(This post first appeared on Assist News Service in September 2014.)
It’s early morning, my favorite time of day, and almost the only time when my mind is alert enough and our home calm enough for me to write. Unfortunately, years of late-night studying in college, over a decade of being married to a night owl, and the last seven years of breastfeeding our four children have so altered my sleep patterns that until recently, if I managed to see the sunrise, it was most likely because a small child’s unwelcome interruption had me stumbling around groggily at that hour than because I got up early enough to greet the new day. Or it was the dead of winter when the sun doesn’t rise until about 8 a.m. at our latitude anyway.
We live in Ukraine. Until recent events brought Ukraine to the forefront of international news, I wouldn’t have expected many people to be able to find the country on a map. Even though I have always loved geography, I had to get a map out myself and look for Ukraine after I met the man I was going to marry, an American who had been living in Ukraine since the age of 16 when he moved here with his missionary parents. All I knew then was that it had been part of the former Soviet Union, but I wasn’t very familiar with all the republics that had splintered off with the break-up of that regime.
Fast-forward thirteen years, and my outlook and experience are much different.