Category: My “Refugee” Journal

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My "Refugee" Journal

My Story, part 4

It was a dark night for Ukraine, and we longed for the dawn.

Read part 1, part 2, and part 3.

Ternopil, Ukraine
February 24, 2022, a little after 12 noon

That first day of the full-scale Russian invasion was one of contradictory extremes for us. The kids and I spent the first half of the day mostly alone in a basement, sheltering in place because of repeated air raid sirens in the morning. Then, shortly after noon, one of my brothers-in-law Jon came and found us. He was accompanied by a good friend, the Ukrainian pastor of the church that my husband and I had planted in this city fourteen years earlier. No words were necessary or even possible. We just held each other, tears in our eyes, drawing comfort from each other’s presence. 

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My "Refugee" Journal

My Story, part 3

Desperate refugees flee Ukraine on foot

Read part 1 and part 2.

Kyiv, Ukraine
February 24, 2022, 4:30 am

The night before the start of the war, George and the seven other members of our team had met and prayed and decided that if Russia invaded, they would all evacuate from Kyiv. Early the next morning, when the sounds of explosions jolted everyone from sleep, they all gathered at our apartment. At a time like that, you want to be with other people, and our apartment had a private basement to serve as a bomb shelter plus stores of non-perishable food and water that I had been gathering for weeks.

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My "Refugee" Journal

My Story, part 2

Enjoying special treats on the train

Read part 1.

Ternopil, Ukraine
February 20, 2022, 10:00 pm

The train ride west from Kyiv took about seven hours. When we arrived in the city of Ternopil that night, fellow passengers helped me lift the kids and our stuff down the high steps of the old-fashioned train wagon. One of my brothers-in-law found us on the crowded platform. He had our three oldest kids with him. We all hugged, and the big boys took our bags. 

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My "Refugee" Journal

My Story, part 1

Ukraine has many beautiful churches, and this one, St. Andrew’s in Kyiv, is my favorite.

We meet lots of refugees from Ukraine here in Budapest. It’s easy. All you have to do is go to a park and listen for people speaking Ukrainian or Russian. Then you ask them where they’re from and how they ended up in Budapest. People are desperate to tell their refugee stories. They often start with the morning of February 24, 2022, with the moment they realized war had started.

This is my story, but to tell it properly, I have to go back to the moment when I first started to take the threat of invasion seriously.

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Daddy Joys Inspiration My "Refugee" Journal

Guilt and Weariness

Despite all the upheaval and change that have characterized our life for the past 13 months, my husband George has been thriving. After he managed to get out of Ukraine in the wee hours of day 3 of the war and reunite with the kids and me, he went to bed, utterly exhausted. But he only slept for a few hours, and when he woke up, he immediately found himself surrounded by amazing opportunities to do enormous good. Without pausing to catch his breath or even missing a beat, he jumped into a swirl of activities and new partnerships that resulted in hundreds of evacuations in the critical early weeks of the war, millions of dollars of aid to the people of Ukraine, and ongoing care for the long-term needs of refugees in Hungary and elsewhere in Europe.

I have rarely seen him more alive.

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Inspiration My "Refugee" Journal

It’s Time to Dare

My eldest son surveying the view from the top of an 11,400-foot peak in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado (Photo credit: Mike Payne)

Last December I took my eldest son to a Christmas concert performed by a gospel choir here in Budapest. We personally know the director of the choir, and their annual Christmas concert was something about which we’d heard great reports for years but which we’d never had the opportunity to attend. This year’s concert was doubly special, because it was their first since COVID. 

It was a wonderful performance, full of energy, passion, and fun. In one of his comments to the audience, the director mentioned that they were an amateur choir, and they accepted anyone, even people who couldn’t sing. As I sat there, swaying to the beat and thoroughly enjoying the music, I glanced at my then 15-year-old son, a music lover who had been in a choir in Ukraine, and I suddenly had an idea. I started to lean over to say something in his ear, but half a moment later, I stopped myself and sat still in my seat, feeling shaken, stunned, and confused.

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Inspiration My "Refugee" Journal

When I opened my laptop today, this is what I saw:

I knew today was the 20-year anniversary of my arrival in Ukraine and the beginning of my life as a missionary, but seeing it spelled out so matter-of-factly was jarring. For years I looked forward to this day. I assumed I would still be living in Ukraine, anticipating many more years of fruitful and fulfilling work there. I imagined I would celebrate with a big party filled with people who had been part of my life during all the stages of my first two decades in Ukraine. I would reunite with dear friends to celebrate this milestone and reminisce about all the wonderful things we had seen God do over the years. But at some point over the last year, I began to look forward to this day with pain and anger rather than eager anticipation. It was because I realized that, along with everything else this war had stolen from me, it had also taken away this milestone. 

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Inspiration My "Refugee" Journal

Okay with “Not Okay”

This scene was walking distance from our apartment in Kyiv. I took this photo an eternity ago, in November 2021.

Over the last few months, I’ve written three posts that chronicle how we have been coping with all the unwanted changes in our life brought on by the war in Ukraine. While these months have been difficult, the overall tone of my writing is positive. In fact, my husband thinks that the second of those three posts is the most inspiring thing I’ve ever written. But today I want to start to tell the other side of the story. Yes, I firmly believe we are going to make it, and I know we have a future and a hope, but that doesn’t mean the here and now isn’t agonizing.

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Inspiration My "Refugee" Journal

We’re Going to Make It

Our impromptu family Christmas picture—using a selfie stick on the couch at our apartment in Budapest

I have always suspected that children are far more resilient than most adults give them credit for. My experience of navigating early tragedy supported this theory (my mom died when I was 5), and now I’ve had a chance to observe my own children coping with loss and grave difficulty. 

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Inspiration My "Refugee" Journal

A Future and a Hope

Our life was a beautiful dream. Every time I walked the streets around the converted old mansion that housed our apartment in downtown Kyiv, I found myself thanking God that we got to live in this charming district, filled with historic buildings and dotted with trendy cafes, interesting restaurants, and all sorts of shops. We had a close-knit church family who all lived within walking distance and a wider community of friends who were in and out of our home on a regular basis. To top it all off, our new landlords had told us that we could stay in their apartment for at least 5 years, and we planned to do precisely that. We had moved 14 times since getting married 18 years earlier, and now, we were finally settled. I couldn’t have been more pleased or content. 

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