The Call
On February 24, 2022, at 6 a.m., Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federation commenced the massacring of innocent Ukrainian lives through bombing. In one day, 2,072 Ukrainian civilian lives were lost; 2,818 civilians were injured. Such bloodshed occurred on the basis of Vladimir Putin’s pursuit of the reinstallation of the Soviet Union.
I don’t think anyone saw it coming in the way that it did. I certainly didn’t.
At the time, I hadn’t braced myself for the possibility of Russia’s fascists invading Ukraine, just as the fascists of Germany had invaded Europe’s countries in World War II. I don’t think we braced ourselves for the sleepless nights that were to follow.
From the moment the news hit me, I was living in unsurmountable shock. In some ways, I still am.
In the weeks before the start of the invasion, people kept coming up to me, asking me if I was worried. I answered with mild humor, yet I could never imagine this happening. That the war crimes that took place in locations like Mariupol and Bucha would occur just weeks after. I remember standing there in the hallway of my house, not believing what I had been informed of.
February 24 changed our lives.
I couldn’t work. I didn’t notice the signals my body sent me. The sudden realization of what was occurring hit me beyond what I had ever experienced, and what followed was an anxious numbness. There was no good day, afternoon, or night. There was no more waiting for spring, scraping for extra points on school assignments, or daydreaming on car rides.
Now, there was waiting for the end of the war, messaging our neighbors to prepare our house, trying to reach all of our family and friends, updating our news feeds every minute, reading the casualties each morning, and isolating ourselves at times in the day to grieve.
And I was the fortunate one. I was safe. But the people I had visited only a month before were there. Were they safe? Were they lucky enough to survive?
I couldn’t wrap my head around this.
My parents, Ukrainian missionaries, had returned to America in late January, just before the invasion. They kept reiterating that their return to America was untimely, unfortunate, and so forth. My father kept receiving questions about what he felt was best to do for his family during this time, and his answer never changed: to keep praying and find a way to get back home. Find a way to get to our people. When he consulted my mother, she wholeheartedly agreed and urged the idea even more.
And so, when our parents told us they had rescheduled the tickets they had gotten before the invasion, my eldest sister and I voiced our steadfast decisions to join them.
My father informed us that he would only allow us to join them if we were ready to die. It was everything we needed to scour for two tickets that would fit our timetables for the end of my school year.
My parents would arrive in Krakow, Poland, and my sister and I would join them a week later. Train tickets (later changed to bus tickets) to Boryspil, Ukraine, were booked. The light baggage we were bringing was packed, documents were arranged, and plans were made.
Yes, the shock of the entirety of the war hit hard. I often wondered why I was ever gullible enough to not read the signs before me. To not accept that history would repeat itself in its own way.
But even if I didn’t read the signs then, I can learn from them now. I believe, with the little experience that I hold, that we obtain too little from the experience of delight and have nothing to offer from pleasure.
And so, we carry on knowing that our hardships bring valuable wisdom and that such circumstances are where we are meant to be. We carry on with both faith and hope for a brighter future.
“Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.”
~C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair
All photos in this post were received from: https://t.me/+9UQtXt3OJGlhOWEy
