HOME . . .

The concept of home is suddenly fluid to me. It used to mean my parents' house: the place where I go to let everything hang out, walk around in my shabbiest clothes, stuff my face, sleep in, pee with the door open. Then I got my own home, and now I find myself doing those things in TWO places. Then all these other types of homes started cropping up all about me. Homes shaped like churches, people's living rooms, the embraces of my closest friends, the email exchanges lasting throughout the night, in the arms of special people, and long car rides.

I have just returned home from another home. Kremenchuk, Ukraine, dropped smack in the middle of the country on the banks of the Dnieper River. Not much to speak of it. It's a small industrial city. Poor. Dirty. Politically disillusioned. Heavily Orthodox with no clear vision of who Christ is. Mostly highly educated but rife with corruption and an inability to get ahead on one's own brains and merits. But to me, it was gorgeous and it felt like home, and more than once, the thought occurred to me that I could set up a house there. Alright, so it would be more like a tiny, cramped apartment with no working elevator, but homes have been built of much less.

For all the things that I forget -- appointments, people's names, the fact that the friend standing in front of me with the bulging belly is pregnant -- I did not forget a sizeable fraction of my Russian. There's nothing like whipping out a language that has lain dormant in the back of my skull for the last 14 years. But there it came, more and more each day, until I found myself on the last day, in the hotel in Kiev, actually translating for our translator. Stick a fork in me, my work here is done!

I, and the rest of our team, felt adopted, and it was the warmest, cuddliest feeling of all. But then beyond that, I feel like I found a long-lost sibling. Meeting the New Hope Church (tell me you love God's sense of humour and that you too can imagine Him clapping His hands in thunderous glee at having New Hope meet New Hope) was like a large, long-overdue family reunion. If it weren't for the physical presence of our interpreters, smoothly interjecting here and there, I wonder if at some point, we might have thought that we were all actually speaking the same language after all. I saw in each face of the New Hope members mirrored faces of our New Hope members. And when I was invited to come back and live with some of the older women whose own daughters had long since left home, the idea wasn't so impossible to me. People go and live with their relatives all the time, don't they?

When families reunite, when long-lost siblings come back into the fold, it can happen that resentments, bitternesses, conflicts arise. "Where were you when this happened?" "Why didn't you try to find us?" "You are too different from us to be a real part of our family now." But no, not with New Hope and New Hope. Instead, I heard and saw echoes of "I'm so glad we finally found each other." "I'm so happy to have a second home here with you." "I can't wait until you come and visit my home." "When will we see each other again?" "How can I know more about your life and who you are, and how can I possibly love you more than I do now?" "How did I ever live without you?" No sibling rivalry, no jealousy, no competition. Just gladness for a separated family brought together in one place.

That's just scratching the surface. Even for one as wordy as myself ... words utterly fail me. I can't make my mind move slowly enough to conjure up the correct words, the accurate emotions, the clearest pictures. I can't type fast enough, I can't speak fast enough. My heart is too full, I wonder if I can tell even one story without weeping for pure joy, such joy as I have not experienced in what seems like months.

So there is so much more to say, but for now, I'll end with this: there is something remarkable about seeing how big the world actually is. It takes a long time to get to Kremenchuk, Ukraine, and it takes a long time to get back. The world is bigger than just the United States, and I dare say, as much as I love this country and would defend it to the death, the rest of the world has some phenomenal things and people of its own. Would that we would absorb as much as we would impose. But there's another side to that coin: it's also remarkable how small the world is. When I looked out the airplane window upon our descent into Kiev's airport, and I stretched my eyeballs out over what I could see of the rest of the country, it was amazing to me to think that God created and loves not just my town, in my state, in my country, on my continent. He also created and loves Kiev, in Ukraine, in the former Soviet Union, in Europe, across the pond from my wee little home. God is that big; we are that small. And yet, He would make us great alongside Him, He loves us that much. To then arrive at New Hope Church and hear their praise team -- a bit of a mirror of our own worship team, I dare say, and I CAN'T WAIT UNTIL THE TWAIN SHALL MEET! -- singing familiar songs in Russian ... how can I tell you how full my heart was? How can I tell you how stirring it is to not understand a single word that is being sung, but at the same time to understand EVERY word that is being sung? How can I tell you how beautiful the Russian language is when it is being spoken in faithful prayer and lifted up in joyous song? How can I tell you how humbling it is to hear a song we sing at least once a month being sung in Russian and recognizing that it means just as much to them as it does to us, that we don't have a monopoly on praise songs and how to sing them "correctly?" This is not a lecture about the cross-cultural experience and the awareness that English is not the master language. No, this is bigger than that. This is an acknowledgement that God knows all languages and He accepts our praises in whatever words we would lift them up to Him, that He is great and we are small, but that when we arrive in Heaven, we can speak whatever language we want and we'll be able to understand each other and sing together, and we will be in glory too.

***

FRENZY . . .

There are many kinds of frenzy. There's the frenzy I was in prior to leaving for Kremenchuk, having to make sure everything for the team and our travels and our upcoming week was in place, and then having to turn attention to myself to make sure I had held my mail, unplugged my appliances, packed enough underwear. There's the frenzy of keeping together at the airport, not losing someone at customs, waiting for those who got held up at passport control, and getting us all to the destination in one mostly-sane piece. This frenzy is joy, for what is coming, for what has been kept safe, and in anticipation of greatness.

Then there's another kind of frenzy. There's the frenzy of making phone calls to pass along bad news, that three of our own are suffering great losses, and that we have to rally around them. There's the frenzy of making sure the families are ok, that they are eating and sleeping and functioning properly. There's the frenzy of offering help, assistance, money, food, friendship, sympathy. There's the frenzy of keeping your energy up so that you have enough not just for yourself to live a day, but to give some away to the ones who are being drained of their own. In this frenzy, it's hard to find the joy and to look forward, not that anyone would demand such things.

We each day expend both kinds of frenzy. And in moments like this, we gladly expend as much as we can of the latter frenzy for beloved Kenny, Mabel and Kwonno. And I'm reminded of some wise words that were spoken to me this past week: fight for your joy. It's there for the getting, and grief and pain may cover it for a time, but the joy that is worth fighting for always, always surfaces.

Father, receive them with love and gladness,
because two more of your beloved sons are home.