best to get there for a visit. We were waiting to see if we could get our residency paperwork done in time to be able to leave town, and we finally got done yesterday…but now there are no available train tickets! The lady at the ticket counter told Jed to come back and check tomorrow morning. The train is really our only option. A bus ride would be at least 12 hours over rough roads and Hava gets super carsick on the short, smooth, two hour ride to Kyiv! We can’t torture her like that. The train ride is 16 hours…yikes, but worth it to see family. 🙂
• Next week is Christmas!!!! We’ve been rockin’ the Christmas music pretty much nonstop around here. This will be our first Christmas alone, just the 6 of us, so that will be really different. Last year Jed’s parents were here visiting. Did you know Ukraine doesn’t celebrate Christmas until January 7th? Fun fact.
• Our favorite Tom and Emma are coming for a visit on New Year’s Eve! They’ll be with us for a week and we’re counting down the minutes till their arrival. Eeeeeeek! Tom and Emma visited last February and it was so amazing to have them with us. Best Christmas present ever.
• My mom secretly asked a bunch of people to send us Christmas cards. Oh my word!! It has been such a special treat! I really can’t tell you how special it is when we get mail. Our whole family screams and hoots and hollers and jumps up and down. Seriously. We love mail! Thanks Mom 🙂 And thanks everyone who has sent us cards. It makes our day. Big time.
• We’re working on a couple special Wide Awake videos for Christmas. In the videos we’ll introduce you to two of our special boys. I can’t wait to share them with you!
• I’ve been working hard to get all the details figured out for the boys from Romaniv who are available for adoption. After Christmas we will start really advocating for them and I’m so hopeful we’ll find them families. Stay tuned for that too. Children were made for families, not insitutions. 🙂

Welp, I guess that just about does it.

Maybe next time I write it will be from Uzhgorod…if we survive the 16 hours on the train, that is! Ha!

This living-overseas-everythingisnew-missionary-stillawifeandmomfirst-immersion thing can be quite the doozy at times. It’s a rough and wonderful road. Sharing about it though, is fine line to walk.

I want to be real and honest.

But I don’t want to be a complainer.

I want to be me.

But how to “be me” from behind a keyboard?

I want to be respectful of people here in Ukraine.

But there are things here that are difficult for us, since this is not our home culture.

I want to be respectful of the people back in the US.

But I also want them to be challenged and encouraged to think and dream bigger- and act.

I want to share all so people know how to pray.

But I don’t want to share all because I know many Ukrainian friends read this blog and I don’t want them to worry about us or feel bad for us.

I want to share about our Boys and their need and their worth. I want to share about their lives and things that break our hearts and should never have to be endured by a human.

But I don’t want to share too much because I don’t want to disrespect them or exploit them or break relationship with the Directors at Romaniv.

Fine line. Tight rope walking.

I say all that just so you know that when I write things on this blog I don’t take it lightly. There are many people to consider and many points of view to consider. Many times I write to clarify things in my own mind and heart. Sometimes I don’t really understand my own feelings until I type them out. It’s kind of like a form of therapy for me. Lucky you, my dear Readers! Ha. I also always want to be honest about this journey. Maybe it could help others who are setting out on a journey like ours. I know I love reading honesty from those who have gone before. Somehow it settles my heart to see they struggle with things similar to my own.

Lately I’ve been trying to figure out my heart and feelings surrounding the balance of being a mother and a friend and a cross-cultural-worker here in Ukraine. When we first arrived here Jed and I both jumped right on in to work. We both volunteered at MTU, probably pretty equal amounts. Whoever wasn’t at MTU was home with the kids. It was an important time for us to figure out where we fit into everything here, and to see where God wanted us in the mix.

Then we had the summer, which was basically a whole family affair (which was AWESOME…). And now we have reached the fall, and we have a new norm. I think this new norm will be the norm for some time to come. I LOVE the new norm, but my overachieving, worker-bee, people-pleasing self won’t let me be completely at peace about it and I don’t know what that means.

The new norm is that Jed does most of the work outside the home, and I am home a lot more with the kids, reminiscent of our lives back in Oregon. Of course we both go to Romaniv twice a week, do language tutoring together, and we both work together on our youth nights for graduates, but most of the rest of the work is Jed’s. I get to focus more of my time on the home, the kiddos, and being Mom and Wife. I am in love with this. I know the kids need it and they thrive when I am home more. Focusing more time on our home and our family brings me great joy and fulfillment. When I’m gone from home a lot I feel scattered and yucky.

So, I know this is a good set-up. I know this. But then I start to question myself.

I don’t question if it’s a good thing that I’m home more. I value motherhood and I think stay-at-home moms rock. I have always dreamed of being a stay-at-home mom with no outside work committments, but that has never been what God had for me. It’s not the focus at home that I question, it’s the time spent not focusing outside the home that has me evaluating my heart.

Do I have such peace at home partly because it’s easier to be home than out in the culture that is still difficult for me? Do I have such peace at home because I feel smart at home and I mostly feel dumb as soon as I walk outside my front door? Hahaha…not kidding…hehe. When I’m at home I have this feeling like I should be outside getting to know my neighbors, or taking the kids to the playground so they can have more exposure to language and I can brave it with neighborhood moms. But as it is, I already feel like I’m not investing enough time in to the relationships here that I already have. It’s like that guilty Oregonian feeling you get when the sun finally comes out. You feel like because it’s sunny you should be outside NO MATTER WHAT. Because you never know when you might get sun again! Well, what if I don’t feel like being outside that day? What if I have inside work to do that day? Too bad. If I stay inside on a sunny day in Oregon I am riddled with guilt. (Is that just me, or do other Oregonians catch my drift?) (PS: I think I have some guilt issues)

I’m used to watching over all the friends in my life and making sure everyone is okay and included and taken care of, but I don’t have that role here with friends. Here, we are investing that time in to our Boys, and frankly the work at Romaniv can be emotionally and spiritually exhausting. I love those Boys more than I could have ever imagined and am fully committed to them and their well-being. It’s just that with being a wife and with our kiddos at home and then our kiddos at Romaniv…I don’t have a lot of reserve left on a day to day basis. I love my friends here so stinkin’ much. I just don’t feel like a very good friend here in Ukraine and I hate that feeling…but I feel helpless to change it.

Are all these feelings okay? Or am I relying too much on myself? Maybe I’m being lazy and selfish? It’s like I still have a short-term missions mindset that I have to give up every spare moment to the work and ministry here, but we are here for the longhaul. There will be no longevity if I live this life like a short-term missions trip. I know that, but I still battle. How to find the balance of time and energy spent?

Anywaysssss…balancing focus on the home and focus outside the home and all my feelings surrounding that is exhausting. I know what the answer is: walk in the Spirit. Be available to God and when He says to act, act. Be fully at home when I’m home, but also be aware and listening for the whisper to go outside and talk to the neighbors. Be aware of my friends and listen to promptings in my spirit for when I need to reach out. Stop being a people-pleaser and only live for an audience of One. Say YES. I know these things, it’s just all easier said than done.

So, there you have it: my Monday afternoon therapy session. Ha! I just think it’s important to be honest about this journey. Then you can all know how to pray! 🙂

Oh this road, it’s so unpredictable. Thank you Jesus for walking by my side.

We are rapidly approaching our one year anniversary of life here in Ukraine.

Has it already been one year?  Has it been only one year????

So much has happened in this past year it feels like a million lifetimes have passed since we touched down in Kyiv that cold November night.

Before we moved we’d been warned by other missionaries and in missionary books and missionary blogs that the first year overseas is a beast. We tried to prepare ourselves for that, but how can you really prepare, emotionally and spiritually, to leave everything you have ever known and held dear- and start over? How can you prepare to go from being a pretty smart person to feeling pretty much dumb pretty much all the time? How can you prepare for what it will be like to watch your children hurt and struggle and feel lonely? How can you prepare to go from being a vital part of a vibrant community of like-minded people to living on the fringes of society?

You just can’t. You can try, but you just can’t be prepared. You just have to jump and trust that your loving Father will catch you.

This first year has been the hardest time of our lives. It has stretched us and jostled us and turned us upside down.

And yet…

How can you prepare to have your heart invaded by 80 boys tucked away in the middle of nowhere? How can you prepare for the joy of knowing young men and women with special needs who can light up the room with a single smile? How can you prepare to watch God fling open doors that have been shut for years? How can you prepare to feel the absolute smile of God and joy of the Father as you walk right down the center of His will? How can you prepare to watch young men and women loving your children with utter abandonment?

You just can’t. You can try, but you just can’t be prepared. These things are what you experience in that catch of the Father.

My heart came to a new place this past week. I was washing the dishes and thinking about our upcoming Ukraine-iversary, and I realized that I’m good. I’m okay. We will most likely live here for a very long time, and I’m okay with it. When we moved here we sold everything except what we packed in our 12 suitcases (and a couple tubs in storage). We came here with the mindset that this is our new home until God says otherwise. We knew then that if we came for a set amount of time we would forever be looking at that deadline and we wouldn’t settle in for the long-haul. We know that about ourselves.

I can’t know the heart of God, and His ways are higher than mine. Maybe He’ll have us leave here next month, but I highly doubt it. I can’t say I know the future, but I can say that the dreams God gave us are big HUGE dreams that are going to take a loooooooong time. So, as things stand now, I expect us to live in Ukraine for many, many years.

We are here for the long-haul, and I’m good. I’m sad, but I’m good. Thinking about the long-haul a few months ago only made me cry. I’ll be honest. Now it makes me cry and it makes me smile. It makes me cry because I miss my family and my friends across the ocean. I saw pictures of a bunch of my family all together last weekend and I bawled my eyes out. I should be there with them. How can I not be there with them? How can we raise our children so far away from family? How can we bear all the missed holidays, all the missed birthdays, all the joys of daily life? Christmas is coming. How will we bear it? I don’t know and I don’t even want to think about it. I guess I have to trust that God will catch us then too. It’s so hard, but we just have to trust Him that He will fill those empty places- for us and our family in the US.  That part is incredibly hard.  I can’t even tell you how hard.

The long-haul also makes me smile. It makes me smile because of our dear ones here. How could we ever leave our Boys???? How??? How could we leave and not be a part of their lives? How could we walk away and not know what happened to them, where they lived out their days? How could we stop fighting for them? And what about our young adults with special needs? We love them! How could we leave? And what about all our friends? Our church? Leaving here would be just as devastating as it was to leave Salem. I’ll even dare to say it would be more devastating deep down, simply because our loved ones in America are daily loved and care for by many, but our Boys are not.

Sigh. There just aren’t any simple fixes. It’s just painful and joyful and trustful and tearful. All we can do is trust and keep hold of the hand of our Father.

So, I’m in a new place. I’m in a place of seeing the long road stretched out before me and feeling okay with walking in that direction for many more years. There will be plenty of tears and joys along the way, I’m sure of that. But oh the peace that comes from saying YES to Jesus- one step at a time. There’s just nothing like it.