It’s been four weeks since I’ve come home- although it seems
shorter, and as many times as I’ve tried to write this post- I could never
bring it to completion, but that was because I was relying on myself to tell my
story. The moment I turned to God- something that’s not always easy to do, I
found the right words.
My time in Ukraine was more than blessed. I love my team,
and miss them dearly, but those are not the only people that touched my life
while I was there. Our translators, Masha, Sveta, and Artoum, told me about
their lives, about their dreams and ambitions, their families, and their
passions- and I made friends that will last a lifetime. The team of Australians
that shared their testimonies made me bolder about sharing mine, and I know
that if I ever find myself in Australia, I’ll know exactly where to find some
of the most God-loving people there. The workers at the camp- many of which I regrettably
can’t name because I’m awful with names- blessed me with their constant joy and
passion to serve. Their smiles and broken English never failed to brighten my
day, and the countless joking offers I got for marriage arrangements never ceased
to make me smile. The children that hung on my arms and legs, that gave me
trinkets even though they had nothing, that went full speed ahead in Ukrainian,
even though countless times I expressed that I don’t understand, that used the
few English words they had, searching to find a connection with someone that
would love on them, the smiles, the tears, and everything in between, it
changed my life. However, no matter how extraordinary any of these people are,
no matter how much they touched my life- they would fail in comparison without
the lessons that Christ taught me in my short time there. Christ used those
people to change me- I know I am a different person now than when I started on
this journey, and although it’s taken me a while to go full circle and really
realize what those changes are, I know that although my time was cut short- I
learned there what Christ sent me there to learn- and that is how to love.
For those of you that know me- you know I’m not an openly emotional
person; I don’t go around hugging people and saying ‘I love you.’ I don’t seek
closeness with people, because I won’t know the first thing about it, and I
definitely hate crying- it’s up there with throwing up my guts and stabbing
myself in the eye with a rusty fork- that’s how much I hate it. It makes me
ugly, it’s hard to breathe, and most of all, anyone that happens upon you while
you’re crying has one of two responses: they immediately try to console you,
even though they have no idea what’s going wrong, or they stare awkwardly till
they regain the ability to move their legs that they lost from shock, and
quickly shuffle away. Neither of these things are helpful to someone who is
truly sobbing. Because I shy away from anything that requires an expression of
emotion, I’ve missed out on a lot of great opportunities in life- many of which
God probably dropped in front of me like ton of bricks, to which I responded by
taking a few steps back, staring, then walking right around it. I’m realizing
now, that I probably went into the World Wide Witness program with selfish
intentions- I got to travel, something amazing was going to happen in my life,
I was going to get to feel good about helping people, I’d be able to say that I’d
been to a different country, it would look good on my resume, it would be a
notch in my social work belt. I went into this program thinking a lot about me,
and quickly realized that nothing was about me. By the time I was on my flight
all I could think about was how God was going to use me to help someone else-
which was a complete turnaround from my initial thinking. I’m not saying that
at first I didn’t want to help people- because I truly did, that’s just what I
feel passionate about in life- but by the time I was on the plane, I wanted to
help people for a completely different reason- it was for them. My three weeks
in Ukraine were brief, unfortunately so. But I know, that God knew from the
start what was going to happen, that I was going to be blindsided, and that
every plan I had carefully constructed, was going to be torn to shreds. 
That’s lesson number two. I am a planner- and God showed me
that all the planning in the world, cannot change his plan- which so often is
completely opposite of our own. I am a planner- always have been, and always
will be. But being in Ukraine has helped me learn how to deal when your grand
plans get tossed out by forces you can’t control. It’s a process- learning
these things. I’m sure it will take me
my whole life to get used to my plans being thrown out a window- and maybe not
even then, but I know that when they do, instead of scrambling to piece
together the broken shards of a plan, I can just hold my hands out, and God
will give me a new one- one that is immensely more perfect than my own.
There are a million more lessons I’ve learned, a hundred
more stories that I could tell, and this blog post could very quickly turn into
a book- but that’s not what this is. This post very well may be not what you
were expecting. I know many people are expecting an explanation, of exactly
what happened, why I’m home early, and was it my fault, and if it wasn’t my
fault whose fault is it? But I’m sorry- you won’t get it. To be honest, I don’t
completely understand why I’m home, other than the simple reason that God wanted
me here, in little Lake Worth, Texas- to learn a few more lessons. It is nobody’s
fault- because faults are a childish way to explain God’s plan- if you ask me.
Trying to explain the happenings of life as a result of a person is well,
useless- because it’s not we who are in control.
Now I’m sure that from time to time, Ukraine stories will be
told- whether it’s while I’m sitting in a restaurant with my friends or in a
blog post or journal entry- because the ending of this blog does not mean the
ending of my time in Ukraine- because it will forever impact me. Something will
happen and I’ll have a pang of longing, or I’ll see something in a new light
and glean a new revelation from an event, and I’ll tell someone about it.
Ukraine is engraved in my heart, now and forever- and I’m a different person, all
because of Ukraine.
I'll be writing in a new blog- my personal one which I'm awful at keeping up with, from time to time. You can find it here.
