Last week was Holy week for the Orthodox, so it was the perfect time for repentance and renewal in our family. I brought all three kids to Father Jacob for confession and we attended several beautiful services.
One of my favorite services is the 12 Gospel service where we read the accounts of Jesus’ passion. We brought the Ipad so the kids could follow along on the Ukrainian Bible. Each time a Gospel is read, the congregation holds lit candles and gathers around the priest while he reads, afterwards we blow out the candles and pray in the darkened church while the choir sings. It’s a beautiful expression of the sorrow and grief of the sacrifice Jesus made for us. My heart was even softer than other years because of my grief over Mary Evelyn and stresses about the other kids and I seemed to cry my way through much of the services, but my grief, like the beautiful mournfulness of the services, is tempered by the joy and hope given by Christ's Resurrection.
Holy Friday has other beautiful services and I was a little jealous of Nadia because she chose to spend the whole night at church with the other teens while they read Psalms all night. I was very proud of her for being so brave to spend the night in the darkened church and thankful that she’d have that opportunity to both socialize and pray.
The following night we had our midnight Pascha service. The kids were all excited. Nadia and I got new dresses and the boys wore their Ukrainian shirts. We celebrated the beautiful liturgy at church and then continued the festivities the following day at our friends' home with a whole roasted pig! My boys are not squeamish about meat- Andrew ate some pig ear and Nicholas sampled tongue!
Monday and Tuesday seemed to be uneventful until late Tuesday night when Mark and I finished watching an episode of Downton Abbey on the Ipad. I had been using the Ipad with the kids earlier in the day to teach a lesson about Ella Fitzgerald. We read a cute primer book about her and the kids enjoyed listening to some of her music on You Tube. The You Tube page opened up, but it wasn’t Ella, instead there were some things I would never want my kids exposed to. One of them had been searching unsavory things on our Ipad.
It was midnight, but we woke the kids up then and there to find out what had happened. Why wait? Better to catch them off guard, a bit sleepy, and let them know by just the sheer experience of being woken up that we were serious. The guilty party confessed and we were able to talk to him about keeping a pure, clean heart and not letting sin control him. Mark stayed calm, I was not so calm, but before long we had them all back in bed and we were strategizing about this new issue. Of course, the first thing was getting a nanny browser, which I hate because it inconveniences me, but I love because it means I feel safe for now leaving my Ipad around.
When you adopt kids you don’t know everything about their background experiences. All three of our kids came without much detailed info,but even kids from nice, Christian, Jewish, or whatever families can also be easily drawn into looking at not so nice things online. It’s one of the challenges of modern parenting and we hope to try to nuture their desire to be good and help them learn to control themselves, just like they will need to as adults.
The next morning, we were able to have a long conversation with Nick and Nadia through our friend who translated for us on Skype. We started with Nadia. She has been telling people she was forced to come here. We reminded her that she asked us to adopt her. She nodded and said yes she remembers that. Then we asked if she had called Luda repeatedly, asking when we were coming and saying over and over that she wanted to go with us. Nicholas blurted in Yes! And Nadia once again nodded yes, she had done that. We went on, walking through all the steps leading us to the adoption and reminding her that she had been in control of her decision. She‘s not a victim; she’s a brave girl who courageously went after something good to create a new life for herself. She agreed, and seemed to like seeing it that way. She has been much happier ever since the phone call. Being adopted and moving to a new country with a new language is a huge challenge so it would be easy for her to begin to feel trapped and let her emotions give her false ideas, but we want her to remember the truth and feel strong and in charge of her own destiny.
We helped her see that in Ukraine, she’d have no job, no money, no education and no family while here she has a family who loves her, the chance to get an education and to have a bright future if she embraces it.
We also talked about other serious issues with Nick and addressed the Ipad stuff. These issues gave us an opportunity to help both kids see that sin causes walls to come up between us and other people and between us and God. Those walls make it harder for us to trust and love each other. By repenting, asking forgiveness and trying not to repeat the sins we become more beautiful inside and the walls come back down. Each of us has to choose, every day, whether we will beautiful inside or if we’ll let the darkness of sin control us. They both thought about it and said they wanted to be beautiful inside.
By the time we got off the phone, the kids were snugglier and happier. It is amazing how gentle honesty and goodness can break down barriers. I cancelled school for the day since we were all tired and instead took them to Hobby Lobby to pick out craft projects. They enjoyed that. Nick likes to embroider (it’s manly in Ukraine) and Nadia like to make mosaics out of little glass beads. Having a project is good for both of them but we still need a little more to occupy Nadia. Thankfully, a Ukrainian friend of ours has had her over to visit this week and that helped her feel less homesick. She may also be a mother’s helper for another friend because she loves little children and babies. Another friend is helping me find a place for her to volunteer with horses.
Later that day, Nadia called Cindy to apologize for her angry outburst and sullen behavior at the beach. I had been impatient for that apology, but was glad I waited for her to give a sincere one. She was eager to make the call. At dinner that night, we were laughing and enjoying a nice meal. Nick had requested Vareneky (Ukrainian pirogues- pasta stuffed with mashed potato and served with browned onions and lots of butter and sour cream) and I made homemade ones. As Nick ate his special dinner with gusto, he joyfully announced that he could feel his wall coming down! Andrew chimed in and said his bad wall was coming down but that he was building a new good wall of love!
So the shock was the Ipad stuff and confronting the issue about Nadia telling people she didn’t want to be adopted. The Awe was the beauty and love of Pascha which opened up everyone’s hearts to forgive each other and remember truth with love.
Many of you e-mailed me encouraging ideas after my last post. I am so grateful for your suggestions and your compassion! Please forgive me if I haven’t written back yet, it has been so busy! Thanks as always for your prayers
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