Street Market, Kiev, Ukraine, September 10, 2011

Friday, January 07, 2011

Merry Christmas!

Today was Christmas Day here in Ukraine, and in other parts of the Eastern Orthodox world. We went to church this morning and had a very nice service. Then this evening we went over to our team mates home and had dinner together. It was great to have everyone together again for the first time in over a year!

However, since church this morning it has felt like Sunday to all of us. :-) It does NOT feel like a Friday at all.

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I'm trying to stay up later tonight and maybe I'll make it to 11 pm since it's already 10:45. I went to bed last night around 9 and woke up at midnight and was awake until around 4a.m. Sigh. I am exhausted. I'm hoping for a good night's sleep tonight. Along with being tired I feel depression seeping in through the cracks. Thank God - literally - Thank God that the past 2 days we've had quite a bit of sunshine because it does help to keep depression at bay.

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I need to spend a long time in the Word tomorrow. I feel parched.

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I brought some Christmas lights from the States, LED flowers on a battery powered string about 3 feet long. I really like the way the colors change and they are so bright. Think I'll go in, lie down and watch them for awhile and try to pray. I so do not want to get depressed and I love colors and I love Christmas lights. I can handle feeling sad, and I think that's all this is right now - saddness - but I'll even take some extra Vitamin D and start taking a B Complex tomorrow as well. Ei yi yi.

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I put on one of my new knee-high boots this morning to wear to church. Something was in my boot. What? I've never worn them before. Reached down and pulled out a plastic green triangle block. Eithnee's. Now how did that get in my boot??

Our team mates have an 17 month old little girl. I watched her tonight and had absolutely no desire to pick her up, cuddle her, nuzzle her neck or kiss/hug her. None. All I could think of was a little girl half way around the world that needs her grandmother's arms around her, holding her. And a little boy who misses me, but not as much as I miss him, I'm sure.

I think one of the things that I have learned here in Ukraine is that loving hurts. I was going to a baby hospital for almost 3 years, once or twice a week, to hold and then play with abandoned babies as they got older. Three kids were there the whole time while others came and went. One day I went in, they were 3 years old, and all 3 were gone. Poof! Gone. One was adopted by a Ukrainian family, so I was told. The other two went into the orphanage, so I was told. I've never heard about them since even though I asked several times where the orphanage kids were at specifically. I never went back. It hurt too bad, and I was told there were no more abandoned babies there anyway. True? I don't know.

It hurts to love.

My grandchildren are not abandoned. I have not abandoned them - yet sometimes I feel like I have. Like I am the one who abandoned them and they will feel that way all their lives - that their grandmother abandoned them. Oh - I pray that is not true. Kara wrote that Eithnee does seem to miss me and all the holding and loving I gave her. I pray that this does not affect her negatively at her very young age.

But there is nothing I can do - these things happen to all of us at some time in our lives.

Yet, I looked at that little girl tonight and there was no desire to hold her. A little verbal play, yes - but physical touch - no.

This saddens me.

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I made it! It's 2 minutes 'til 11:00pm. Time for bed. Finally! Sleep - please come and take me away for 8 hours!!!

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