On the last Tuesday of every month, we have an all-team meeting here on the Homestead. In those meetings, we cover a variety of topics. Sometimes we talk about new policies or protocols for our work, maybe a new development in one of the boys or something to do with their health that everyone needs to know; we celebrate accomplishments and milestones, say goodbye to team members who are leaving, or welcome new members to our tribe. Sometimes we just eat together or pray together, or discuss one of our values of dignity, love, and hope. The monthly gatherings are an important time and our boys are always right there in the middle of them. Their presence makes each team meeting a lively and loud event. 😀 We always have to agree on one team member who will be in charge of keeping Yaroslav in line as he kind of resents when all the attention in the room is not directed at him. Sasha loves to sit in the middle of the group and sing loudly- especially when it’s a quiet, more serious moment. Anton usually paces the halls and Boris bounces unbelievably high on the cushions of the couch eagerly awaiting whatever treat he sees lying on the counter for afterwards. It’s a circus, Y’all.

Anywayssss, today at our meeting Jed asked Ruslan to pray to start us off. We were outside around the fire pit and Ruslan proceeded to thank God for each and every single person around the circle- by name. It was a sweet moment and it warmed my heart to remember just how many people know and love Ruslan. He was once alone and now has a whole crowd of people who know him well and treasure him and his life. All of our boys are surrounded by that love and I really believe that they feel it. We have watched them come alive in our love over the years they’ve lived with us. God has done so much healing of their hearts, minds, and bodies. Sure, there is much more healing needed, but look how far they’ve come! I believe that they know they are loved and I’m so glad for that. Man, how I dream of that for all of our friends still stuck in Romaniv. I wonder how they would blossom and change if they were surrounded by a big ol’ family of people dedicated to their well-being and growth? I bet they would become almost unrecognizable- like our boys. I hope I get to see that in my lifetime.

While Ruslan was praying I was reminded of a question that was asked quite a long time ago that I never answered (sorry Katie!!!!). Katie asked about the boys’ spiritual lives. She wondered if they pray, if they go to church with us, and what level of spiritual understanding they have. Great question! Some aspects are difficult for me to answer, just because most of our boys are not verbal, but I can tell you what I know and what I see.

All of us house parents attend the same church in town and all of the boys attend church with us regularly. It has been quite a journey with our church body here. Whew. It has been a long journey of acceptance and growth. We have miles to go, but I feel like we’re in a fairly decent place right now. Almost all of our team members also attend the church and many of our volunteers also attend, so there are always many people present at church on Sundays who know and love our boys. The boys have learned over the years when they can “sing” and when they need to sit quietly. They mostly do really well at the whole Sunday service thing. Ruslan loves to sit in the very front row and sing his lungs out. He’s so loud! It’s amazing. Vova isn’t verbal, but he also “sings” a lot and quite loudly during the worship time. Yarik too! I love hearing their voices when everyone is singing together. I’m always struck by the miracle of having them there with us. It never ever gets old. The boys’ behavior during the preaching is hit or miss, but for the most part, they are fine. Everyone is used to them and their unique noises. The boys have grown a lot in their patience during the preaching time! Ruslan, Boris, and Yaroslav really, really seem to love going to church. For Yarik, it is definitely the highlight of his weekend and he starts to ask for it at least on Friday. He asks for it by holding his hand up to his mouth like a microphone and saying “Ah ya ya??” in a very specific tone. He loves it. Anton likes going to church because he knows he’ll get coffee afterward, Sasha doesn’t seem to care either way, and Vova is just happy to be anywhere with anyone. He is the happiest, smiliest ever. Remember when he used to bite everyone? Ha! Risperidone is a gift from God is all I have to say about that. But really, Vova does seem to enjoy the music at church quite a lot.

Every day, Monday through Friday, the boys have worship time together with the assistants at the duplex. That involves music either with a guitar or on YouTube. All our boys love music. Anton, specifically, is very sensitive to music. Sometimes a certain worship song will just hit him and you’ll see him sitting in his chair listening, with tears streaming down his face. It’s the sweetest thing. I think in those moments the Holy Spirit is just touching his heart and bringing healing. It’s beautiful.

We can’t know what the boys understand about God or what they know of him, but it does seem clear that they each have their own special relationship with him. Ruslan is the only one of our boys here who can speak in small sentences and really express his thoughts or feelings in a clear way. For sure our boys express many emotions all the time, but we have to interpret their meaning in the best way we know how. Ruslan is really the only one who can tell us sometimes what he is feeling or thinking about. Well, Yarik can do a bit of that too with gestures and minimal words, but to a lesser degree than Ruslan. With Anton, Vova, Sasha, and Boris we really have to look at body language, facial expressions, and behaviors to understand what might be happening inside their bodies and minds. But they all, except maybe Sasha, who is so much in his own world for so much of the time, seem to really respond to times of prayer, times of worship, and times of turning our attention to the things of God.

I’ve told this story before, but I think it’s relevant to share it again. When we first adopted Vlad (almost 9 years ago!) we took him to the US with us for several months to get him some medical care that he couldn’t get here. We took him to church with us and he enjoyed it, but we had no idea how much he understood about what was going on or about the things of God. He was fresh from the institution and wasn’t super verbal. He could talk in small, almost unintelligible sentences and acted like a little wild animal much of the time. Gosh, it’s amazing to think of how much he has changed!!! Anyway, the first time communion was served at church Vlad perked up because he was completely obsessed with food. Crackers? Juice? Yes, please! 😂 I didn’t want him to feel left out so I tried to explain as simply as I could what we were doing and what it meant. I told him “Vlad, we are drinking this juice and eating this cracker so we remember that Jesus died for us and that he loves us. Vlad, God loves you so much!” He quickly replied, with tears in his eyes (and Vlad NEVER cries), “I know. I know God loves me.”

I was blown away in that moment. How in the world did that child who had been abandoned at birth, then lived for 15 years in hell on earth; that child who had known neglect and abuse that most of us could never even fathom- how did he know that God loved him? How? It became clear to me that we have no idea how God reveals himself to our boys and others like them. Psalm 68:5-6 says “A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, he leads out the prisoners with singing…” When we started going to Romaniv back in the day those verses confounded me. How was God being a father to those abandoned boys? How was he caring for them? I just didn’t see it and was super confused about how to think about that promise of God. But then in that moment with Vlad, I realized that God was meeting with Vlad before we ever met him. God was fathering him in unseen ways and revealing himself to Vlad over the years. God was comforting him and defending his heart when he was abandoned by the world. It’s the only way Vlad could have known that God loved him. There’s just no other explanation. Several months ago Vlad got baptized at the church in the US he attends with my parents and we were able to watch it on the live stream. Vlad wanted to get baptized and the pastor spoke with him about it ahead of time to make sure he understood what it meant. When we watched the video it was obvious that Vlad met with God when he was baptized. He actually “whooped “with joy when he came up out of the water!

Our other boys seem to know God in a special way, like Vlad does. I see it in them and I’m thankful for it. We often tell them about God’s love for them. We pray for them and with them. They minister to us as we minister to them. The body of Christ is alive and well here on the Homestead. Praise God for that. ❤️

Yesterday we had the most amazing opportunity to witness the birth of our new foal! Gloria, one of our horses who we unexpectedly found out was already pregnant when we purchased her in October, gave birth to a sweet baby boy. New life never ceases to amaze me. It was an incredible day!

We always assumed that Gloria would give birth during the night or in the very early hours. And since we didn’t even know she was pregnant for most of the pregnancy, we didn’t know exactly when to expect the new arrival. Every morning I would look out my bedroom window to see if Gloria was waiting for her breakfast at the fence. If she was ever absent in those morning hours I would eagerly check to see if we had a baby. But…she decided to do it right smack in the middle of the day…and in the middle of the mud!

Jed and I were inside clipping our weiner dog’s nails (I promise we don’t only take care of animals here…😆) when Tonya, one of our team members ran into the house screaming our names. My heart about stopped- something terrible must have happened! We ran down the stairs “What? What happened?” “She’s giving birth!!!!!!” “Who?” (We also have a pregnant goat) “Gloria!!! Come quick!” Apparently, a neighbor was walking past our back fence on her way home from the little village store, saw a horse in the middle of the birthing process, and began screaming her lungs out to get someone’s attention. Tonya heard and we all started running to the barn. It was quite dramatic. 😁 We arrived on the scene to see a freshly born foal lying in the mud, still partially in the amniotic sac! Its legs were stuck in the sack so Jed pulled it away and then we all just watched Gloria and her mothering instincts take over. Ahhhhh it was so beautiful and special. We got to see our new colt stand for the first time on his stick-skinny, looooooooong legs, we saw how Gloria guided him to learn to nurse, and how she protected him from the curiosity of the other horses. All of us who live with the boys here on the Homestead just stayed with them for hours, watching the new life unfold. So much fun. Dajana, our resident “horse person”, is actually in Germany right now and was so upset to miss the birth! We were sending videos, Facetiming, and wishing so badly that she was with us on the special day. We miss you, Dajana!

Once we established that he is actually a “he”, we started the name convo. We hadn’t discussed names at all and I’ll tell you what, two Ukrainians, a German, and a few Americans all agreeing on a name is a great “experience” in honesty, team building, compromise, and kindness… and is about as easy as herding cats. Ha! We had to agree on a name that sounds good in all three languages (German, Ukrainian, and English) and with all three accents. In the end, at 11:00pm, we decided to use rank-order voting in order to make a fair choice. Thankfully, Christiana was once a voting official and was able to guide us through the process. 😂 We each submitted two name ideas and then we each ranked them according to our likes and dislikes. For your amusement, here is the list of names we were voting on:

The List (in no particular order)

1. Ryan Gosling
2. Horse Named Sioux (inspired by the Johnny Cash song “A Boy Named Sue”)
3. Bjorn
4. Johnny Cash
5. Marty
6. Kev
7. Uhtred
8. Josh of the Woods (inspired by our board chairman and US Director of Operations- Josh Woods)
9. Carl
10. Keanu Reaves
11. Clint
12. Woody
13. Seastar
14. Chandler
15. Johnny Go Lightly

And the winning name is….”Horse Named Sioux”!! He will affectionately be referred to as “Horse”. We think it’s absolutely hilarious that that name won. But, in a country where English is not the commonly spoken language, it’s actually quite cute and funny to hear Ukrainians calling him “Horse”. I love it so much. It makes me laugh.

Anyway, we wanted to introduce you to our sweet Horse, the newest member of the Wide Awake Family. He is already and will be well-loved. Welcome to the world, Horse Named Sioux! ❤️

Here is a beautiful intro from our team’s Instagram

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A post shared by [ΔᎥм]ГᎥдностᎥ | Dignity Home (@dim_hidnosti_ukraine)

Last week Ruslan and Jed returned home to us at long, long last. Oh, the sweet relief and joy of having them safe and sound, back in our arms. Annnnnnd they brought home with them our dear Christiana! Christiana is a friend of ours and of Wide Awake/Dim Hidnosti for many years. Her dream (and ours) was that once she finished grad school she would come spend a longer period of time here with us as a house parent, living with the boys. At long last, she finished and now she is here! It still doesn’t feel quite real that she’ll be with us for a full two years. I think we all feel a bit of the “pinch me” feelings. 🙂

Now that Jed is home and Christiana is here we really do have what we have always dreamed of. We have our boys living in our beautiful homes and we have amazing house parents living with them, building family. And a huge bonus is that all of us living here on the Homestead truly love and like each other! What we have is something special and right now I’m really feelin’ all the feels about it.

Dajana and Christiana love the boys and are feeling inspired to finally make Side A of the duplex a real home. Just in time for the coziness of the holidays, too! Dajana has such a calm, intuitive way with the boys that you would never know this work was absolutely, completely new to her just a few short months ago. She’s a natural and I’m pretty sure she’s happily surprised by that. 🙂 Christiana is new to us but is already thoughtfully considering how she can create meaningful time with the boys in the evenings when it’s family time. I love that! Oleg and Masha have done a really great job of making Side B into a true home for Anton and Sasha. They are dream house parents and are an example to us all of how to live life not just physically “with” the boys, but to really and truly live with them. To invite them into family, to look at them as equals, and to consider their wants and desires as humans in this world. I, for one, am inspired by them all the time.

What we have together here on the Homestead is a living, breathing, loving community and I feel so honored to be a part of it. Masha recently wrote her thoughts about community life on our team’s Instagram and Facebook pages and what she wrote was so beautiful it made me a little teary. Here’s the translation (Just a reminder, “Dim Hidnosti” translated “Dignity Home” or “House of Dignity” is the Ukrainian arm of Wide Awake. It is the name of Wide Awake’s work that is done here in Ukraine, simply because “Wide Awake” doesn’t translate well into Ukrainian) :

Life in Community
“In this era of individualism, people have begun to lose their sense of community and interdependence with others❌. In a society where no one owes anyone anything, unfortunately, there is very little room left for creating a community where all move in the same direction.

But do people need community now?
As we have already verified over the past year and a half – community, for us, is a huge driving force💪! Without community in various forms of its existence, it would not be possible to achieve goals for the benefit of society. Therefore, the development of local communities right now is very important for the further development of our country.

In a society where ‘no one owes anyone anything’, deinstitutionalization, saving children and adults from institutions, would not be possible. If ‘I don’t owe anyone anything’, then the innocent suffer. People remain defenseless at the hands of the institutional system and there is no one to help them 💔. Would we want such a fate for ourselves, our children, our relatives? Then why should others be condemned to loneliness and a life without a family? We cannot choose to exist only for ourselves – we simply do not have the right to do so while there is such injustice in the world. We must act, join local communities that are already helping people, or create them ourselves 🙌🏻

Would it be possible for the ‘House of Dignity’ (Dim Hidnosti) to exist without community? We can say with confidence: NO. Only in community and unity is it possible to achieve the goal we have set for ourselves – to give dignity, hope, and love to people with disabilities ❤️‍🩹.
The community of Dim Hidnosti is protection, support, and family for the men with disabilities who live with us. Moreover, we are their only family forever.

Community is a calling. Not every person can choose such a life for himself, because it requires full disclosure of your personality to other members of the community 🫣. To see imperfection in yourself and others and to have the courage to forgive, recover, recognize your right to make mistakes, and give this right to others 🤝….
We appear before everyone as we are, without decorations – and there is always a risk of not being accepted or being rejected. But, is it worth taking the risk and finding out what community acceptance and love can be like and how lifelong friendships can realize and fulfill dreams? 🙌🏻

Dim Hidnosti is a place of restoration and healing, not only for our boys but also for those of us who have dedicated our lives to them.
This healing and restoration is possible when every member of our community gives their heart to the work.
We are grateful for every person who has been with us, who is with us now, and who will come to Dim Hidnosti because each has given a part of their life and heart to our boys and this community ❤️.”

The longer I am a part of this community/family God has brought together the more beautiful it becomes and the more thankful I become. Is it always an easy life, living in close community where your actions affect everyone and their actions affect you? Heck no! Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it’s tiring. Sometimes it’s disappointing. But is it worth it? Yes, a thousand times yes. I wouldn’t give up the gift of my Dim Hidnosti family for all the world. They are God’s gift to me and there is nowhere else I would rather be.

Please don’t live life alone. Seek out community. Open your eyes, your heart, your arms, your home. I am certain there is someone who needs what you have to give and your life will be so much richer for having given. We were not meant to walk this life alone. Life together is so much more beautiful.

I didn’t grow up close to nature. Sure, we would go camping as kids, and those times are some of my fondest memories, but I wouldn’t say we were a “nature family” by any stretch of the imagination. We were more of an after-school activity, church, sports, Saturday-morning cartoon family. We had a couple cats when I was little, but they either ran away or we had to give them away when we moved…I can’t remember. And I had a few guinea pigs over the years. Fun fact: my first guinea pig’s name was Hudson Taylor. I was a weird kid, but I knew where my life was headed, I guess. What I’m getting at, is the extent of my childhood knowledge of farm life was limited to my heavy consumption of Little House on the Prairie (the TV series, not the books, thankyouverymuch).

When we lived in the US, before we were aware of Ukraine at all, Jed and I talked and dreamed about having some land, homesteading a bit. It wasn’t anything we were ever ready to seriously look into, but we dreamed of it someday in the future. I’m not even sure what sparked that dream. I guess we liked the idea of planting and growing things, of having space for our kids to run, of getting our hands dirty and caring for animals. Jed had a bit more experience with all that than I did, but not much. For whatever reason, it just sounded cool and it sounded very “us”. I liked to cook from scratch. We were always kicking our kids outdoors. We had backyard chickens. Baby steps toward the dream…

Then came that fateful night in the summer of 2010 when our eyes were opened to the horrors of institutional life in Ukraine for people with disabilities and all other dreams flew out the window. There was the agonizing time of not knowing how to respond to the new information we had discovered. Then the decision to adopt. Then when that fell through, the first visit to Ukraine. Then the founding of Wide Awake and the selling of almost all our worldly possessions. Gone was our beautiful craftsman on a quarter acre (huge to us), our backyard chickens, our bunnies, our cook-from-scratch, grain mill-using, kefir-making kitchen. The homestead dream took a backseat to the urgent need to get to Ukraine and DO SOMETHING to relieve the suffering of those languishing in institutions.

Now we’ve been in Ukraine for almost ten years (pinch me) and this past week a thought hit me like a ton of bricks. Our homestead dream is coming, has come true. Say what???? Our land here in the village has slowly become the thing of our dreams. And it has happened so slowly, in the midst of so many more important things that I somehow seemed to have missed it, or forgotten that we had once, long ago dreamed of it.

When we decided it was time to buy land here, that it was time to start getting people out of institutions we debated about what was better- to be in the city or in the village. We didn’t want to hide our friends with disabilities away, out of sight, like they always had been, but at the same time, we wanted them to be able to touch nature, to walk freely outdoors, to have space to breathe. We eventually decided the village would be better suited for deinstitutionalization, so we bought a little bit of property and the Homestead took its first breath.

I always thought that we were in the village because it was better for the boys. And I do believe it is. I can’t imagine trying to do what we do in the middle of the city. But now I am starting to notice a sneaky truth, that God placed us in the village not just for the boys, but for me and Jed too. I truly believe that God remembered that long laid down spark of a dream and in his kindness he has made it a reality.

Living on the Homestead, working in our massive garden, caring for our chickens, goats, and dogs- it brings me so much life. It’s like therapy for me. For reals. Sure, with Jed gone it can feel a bit overwhelming, but I still love it so much and I know Jed does too. Many of our Facetime convos, while he’s in the US, consist of me showing him the garden and the animals. 😆 I like learning new things, trying new things, planting, growing, harvesting, and preserving our own food. I love watching baby chicks grow and change. Our one little chick that recently hatched has two mama hens and the three of them are just the cutest little trio there ever was. Now we have another mama hen brooding on 4 eggs and I can’t wait to see what will happen with her. She’s an aggressive one. Ain’t nobody gonna mess with her babies! One of our hens, Kelly Cluckson, broke her leg and I thought we were going to have to put her out of her misery, but after a few weeks of making sure she could be left alone with food and water, I’m happy to report that now she can walk and jump and kinda/sorta limp-run. It’s so great! I’m so proud of her! 😆. Soon we will have horses and that will take everything up a notch. I have no idea what to do with horses, but I’m eager to learn. Dajana and I have a plan to take the horses to the forest after she teaches me to ride. Can you imagine? So cool.

One of my favorite moments of the day is late at night when I go out to the barn to lock up the goats and chickens for the night. It’s suuuuuuuuper dark. Our village doesn’t have street lights so the only light is from the moon. On clear nights there are so many stars. It’s incredible. I love to stand out there, look at all the stars, listen to the bazillion barking dogs. It’s like my soul can take a deep breath in that moment. In the midst of dealing with the trauma our boys carry, hard parenting moments, and living in a country at war, our little Homestead brings me life and joy. It steadies me a bit. I’m thankful that God placed that kernel of a dream in our hearts all those years ago and that he brought it to fruition in a way we could never have imagined. He is so good and kind to us.

Making our garden accessible, and fun moments from the past couple of weeks ❤️

For everyone following the journey, we’ve done a lot of building during the last 6 years. Jed gives a tour of the new barn, cargo bikes, walkways, and his best attempt at keeping the chicken eggs clean. Enjoy.

www.wideawakeinternational.org

Here’s a little tour of the Wide Awake/Dim Hidnosti property for you. ☺️ I think it helps to see the bigger picture of the Homestead and how it has changed and developed over the years. Plus, exciting new developments are underway! 👏👏
PS: Sorry my voice sounds annoying and Jed’s is so quiet. I’d redo it, except it’s raining…so…no. 😆

Yesterday I tried to get up the gumption to make a video, and then again today, but I just can’t seem to do it. The war rages on. So many lives lost. There doesn’t seem to be any end in sight and we are just hurting so deeply over it all. Words can’t express it. It’s a deep, deep ache at the core of me. I don’t know how it will ever heal. I only read Ukrainian news because any news from the west makes me want to scream and cry. Does anyone truly have Ukraine’s best interest in mind, or are all the people who hold the power only interested in preserving their own self-interests?  I think we all know the answer to that by now. Ukraine continues to defend the free world, at the cost of so many innocent lives. How can this be? I’m tired. 

It’s been seven weeks since we left our home but it feels like a lifetime has passed. The 5 months when Jed lived in the duplex with Anton and Sasha and I lived across the yard in our house with our family were hard. It was one of the most challenging and exhausting times of our lives. But I would go back to that life in a moment- in the blink of eye. We were tired but so happy. We were at home, in the place we love. Our kids went to school and youth group. We walked in the city and went to church. We dreamed about the summer garden and prepared the soil. We planned for the future and looked ahead with hope. Life in Ukraine was not without its challenges, but those challenges feel like nothing in comparison to what life has become.  

Now our hearts are broken. We have survivor’s guilt and we mourn what was, knowing it will never again be the same. I hope and dream that we will go home, but it will be different. Will we feel safe there again? Will Ukraine ever truly be “safe” again? How will we even know when to go back? We lived in Ukraine for 8 years while the country was at war..but now things are different. German lessons are offered to us and I refuse to go because something inside of me feels like trying to learn a new language is accepting the fact that we are here for a long while and I don’t want that to be true. So I stumble along with my smattering of German words and mostly get by using English. I don’t want to ingrain myself into the culture here, not because I have anything against Germany, but because my heart longs for everything Ukraine. It feels like a betrayal to accept a life here while Ukraine fights to survive.

I see others going into Ukraine, delivering humanitarian aid and volunteering and I feel jealous that they are there and I am not. I also feel guilty that they are there and I am not, although I am a mom of (now) 11 and my obligation is to my children. Living in a church in Germany isn’t as sexy as being in Ukraine, at the heart of things, and I run out of things to say about life here. I change diapers. I take our boys to the doctor. I cook food. I buy groceries. I mourn for what was and worry about what will be. It’s not exciting or necessarily helpful to the cause of Ukraine, but it’s where I need to be. That’s a hard pill to swallow.

I am thankful to our friends here in Germany who have helped us so very much. I’m thankful that we have a place to all live together because living apart would never work. I’m thankful that my children are safe and have food to eat. I’m thankful that our two new boys, Yaroslav and Vova, are doing so well and that we have the opportunity to give them a life worth living. There are joys in the sorrow, and for that I am thankful.

Some days I feel God’s smile and his joy and some days I wonder where He has gone and how He can allow this to happen. My faith in His goodness is being severely tested and I don’t understand how to communicate with Him right now. Everything feels too complicated and I’m afraid to dig too deep into my own emotions. So, I change the next diaper. Wipe the next nose. Drive to the next appointment and wait. For peace? For home? For an answer? I don’t know what I wait for, but I feel too unsettled to call this life anything but waiting.

I know a house is just a building, and buildings can be made again. I know people are more important, and of course I would choose people over a building any day. But today I just want to see my house. Our house, to me, is so much more than a building. It represents the reason we live in Ukraine. It is an oasis of hope. It is the place where our boys first felt the love of a family. It is the place my children call home. It is a place of joy and beauty and hope. I’m so thankful it is still safe and standing. I wait, with longing, for the day we can return.

Please, don’t forget Ukraine. 💔