Punch Fear in the Face

So here I sit, in my broken leather armchair in my broken country, trying to think clever and deep things to say to you after such a long cyber absence.
We took a step back from face book because it felt like the healthy thing to do, and it was, and we're not really up for getting back on the promo wagon. Freedom from living life in the light of other peoples' eyes, freedom from comparison and striving and also in my pregnant state I have a tendency to non-filter the rage that spews forth from my face. Status updates were getting a little bit offensive, because the inside of my head is often quite offensive, and it was time to step back and cool off a little bit.
I've avoided writing the blog because honestly I haven't felt like anything I could say would be worth reading. Have been quiet in myself lately, not needing to rant or vent, perhaps because I've been concentrating on growing a mini human in my tummy while nurturing the other mini human in my house. John can be so demanding.
Just didn't feel like my thoughts were worth inflicting on the internet, felt like I needed to go away and be quiet and helpful for a while.

But, well, the last month happened and I think maybe it's time to break the silence.
Because we need to punch fear in the face.

It's time to step up to the mic and shout down the panic until it's left the building. It's time to shame the enemy, by pointing at the King.

So we've been here in Ukraine through revolution, peaceful and violent. We've been here through panic buying, gas shortages, power cuts, shootings in our city, street blockages, wars and rumours of wars. We're here as a certain captain naughty pants strolls around on land that isn't his, parading his big tanks (compensating for anything?) and his big missiles (really? You're making this too easy) telling the world to be afraid. And the BBC, whom I love, jump up and down shrieking about the apocalypse until we're ready to panic buy all the train tickets home.
Our conversations strive to pick apart a future that hasn't happened yet, we say words like contingency plan more than once a day. We're planning for visas and passports and airplanes and embassies and the kinds of things that normal people don't have to spend that much time discussing. We go for dinners and wonder aloud who it was that our friend saw shot that afternoon in the park. We go to parties and debate how many months until we're made to leave the country in a hurry. We make plans like 'I'll row you across the river to Moldova in a blow up dinghy', which was reassuring thank you husband. 
The thing is, the panic can build. The peace can be diminished. That Human Rights degree can backfire when your head is full of Amnesty reports on war crimes, when you know the awful things we can do to each other, when you know too much to remain brave. When your nights are packed with nightmares of war. When you fear for your children. When you freak out when your husband is home late, imagining his face covered in bruises. When you've booked your tickets home a thousand times.

The thing is, all those worries, all that anxiety, it's whispers of hints of possibilities made huge by fear. It's not real.
Hosea says that God wants to be acknowledged.
I need to acknowledge him. The things he has done. 

And the thing is, I've learnt about Him and fear. He's bigger.
A few years ago I was told by a doctor that I had an anxiety disorder. I was offered a lot of treatment options, a whole world of band aids to slap on the wound, an array of things to pacify and soothe and heal nothing, just to numb the symptoms. I opted instead to go a bit deeper, scrape this thing out from the bottom.

Not many people know about what was going on in this season of my life, but the line I used with the people who did know was that I'd been through some stuff in my life and had healed but not quite right. Some bones needed to get broken so they could be re set. Some scars had to be cut into again so we could heal them better. Broken to heal.

Counselling, with a gifted and kind woman who loves Jesus, got me a long way. Broke the bones to reset them, this time with Jesus doing the operations instead of me in my ignorance. DTS finished the job. By the time we came home, baby in belly, a revolution in Egypt witnessed, a world of poncy travel pics and pretentious stories to tell, I was better.

I've been better ever since.
It's not been that long but I'd like to venture that a woman given to worry doesn't pack up her seven month old infant and move to a new country to live and serve people she barely knows. With no formal wage, no pension, no insurance, no ASDA (ASDA is my happy place), no family, no security.

Furthermore, I don't think worriers sit around in a war zone making jokes over pudding.

There is a peace in myself that reaches beyond what has happened, what is happening and what could happen. There is a woman in this house who mothers and works and wives (that's not a word) in strength and I think her name is me. The person who was crippled by fear doesn't recognize those feelings when they try to crop up, the worry that became my identity for some time has no place in the life I live now. Fear is alien.

So to acknowledge him - I've been writing this to 'see beneath your beautiful' by Labrinth and Emilie Sande and it needs to be said: I am healed because He has healed me. What's inside me is Him.

I am brave because He is King/ Lion/ Ruler/ Volcano maker.
I am here because that's where He's said to be.
I am whole because He loves me.

He used counselling and DTS and my friends and my pretty darn perfect husband and he took those opportunities to take my crap away and give me happiness instead.

So yup, wars and rumours of wars.
And we're not going to panic and run about in our pants wailing, although that could be fun, we're going to stay until He says go.
Because fear and me?
I'm over it.













 

One

Moving countries can turn you into a bit of a nut bag.
All the things you never noticed about yourself, about how you function and what you prefer and how you understand the world, all those things that you never have to look in the eye, well they pretty much stand up and punch you in the face when you step off the plane.

Falling on the tarmac of the runway.

Well, it's not quite that soon. That's just every time you come home from going home, continually confused flying back and forth from who you were and who you're turning into. Planes between worlds, connected by the internet, nothing making any sense.

Nope, the first time your identity crisis slaps you about is when you've been in the new country for a few months or so. When your subconscious - sluggish as it tends to be - finally grasps that you're
not
going
home.
That what you thought of as home is a box of memories, punctuated by awkward skype conversations with people you can't touch. And if you try to, you look mental. That home has passed, gone, you committed to a new life in a place that is drowning you and you
can't
go
home.
You can pop back, and Lord knows we have, for operations and weddings and holidays and awareness raising and thankfully the reasons don't go away, so the journeys don't stop and there's always a future visit to look to. But it's not going home. When you're here you call there 'home' but also vice versa, seeing loved one's faces cringe a little when you call some far off location where they don't live 'home'. Calling everywhere home because nowhere is. Not sure where you belong and so you don't belong anywhere. Lost.

And suddenly you are aware that you're not, really, in England anymore. Ever.
You're in Ukraine.
But, your tiny brain rails, you are English! Not Ukrainian! YOU DON'T FIT HERE. EVERYTHING IS WRONG.
So you obsess, constantly, without meaning to, without trying to, while trying not to, on the differences, on the wrongness, on how you don't fit. But because you are up yourself, this gets projected onto the new home - you obsess over how actually they don't fit. Everyone else is wrong.

Everyone else is unfriendly. Or rude. Or judgemental. Or ignorant.
Ridiculous, stupid xenophobic reactions but these ideas have stamina and they will gather traction and they will hold you in their grip, trapped by hurt masking itself as superiority.
When we went home for Clare's wedding last month we chatted to our taxi driver about how he found the move from Pakistan to England. He was angry with England, he said 'everyone here pretends to be family orientated but they're not, they don't care about you'.
It was like an echo of my thoughts, but dumped on the country I've been longing for, my England. And he was so certain.
Like I've been so certain. Of so many opinions.
Horrible opinions, about how different people are here, navigating life through massive generalizations, and it is terrifying to be so certain about things that are so wrong.

Moved here, got scared and confused because it all feels so different and because I don't have England as a home anymore. So I let my brain go all defensive and accusatory. Found flaws in an entire culture. Idolised my own.
Took nationality as an identity - when you realise your national identity is different, you burrow deeper into 'I am British'. And your days, hours and minutes are spent noticing how British you are compared to the Ukrainians around you. Laminating badges in your mind and pinning them to everybody. Labels. Nationalism. Culture.
Sin.
Stupid.

And you don't notice the cage you've built around yourself til you try to grow, but you can't because you built the cage too small. So all the fruit, all the beauty that could come from this missionary life is choked to death - never stood a chance - because you're in a tiny box with no room to grow. So you just get tangled and bitter and you say absurd things and wish ridiculous things. And the cage says ENGLISH on the door that you never open.

When you could have been turning into something gorgeous. When God has been holding you, meeting you, providing for you, gloriously and enthusiastically present this whole time but you never looked up cos you were fiddling with the dirt on the bottom of the cage. New branches all stuck in the bars.

But he's bigger than my silliness. And he can teach me, on a bus journey to Zhmerinka orphanage, through my headphones and the kindness of my team who let me sit in the back savouring the toddler-less peace that is a minivan drive through the frost, headphones in and ignoring everyone. He can grab me. I gave him that permission with every worship song I tried to mean, with every prayer week and Bible verse and journal entry. We go way back. So that cage, that nationalism? Like dust, mate. He's got me and he's not going to let me be lied to indefinitely.

He can gently, quietly remind me of who I actually am.
I'm not British.
Sorry, family and friends and your majesty the Queen, but I'm not yours.
I'm also not Ukrainian. Sorry, orphans. I know, what a loss.

I'm in Him.
He's in me.
It's called the cross, it's called looking at God come to die, God's blood on the dirt, His body in the dirt. His tomb empty. His hands, scarred so you can see through the holes, still healing women and children and men bewildered by their own powerlessness. Still overflowing His Spirit all over this world of us, in so many levels of denial but still needing that healing and it's called saying YES.
It's called walking after Him, with Him, carried by Him.
It's called the last ten years of painting with Him,
dancing with Him,
listening to Him at 3am,
chasing Him,
writing awful poetry for Him,
wrestling with the HOW COULD YOU and WHY DON'T YOU and
falling in love with the world he is making,
it's called
being a mini Jesus
being a Christian.

Not British. My friends here on the team aren't Ukrainian, or American, or Russian or whatevs.
They are Jesus'.
His.

It's bigger than anything, this is the truth that the enemy was desperately jumping up and down in front of, trying to stop me from seeing. No! Look! They eat weird jelly! What a terrible country! You will never have friends here! You are too different! You should abandon the orphans! They're so ungrateful!

And behind him, bigger than him, bigger like the sun is bigger than my hands, stands Jesus. My Jesus.
He doesn't have to say a lot.
Just...
you're mine.

And I know I can be here. I can live here and I can be ridiculously happy. I can grow. We can all be here, this bunch of nut bags, this motley crew (not cru) of sons and daughters. Together, the same, loving the children who haven't ever been loved, loving each other with cookies and can-I-pray-for-you and let-me-babysit-for-you and let's go for lunch after church. And the grace of a community that have seen me sulking in my cage and instead of slapping me out of it, have stood and waited, have trusted me with their ministries and dreams and tasks. We're all the same, we're family, and nationalism is just this stupid Babel babble that makes wars.

We're His. I'm His.
And maybe when I grow up I can be a tree.










 

some gratitude, badly expressed

I can’t do this.
Life.
Trying to live well, or at all, is unrelentingly difficult. Walls after ditches after tranches after oh for goodness’ sake what I am trying to do now? Who thought this was a good idea? When did I agree to this? And so on.

But it’s ok. Not because I’m a super duper Christian lady who spends lots of time with Jesus every day, not because I am filled with the power of He who defeated death (well, ok, a bit because of that, ok, a lot because of that) but what I’m trying to say is that this missionary life isn’t possible because of my brilliant Christianity.
My Christian walk is appalling. Really. You would be appalled. I’m like a walking advert for why someone should not follow Jesus. Such a flaming hypocrite so riddled with need and distractions and frankly a bit of a judgy bitch. John wouldn’t use that naughty word but he knows me very well indeed as being married to a woman with no filter can be illuminating. Poor hubby. He knows the terrible things I think about people because I will tell him them in a stream of sinful consciousness ‘these are my current thoughts, based on my current emotions, and in ten minutes I’ll change my mind but right now I’m saying incredibly judgemental things about so-and-so and if you’re really lucky I’ll dress them up as righteous insights’.
I don’t even know if I’ve read all of the Bible.
John’s read it all at least twice.
When judgement day comes I play the ‘I’m with him’ card and hope it gets me points.

Very bad at being like Jesus. Left to my own devices would shop online for cocktail frocks, for hours, then go read a book by someone low brow and eat a cake. Not so much into the caring about other people, just me.

If I was all by myself then this whole ‘missionaries in Ukraine’ thing would have been over a very long time ago.
But it’s ok! I’m not by myself! Other people exist!
Here is a list of things that other people do:
Well, the most obvious one is people send us money every month so that I can shop online for cocktail frocks. Or buy food and clothes for the kids and petrol for the Lada and pay our staff fees and that kind of thing. It’s amazing and I don’t think you’d find much of that outside of the church i.e. people who follow Jesus. People working their jobs and then saying ‘oh I shall take a large slab of this hard earned income and redirect it to the Washingtons, because it’s good to love people and orphans and Ukraine and all that stuff and I’ll be nice about it as well and never send them weird emails asking for accounts, in fact when I see them I’ll also give them chocolate and cuddles and not ask where all those cocktail frocks come from and why Fritha is wearing them to Tescos’. Mental. Brilliant. Beautiful. Not normal. 

I often need people to tell me things. Sometimes I need people to say ‘ooooooh you’re doing so well you precious little flower for the Lord here’s a virtual hug muffin’ (my real hug muffin is John HAH!) and those things are vital because when one is neurotic one can become a little insecure and it’s actually not possible to convey how kind words through the internet have kept us going. The other sort of thing I need people to tell me goes along the lines of ‘stop that. Put that down. No. Do I need to put you in Time Out?’ and those are difficult things but I need them too.
As an aside: If you’re one of the people who does the latter because you have known me for years, because you trust me and I trust you, because you have cried with me or giggled with me or drunk wine with me while shouting at the telly…that’s good. And you know who you are. If, however, you are one of the people who sends me bizarre emails from a place of having met me a few times, years ago, and you think I need a Bible verse with an opinion let me just point this out: I know the Christian answers. I am not interested in them. Please pocket your clichés and your empty concern and go disciple a hamster. You’ll find it more receptive. Better yet, jack in your shiny Christian career, work full time for free, have a kid, move to another country, help orphans and exist in a missionary community and do it for longer than me with more success and then I might listen to you. If you’re not my friend and/or Jackie Pullinger I very much doubt that what you’re going to write will help and I suspect that you’re not so much interested in helping as in being more correct than me, which is tiresome and the last thing I need out here is religious vitriol. Jesus loves you, go relax somewhere and leave me alone. 

Too cross? Well…it’s been brewing. Naughty.

Another obvious one is praying.
We don’t pray enough, my approach to life seems to be ‘throw self in deep end shouting very loudly about all the things I’m going to do’ and I tend to forget to ask for help. Which is why it is very important to have many people around the world having conversations with God that look something like ‘Hi, LORD, so, Fritha’s in a pickle again, can you help her out? Thank you’ and then God says ‘well alrighty then’ and jumps in the deep end too and tows me out. And then we splash about having a nice time/ swimming lesson and then we go get some crisps from the vending machine. Of life.

I can’t do friendships very well anymore, especially having moved away and left this huge chunk of myself back in England with all the people I love. That was painful and I got scared that I was forgetting how to be close to people because I was in this weird self defence mode of not getting attached to people because this is YWAM and everybody leaves, and sometimes that someone is me. Do you know how painful it is to see your daughter try to climb into to laptop to cuddle her family? Do you know how difficult it is to clean soggy marshmallow off the screen because she thought she could feed Granny snacks via skype? Do you know how annoyed a husband can get that you actually just left it for him to clean?
So I don’t attach. But I have been amazed by the generosity of people – old friends and new – who on purpose attach themselves to me. I could be numb, too wrecked by this last year to be open to anything nice. But people around me are fun, and inspiring, and kind, and funny, and I haven’t had the chance to become a weird missionary hermit, I’ve had to remain in community and laugh about stuff. Or cry about stuff. But not numb and not alone.

So yes. I’m not alone. And it’s not like I’m supported by amazing Christians like what are in books, it’s just that together we make a whole, lots of bits of people clumped together holding each other up. Maybe when I’ve grown up a bit I can be one of the pieces holding up others.

Beth’s awake so I’m going to go and do kisses which is her trying to wriggle away and annoy the dog. xxx

whole heart

This one is a bit scary to write because there's a ledge I have to leap off but I'm too afraid and in the busy life that is my life writing this blog is hopefully going to be part of the run up. By the end of this, I might have jumped.

I might be flying.

Or I might cop out and huddle under a table somewhere refusing to look Jesus in the eye. We shall see. John's watching movies with the team downstairs and I could just jack this in, turn off David Crowder Band and go back to normal. We shall see. This might be too hard to write and too scary to accept. We shall see.

Lately I have been surrounded by women, by real life women and also whispers of women who others know well, women who have shaken my complacency. Women of such strength that I'm left in awe, capable of such holiness that their lives fly like meteors tearing through the sky that holds us back from heaven. Women who sacrifice like it's nothing, who live like what they want is nothing. Who adopt eight children in a foreign land. Who move to the walled city. Who pay thousands of dollars to return children to a new home they've not yet known. Who work, carry, create, clean, try, try, and try to make their homes places of refuge. Of joy. Of beauty.

I could write a press release that makes me look like one of those women. I live in Ukraine, working with orphans, I moved here with a seven month old baby and opened my home to a teenage girl, mother of two now. Blah, blahdy blah.

I've opened my home but I haven't opened my heart and so my home is a shadow of what it could be.
I should probably try to explain a bit - as if the wonderings of this wandering mind could ever be properly understood. Hah.

I'm here and I'm doing the job, I'm cooking and learning language and washing clothes and taking photos and so far so 'successful'. But there is so much of myself that I am holding back for nobody other than me. In the name of boundaries, in the name of comforts, in the name of avoiding hurt here I am looking like a missionary but unable to love my God or my girls because this heart of mine is reserved. For me. By me. Selfish and scared and cynical.
To explain further: Alla lives in my home and I care about her but would I be destroyed of she quits us? Would my heart break? Would I search the world to find her again?
Would I even skip a meal?
I'm not loving whole heartedly so how can  my heart be whole? Not possible.

My God is too wonderful to accept, or indeed offer, anything other than everything. Those women I am hearing about and meeting are women who have stood on the ledge, looked up to His sky full of the cross, full of His sacrifice, full of His love and they have flung their arms apart and leapt spinning into Him.
Not 6 days a week, not until the toddler's in bed and then it's movie time, not until they've had enough and it's me-time, not just when they're doing ministry, not when the person they've committed to is behaving in a pleasing manner. Not part time. No boundaries from God.
No boundaries with Him.
No secret areas of hurt. No topic off limits. No reservations. No privacy. No lies.

Life, offered with a whole heart flying into the blue, untethered by selfishness. Free.

He's asking this of me. He wants all of my life, all of my priorities, all of my time, all of my perspectives, all of my behaviours, all of my thoughts. Free.

And so I say this to Him, to you LORD of this bursting heart that only really feels it's own beats when I'm dancing with you. To you I say this...

Yes.
Take this house,
take these hands,
take my days,
take my sleeps,
take my womb and my feet and my spine,
take the things I want
take the things I think I need
take the things I think are beautiful
take my time
my downtime, my stressed time,
everything I think I should be doing,
all my petty selfishness and my schedules that build the walls around everything I ever have to give,
my internet time,
my photo time,
my cooking time,
my life as yours. All of it. Don't let me put bits of me in a box away from you.

Sick of mediocre, sick of how unloving I can apparently be. I want more.

'Real love isn't afraid to bleed' well I think you were a lot afraid and you did it anyway. You can have all of me.

And then, maybe, Jesus, you can give Alla and Beth and whoever is next a mum who tears holes in the pain that this world builds around people. Maybe I could meet Alla's eyes without fear or suspicion, weilding weapons that scare the crap out of the devil. A woman who brings light into those nasty corners where the demons thought they were safe, a mother who proclaims healing over those who are hers and who stands over them like the lioness she was always meant to be. A woman full of the beauty of you who makes gardens flourish, a girl who couldn't care less about the praise of magazines but prefers instead to walk through life unconsciously drawing the beauty out in the damaged girls for whom she bakes cakes. A woman whose presence turns the scars of rape into flawless, spotless gowns for her brides. Who takes her joy when it is given and who trusts that it will come, who doesn't control or scheme or plot but instead flows around others, singing and sometimes headbanging and sometimes shocking everybody because controversy comes from what is honest. Who doesn't need anyone to say well done because she knows you have already done everything as well as it could ever be.

And I know this is a statement of intent, I know I'm small and that's ok. I know you just love that I'm trying to listen to you but can you take these words and make them truth? Can you take all of my heart and when I'm not offering it can you remind me that you still give me all of yours, everyday?

Take me down, take down my walls and open me to Alla. Open me to my kids, not just the ones that came from my body, give me love and all the pain that can bring because of the joy and healing that is so desperately needed in this house.

Make me whole hearted.
Give me a whole heart.
So your will can be done, and your kingdom can come, in this thing called life.

Hopefully in the post below this one there's a youtube video of the song I was listening to while I wrote this, it's amazing. Turn it up loud. Quite music is stupid.

Fall On Your Knees - David Crowder Band

my mistake

Hello, we're home!
Oh good grief there's already an exclamation mark, I must be feeling perky. Brace yourselves.

Before I go any further, here's a nice picture. This is her happy face. Can't think where she got that grin from. 

So we went home and here’s a list of tings (yup, tings, because I’m street) that were just lovely. If you’re not specifically named on the list please don’t be offended because my attention span is shorter than Beth’s and the only thing worse than that is my memory. So I love you but I might not remember to put you on this blog today. Plus I’m listening to my beloved writing support group, One Republic, and every now and again will be shaking it around the lounge and not concentrating on writing this thing. Responsible, I is not. Having fun, I is. 

THE LIST:
Grandparents who babysit and Auntie Roadie and Uncle Annie, meals out with hubby and starlit walks along the beach in Greece, Beth in the sea after she’d recovered from her original aversion (which is what you get when Daddy gets excited and literally drops you in on your first day but that’s Ok because here’s a terrifying rubber contraption into which we have forced you why are you crying?)
Um. Beth weeing copious amounts on members of my immediate family because we'd run out of swim nappies, which is code for I wanted her to feel unencumbered and at one with nature. Pee freely my little love! On Granny!
So many, many faces of people that I have missed so much that it has hurt. Smiling faces.
Hugs, hugs from people who know me and love me anyway and all the cups of tea and that weird Narnia feeling of a year actually only being a day in the real world and your life was always here for you while you had your adventures. All the loved people and loved places solid and faithful and you're not forgotten and there is still somewhere on planet earth where you're considered normal. Sort of.
Brighton you vile stinky shopping heaven and your overpriced buses and oh Boots meal deals how do I love thee? Let me count the ways, you veggie crisps and prawn salads and fair trade chocolate dream factory.
The cinema! Even though the film was quite terrible! Yay!
I got to talk to Christine Angel and that woman's name is well deserved. She's a proper missionary.
Meeting a certain lovely boyfriend for the first time. Hanging for an avo with an excited bride to be. Crying for a true friend. Praying for her too. A day in the park with a family who inspire and accept us all at the same time and who we miss a lot.
Going off the HOOK because for two evenings I got to worship in my own language. When it comes to worship, yes it is possible for a human to physically go off the hook in the manner of a club or tune or event, on the inside.
Chips. Curry. Chinese takeaway. Pork pies.
Not working out for three whole weeks.
Getting a tan, ish.
Going snorkelling with John who demands that we swim to a really deep scary bit that turns out to be really boring so then he demands that you climb out of the sea via a rock face and then he demands that you walk back, past a restaurant, in a bikini and as you draw level with the bored and staring faces you trip and fall over and kind of spill out of your hastily purchased and inadequate bikini. Getting back to find that B has done another wee on Granny. Good times.
John would put golf in this but i'm not going to because golf is stupid.

Right, so I have to cap this because in 30 mins we're making Allachka (it's like a soppy way of saying someone's name here - Frithachka, Bethchka, Kate Middletonchka, Rhiannachka - I put some celebs in there because I am cool and relevant) go to bed because we're parents and there's routine and stuff now. It's lovely.
So to my point. Everything you've read thus far hasn't even been the point. How annoying. I would have put a jump thing in but I couldn't be bothered.
My point:
I communicated very badly with our church.

We did a very successful and lovely QandA with people, there was cake, we were interviewed at the front like proper Christians and we gave succint (ish) summaries of what we're doing and I even made a power point thing. People came away informed. Our projects outlined, our activities explained, Ukraine analysed etc etc.

As an aside, it is good that we did a feedback thing. The way I would explain how we afford food and stuff is as thus:
We do something that the world (in this instance, the Ukrainian or British government) is never going to pay us to do. But we believe that it needs doing. Our friends also think it needs doing and while God hasn't told them to get on a plane and do it themselves, they have been prompted to give us their hard earned money so we can carry on doing it. We live by faith and so do you.

Faith and love and kindness going round and around and changing the world. Money is involved. Because it's cold here and the kids need shoes.
So yeah, it was important to explain where the money goes. And because the need is so great, it is also important to set people alight for Ukraine (not, like, literally cos then they won't want to fund stuff), so that more money can come in to pay for more lives to be saved.

But the bit I missed out? The WHY.
My beautiful friend was asking me this over curry - chatting about how we're not doing it (Ukraine, YWAM, T- home, all of it) because of such and such but because of God and I sat there confused and speechless because i'd been in PR mode for two weeks. Projects, projects, orphans, orphans, power points and tea and hardy ha and honest but not quite the point.
So if we gave you the impression that we live in Ukraine to help orphans, I apologise. Let me correct myself.

We're in Ukraine because of Jesus. Not because he loves Ukraine, which he does. Not because he is broken hearted over how we don't care for our (they're ours even if they're in Ukraine not England because in this age of internet all ignorance is willful and we are responsible) children, and I think he is. Not because of telling people about who he is, what he's done and what is on offer. And that would be legit. It's a good reason.

But this God of ours isn't into what I can do for him, he's not even into what I can do for people.
He's about me, and him, and this dance and this life and this discovery of this self that He is. This galaxy of mystery, these unsearchable riches, this paradox of love and justice and Himself, Himself, Himself.
It's about relationship with Him.
All of it.

To love an orphan? To open your home? To give clothes and food and a bed and jokes and cuddles?
Yeah, that's not the point. That's just projects.
To love an orphan is not fulfilling, it's not even powerful. And it only happened for me after a decade of hanging out with the scandalous, angry, happy, controversial, comforting, stunning One. Any power or fulfillment in what we're doing comes from the fact that we're where He wants us to be, bumping into Him when we walk round corners, looking up from our work and realizing with a jolt that we're working next to Him, learning new songs to sing about / to Him, finding out what He thinks about Allachka or B. Watching Him work. Discovering how he works. His hands. 
Sorry for making it look like we're grownups trusted with your money to do clever and effective projects for 'the Kingdom'.

Really, we're just in love. 

tasty

So in two or three sleeps we'll be on a train then a taxi then a bus then a plane and then we'll be in England. Beloved England. And it'll be almost a year since we came to live in Ukraine.

So a year since...everything. A year of this. A year of Yook(raine).

What should I say on a momentous occasion such as this, what could be said now? I have bitched so much, complained so often that it may not be easy (for me or for you) to see the threads of gold that have tied this together, that run through what we have experienced and experimented in the last twelve months.

Don't get me wrong - the bitching has been justified. Not going to be polite about that one. You take your marriage and your seven month old and you fly into a storm of culture shock, pressure, misunderstanding, illiteracy, religion and orphans. You try being upbeat. You would be lying and we would not be friends because you and I could never get along. I don't fake it.

So yes, the thing you all know about this year is that it has been very, very hard. I know lots of missionaries and they aren't all missionaries anymore and I completely understand why. We were warned but we were naive and we fell down hard. Not in a spiritually triumphant way like what people write in books 'oooo I was so humbled by my struggles'. Nope. My spiritual fruit tastes bitter.
Sorry. You want tidy, happy endings and warm fronts and everything is fine because Jesus wants me for a sunbeam? Can't do it. And if I tried to properly explain the extent of, or the reasons for, the sheer impossible that is moving to Ukraine, I would just be annoying and self justifying and it wouldn't work anyway.

So yes. This year = hard.

Have I made that clear enough? ;-) Oh good grief I've resorted to emoticons in a blog I'll never be a proper writer...

So the goldy bits? What am I on about?
Yeah my fruit tastes bitter but it's ok cos my God's sweet enough.

I've been stropping about, thinking things and ignoring things and doing things and being lazy and busy and frantic and exhausted and somewhere along the way staffed a DTS and cuddled some orphans and got to take in a teenage girl who is already grafted into our family. Proud of her like I'm proud of B. It makes no sense and I don't know where it came from - that's a total lie, it's Jesus, stoopid - but it's good.
This life in Ukraine? If it was all down to me? Yuk. Rotten, bitter apples that don't make anything tasty or good.
But when I look back on this year my bitchy self can't obscure the beauty of what 'since we left' looks like. It's just gorgeous. I've messed up so many things and messed up so many times but there is still love in this house, it runs through like a river and it makes things live. Things have happened through our family that I could never be stupid enough to claim but my hands were allowed to be the hands that picked a wailing motherless baby out of her cot to snuggle into my shoulder and to learn what eye contact feels like. My hands were allowed to stroke her hair and to hold her hand.

My bitchy mouth silenced by the beautiful things my hands can do. My sour fruit transformed by that sweet taste the Holy Spirit leaves in your mouth.
My life is an apple crumble. Hah!

I forgot, recently, what joy and peace feel like because I wasn't expecting them. I still struggle to expect that God is good which is a little unfair and quite the slur on his character because my life is just flooded with the proof of his heart and of his care for me.
Money nowhere to be seen? have a massive 'pay day' oh and here's a bazillion pounds for the transition home
Visas are impossible? Nope, they're not, look...
Exhausted and ill? Meet Candy, she is from South Africa and she says I just told her to babysit for you today while you go sleep (*confession, I spent this morning watching Vampire Diaries not sleeping but it was very restful and I feel much better*)
Lonely? Tell me about itHad enough? Well here's your plane tickets home
And there's the stupid little things like this one republic album through these amazing earphones, like learning how to take nice photos, like the Bethel live album that our Bethel is obsessed with, like baths and bedtimes and paddling pools and grocery shops and oh yes. Life is good. He is good.

He is the golden thread, the river of life and living and He is the sweetness that makes this year worth something, He makes all things tasty.

And we're coming home.
Two sleeps. 

xxxx