Reflections on One Year at the Homestead

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I have been living in Ukraine for over a year now! The year mark was an opportunity to reflect more intentionally on my time here thus far. 

First, I am so grateful that I get to be here. I’m so grateful that God said yes to the desire to live here that had been growing in me for years. After my first time in Ukraine, I just knew I wanted to return. Sometime around 3 years ago, that grew into a desire to live here for a season and be a part of the Wide Awake mission and community in a deeper way. But to actually get to live here?? Despite the distance, and the war, and all the other reasons this dream felt a little out there. It hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows, and when I’m in the normal stuff of daily life, I can forget how magical it is that this dream became a reality. But it actually is pretty magical, and I’m so glad that I get to live this life and do this work.

So if it hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows, what has been hard? If I can sum it up in one sentence: The hard part is the ways in which living here exposes all the faults and weaknesses that I had before I came. I read a missionary memoir (by Helen Roseveare) where she said that moving overseas to do mission work doesn’t magically make you a different, better person. You bring everything about who you already were to the foreign place, and I feel that 😅 The pressures of my life before were different, so I could avoid some of these weaknesses well enough to forget about them. But God works all things together for the good of those who love him, so it seems He is using aspects of life here to grow me in areas I’d been avoiding (or just oblivious to). 

One area that seems to be a recurring theme in my life here is help… or self-sufficiency… so I suppose, pride. I came here to meet a need, to contribute to life on the Homestead, to be another willing set of hands. But there is a difference between a good desire to help and a prideful desire to only help while needing nothing from others. Giving help often feels good; it puts you in a position of power (whether you consciously acknowledge it in the moment or not). Being a helper is an identity our achievement-oriented culture celebrates. Needing help displays weakness; it puts you in a position of humility and is the opposite of being independent. 

As it turns out, as much as I SAY that I desire community and interdependence, I actually really cling to being independent. I want to be in a position to give help, but needing help feels vulnerable. What if people think less of me? What if I don’t actually get the help I need? What if me being too needy leads people to reject me? Surely, I’ll be easier to love if I make no demands on anyone.

I know it sounds ridiculous when I put it that way, but I usually don’t have to hear that quiet voice deep inside. Life is loud. 

And then I moved to Ukraine, where I am constantly finding myself in situations where I feel incompetent. I need help with things all the time that I could do independently in America. And whenever I think “Cool God, thanks for all the growth opportunities about accepting help, but I think I have finally learned this lesson now” something new happens to make me realize that I have most definitely NOT learned this lesson yet. 😂

Part of my role here is to be a house parent, to care for Yarik and Vova. And then I break my elbow and am in a plaster cast. Or impale my foot on a rusty nail and can barely walk. Or get a stomach flu over the weekend. I have had the most ridiculous, random injuries in my life here. And I’ve gotten sick what feels like an absurd number of times. Every time this happens and someone else has to carry something that I see as my responsibility or something I “should” be able to do, I once again get a bad attitude (i.e. guilt, resentment, frustration). Then I realize that I have not accepted being a frail mortal and that I still do not want to need help. 

But we all give and receive help. That is actually by design, not because of a fault in the design.

And if we build an identity on being a helper, on always being self-sufficient and in a position to help others, there is a danger that we can look down with contempt on those who need help. Not intentionally. But if we revile needing help, how do we view others who need it?

So there is some slow, deep work happening in me in this area. It’s still in progress, although I’m hoping God chooses to work on this in my life without any more crazy injuries.