Frog in Hot Water?

We've known since the day we arrived in Ukraine that there might come a time when we need to evacuate out. Now is not that time! But we did arrive knowing that there could be a nuclear problem (Chernobyl is still fresh in everyone's mind here) or there could be a political problem that caused us to leave suddenly.

I read the news on the internet today, I watch some of the video coming out of Georgia, I listen to the thoughts and opinions my Ukrainian friends have. And what do I do?

Think about what we will have for dinner tonight when our guests come over. Think about the needs in the Sunday School and what kind of meeting we should have over those needs. Play a game on the computer. Check my email. Read some blogs. Wash a load of laundry, dust the living room, water my plant. Look around the room and think again of what I want to take if we suddenly have to leave.

Several times this year I have thought about how comfortable we have become here in Ukraine. By "comfortable" I am not talking about the furniture (ha ha), nor am I talking about standing in line at the post office (ha ha), nor am I talking about any one of a dozen other things that we do on a regular basis.

No, I am talking about how "normal" everything here seems to me now, how relaxed I have become in every day life.

Mel and I were waiting for a marshrutka or trolleybus last night after the Kids Klub finished. The bench was being held down by several young men who should have stood up and let some of us old ladies sit down, but manners have eroded here at a terribly fast rate. Finally I went over and sat down on a big concrete slab that holds a billboard. I'd been standing for the last last hour or more and my knees were telling me about it.

As I sat on that slab and looked around, I thought about how normal it all was. Sitting at a bus stop in Kherson, Ukraine. Waiting for terribly overcrowded public transportation to take me most of the way home. Sitting in the heat and humidity that I am still not comfortable in or used to dealing with, even after 10 years. Reading signs in Cyrillic and understanding them instantly. Listening to voices speaking in Russian and/or Ukrainian and even an occasional foreign language (Turkish, Uzbek, Kazahk for example). Noticing the two guys across the street, sitting and chatting together in the evening sunshine on the bench in front of their wall. Watching a young woman walk up to the bus stop in 4 inch heels and a dress so short she dare not bend over at all, being disgusted and amazed at the same time that she could do that and get by with it.

Normal. Every bit of it - normal.

This is part of my life now.

I wonder what it will be like when we go back to the States permanently some day. Will these years here in Ukraine seem like a dream? Or will I have been so changed that living in America will seem like an unreal dream?

As I sat there last night on that concrete slab, I wondered what it would be like if tanks started rumbling down the road. I've seen the video from Georgia and the buildings are so much the same as here in Kherson that it is easy to take those images and simply move them to the scene right in front of me. Not difficult at all. Even the uniforms on the soldiers are almost exactly the same as what we see soldiers wear here.

I thought of the past and I wondered about the future. I thought of all the young people I know and love here and wondered what they will be doing 10 years from now. How many will still be here in Kherson? How many will be mothers and fathers?

How many will still be alive?

So many questions.

It is all in God's hands and I am glad.

So, I continue to plan for the Sunday School meeting in a couple of weeks. I think about what I still need to get for dinner tonight. I think about the lunch I'll have with Melinda in a few hours. I think about paying our semi-annual rent payment on Friday. And I make a mental list - "don't forget this, get that ready just in case, that item can be replaced, get the meds all together in one bag again, who should I ask to take the fishies and plants, make sure Cheyenne's basket is clean, stocked and ready, to which of our Ukrainian friends should we give a spare set of our flat keys" and so on and so on.

I am as prepared as I can be, mentally. I still have a lot to do physically so I'd better get to it.

I know it may all be a simple exercise, needed to keep me alert and ready. I don't want to be like a that proverbial frog in the pan of water on the stove.

Alert. Prepared. Ready.

Praying. Trusting. Peaceful. Calm.

Knowing that my God is in control and that my friends and I are in His hands.