Things Learned in Russia

I am back from Russia! What an amazing, educational experience it was. I feel like I learned more in ten days than I have in the past ten years. I’ll have much to write about in the weeks ahead, but here are some of my lighter impressions.

                        Random Things Learned in Russia

1. Someone told us that a coat is to a Russian what a car is to an American. You spend all your time in it and it says a lot about you. Younger women wear sleek, belted non-fur coats. At around 35, they switch to full-length furs. And yes, that’s real fur. Clearly no PETA presence here. The men in the family will save up to buy the coat for their sister/daughter when she is “of age,” and she’ll have it the rest of her life. She’ll likely have a big, puffy hat to match. And you know how here it’s hard to get out of the parking lot after a big public event? You don’t have that problem in Russia where everyone takes public transportation; instead, the logjam forms at the coat check.
2. They need the good coat, because it is every bit as cold as we imagine it to be. My brother-in-law, who I met up with in Moscow, used to live in Minnesota, and I asked him how the two compare. The difference in Russia, he said, is that you’re always out in it because you walk everywhere. After shopping for 90 minutes at the outdoor market and eating shish kabobs outside, I was as cold as I’ve ever been. As much as I didn’t enjoy it, I’m glad I got to experience the cold, which is so much a part of Russian culture.
3.  “Tea” is not tea in Russia. It is a smorgasboard of desserts. At “tea,” skinny Russian women down four fried cottage-cheese pancakes, drenched in sour cream, without a thought. Salad is not salad in Russia. There is no lettuce involved. You’ll be lucky to find a few sprigs of parsley on a salad bar, hiding out among the many mayonnaise concoctions, usually made with a host of unidentifiable ingredients. Sometimes they’ll sneak in squid.
4.  When Russians learn that you have four kids, they gasp in horror. Even though they get paid to have children—an effort to increase the population since Stalin took out tens of millions of his own people a few generations ago—two is the most you see. And they’re usually spaced further apart than our American children. This makes sense when you see their tiny flats. Whole families sleep in the same room, which would provide about all the birth control I would need.
5.  The words “Soviet times” come up frequently in daily conversation. It’s their frame of reference. Although their transition out of communism was brutally hard, leaving them without wages, food, electricity, or any semblance of stability for several years, they seem thankful that “Soviet times” are a thing of the past. When I expressed surprised that Lenin was still hanging out entombed in Red Square, my young Russian friends said, “Yeah, we don’t know why he’s still here, either.”
6.  If you’re born in Russia, it’s likely that you’ll live your whole life in one place. Each citizen has an internal passport that records the region of their birth, and they can’t just decide one day they want to live in Moscow, pack up, and leave. It’s not that it’s impossible, but a lot of work would go into securing legal housing and pay in another region. This means that I would have been stuck in Oakley, Kansas, for the rest of my life. Hard to get a good college education there, and not much work available outside the local truck stop. I will stop taking for granted our freedom of travel and movement in the United States.
7.  “You never know” is the standard rule of thumb when traveling in Russia. You never know if you’re going to walk into a café bathroom and find a toilet with a seat, a toilet without a seat, or a mere hole in the ground. You never know when you bite into that rolled-up pancake they call blini if you’re going to get yummy cream-cheese-and-raisin filling or cow’s tongue. You never know in a restaurant if all the guests at your table will get their food at the same time, or if one dish will come an hour and a half later than the others. And you never know when you buy a ticket to a Russian circus if you’re going to get Olympic-caliber gymnasts doing outrageous acrobatic stunts or “trained” parrots sliding down a slide. (In our case it was both.) What you do know, however, is that there will always be heavy traffic in Moscow and you’ll have to fight for a table at every McDonalds, regardless of what time of day it is.
8.  Everyone’s an artist in Russia. Everyone knows art history in Russia. Everyone knows about great Russian literature and great Russian music. And when they get to know Americans, who can’t name a single American poet or artist, they wonder how in the world we got to be as successful as we are. (I figured out the answer to this pretty quickly. We’re a young country, and we got to learn from everyone else’s mistakes. That and capitalism have worked out well for us.)
9.  There’s no sensory sensation in the world like having dinner in an Azerbaijani restaurant with sweaty Georgian dancers popping in and out, waiters offering hookah, strange foods coming and going at strange times, words flying across the table in Russian and English with translators frantically trying to keep up, and 80’s Madonna music playing in the background.
10.  While it’s acceptable to talk about cat castrations at a Russian dinner table, it’s not OK to ask people about their hopes and dreams. You just never know.

 I may never understand Russian culture, but I love that they have so much of it. And, oh, what lovely, fun, vivacious people we met. There were several I wanted to bring home for you all to meet.

Stay tuned for more serious reflections on my time in Russia in the days ahead. 

Expectation

From Beth Moore’s study on the life of Jesus:

“I do dearly love surprise encounters with Jesus Christ, but I think He is pleased when we live our lives in expectancy. He delights in faith that fully expects Him to act.”

Do I live with a sense of expectancy? Do you? Do we wake up expecting to see God in everything we do? Do we expect to be amazed?

I know that God is “just right there” and He could blow my mind at any minute, but I have to admit that I am not as expectant as I’d like to be. I can recall a few times in my life—crisis times, no surprise—when I looked for Him at every turn, when I was aware of trusting Him every waking hour, when I desperately needed Him to show up and was almost certain He would. Of course I was not disappointed, yet as soon as the crisis faded away, I went back to my non-expectant way of functioning.

Today I am filled to the brim with expectation. The cool thing is that I’m not even in crisis. I’m just going to Russia. People do that every day. I’ll be on a plane loaded with other people who are doing just that. But will they carry the same sense of expectation I have, the hope and belief that they’re about to encounter God in a most unusual way? I hope so because it’s a pretty terrific feeling.

I have asked God to let me see a glimpse of His glory on this trip. I know people talk about such things all the time, but my ask was not made lightly. I have a very healthy fear of the Lord and His glory. When Isaiah caught a glimpse of it (Isaiah 6), the first words out of his mouth were, “I am ruined.” In order for Moses—Moses!—to see God’s glory, he had to be hidden in the cleft of a rock with his eyes covered. This is not something we should ask without some serious consideration.

In case you’re wondering, no, I don’t really expect to see the face of God, or even His back like Moses did. But I am filled with expectation about seeing His power. I believe I will see prayers answered, that I’ll experience Him in ways I’ve never imagined, and that He might even slip in a miracle. I long to have my preconceived notions about who God is and how He works stripped away, to have my mind blown by how much bigger He is than I’ve ever guessed. (Those of you who have been on missions trips are surely thinking, “Oh, girl, you better hold on! You just might get what you wish for.”)

I admit that a good deal of my thoughts right now are wrapped around questions of bodily comfort (Will I have a decent pillow?), eating (Is it better to know what’s in the soup? Or not?), and staying warm (Do these layers make me look fat?). But because I’m taking my first overseas trip at 43 and not 18, I’m aware that such issues, while practical, can rob me of the heart issues that are far more important. Every time I start to get worked up over the trivial things, I ask God to direct my focus again to preparing my heart. More than I need warm gloves or electrical converters, I need a heart fully prepared to meet Him there. A fully expectant heart.

Eight days and counting. 

My 2013 Reading List

2014? Really? Doesn’t that seem really . . . late? Like when my son turned 13 and still seemed like a little boy but then turned 14, which sounded so much older?

Let’s stick with 2013 for a bit longer. This was the year I got a Kindle—it was a gift—but I still find myself buying books or checking them out from the library and hauling them around in a worn and heavy tote bag. Old habits die hard, and I’m not sure there’s merit in killing this one at all. While I might be able to enjoy a novel on the Kindle, for deep, contemplative reading, I need real pages and a real highlighter. For now, the Kindle is reserved for Downton Abbey and mahjong.

A review of the books I hauled around, and read, in 2013:

Favorites

The Cure: What If God Isn't Who You Think He Is and Neither Are You? by Bill Thrall, Bruce NcNicol, and John Lynch. I will return to this short book again and again for pithy truth that reminds me of the God who is rather than the God my shame creates. Can He really be as pleased with me as this books insists? Is my view of myself really the greatest commentary on my view of God? So much to think about here that I could only read a couple pages at a time. Some people don’t like Lynch’s style, but he had me from hello, and I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t need a little something of what he’s teaching in this book.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand. The movie will be great, but read the book first. My fascination with the “greatest generation” continues, and this book caused me to read newspaper obituaries for months. I knew this would be a tough one to read, but I had no idea it would also be one of the greatest redemption stories I’ve ever read.

Love Does by Bob Goff. I’ve never read anything like this before, and it left me wondering, “Is this guy for real?” He is, and I’ve got to believe that if God picked favorites, Bob would be right up there. His unbelievable stories challenged me to think less and live more.

 

Continued Pursuit of All Things Lewis

Just when I think I’ve landed on my Lewis favorite, I read The Weight of Glory, reread Mere Christianity, and decide it’s fruitless to choose among them. Lenten Lands, written by Lewis’s stepson Douglas Gresham, was a behind-the-scenes look at the man who I’ve come to appreciate so much. I’m halfway through Alister McGrath’s new biography, C. S. Lewis—A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet. It has a text-book feel, but I’m eager to pick it up each night and gobble up more.

Christian Non-Fiction

A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband "Master" by Rachel Held Evans. Evans is a rising star in the blogging world, and she is a captivating writer. I follow her blog occasionally and find flashes of brilliance, though her repetitive messages and ubiquitous apologies on behalf of the church get old. Still, she’s thought-provoking, controversial, and someone to watch.

Follow Me by David Platt. I was gripped by the first chapter, then just felt in a headlock the rest of the way. Platt’s earlier book, Radical, didn’t affect me this way. It put wind in my sails. This one sucked the wind right out. I couldn’t even finish the last 20 pages. Love his heart, love his style, but someone who struggles with finding identity and purpose in doing rather than being (me) should avoid these kinds of books and stick to The Cure.

Undaunted: Daring to Do what God Calls You to Do by Christine Caine. A good follow up to Platt’s book, which left me feeling guilty and unproductive. Caine uses stories from her life to demonstrate what it means to be in tune and responsive to the Spirit. Am I interruptable? Am I willing to cross the road? The priest and Levite in the Good Samaritan story were not described as bad guys; they were just too busy to be interrupted by God and cross the road. Caine has crossed the road with victims of the sex traffic industry, and she didn’t start until she was a 40-year-old mother of two with a slew of her own issues to work through. There’s hope for us all.

Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons by Frederick Buechner. These short essays offer good insight with excellent writing. Describing the appalling nature of Christ’s humble birth, Buechner says, “Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again. Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of mankind. . . . It is where we least expect him that he comes most fully.”

Pseudo-Christian Non-fiction

Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife by Eben Alexander. When I started this book, I couldn’t figure out why Christians weren’t talking or writing about it. It seemed like Heaven’s for Real for the intellectual sect. The doctor writes about the scientific perspective of the soul—basically that we don’t have one—and it was interesting to see what it took for him to believe the things that are second nature to me. But a Jesus-less heaven? I’m not buying it, and apparently other Christians aren’t either.

Fiction

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Reminded of this classic because of the movie, I read it again, knowing it will pop up one of these days on my kids’ required reading list. The writing is every bit as good as I remember (this is the book that made my teenage self want to be a writer), but the story is meaningless and sad. Why do we have our 17-year-olds read this? To learn about unfaithfulness and wild parties and stunted morality? Surely they can learn that from teen culture and not “great literature.”

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes. With vivid characters and a riveting plot, this one should have been great. And really, I could barely put it down. But if you’re looking for the feel-good book of the year, this isn’t it.

Before I Go to Sleep by SJ Watson. I’m normally not a reader of thrillers, which became clear when this book took a major twist that I didn’t see coming. The edge of my seat is not my favorite place to read a book, but every once in a while, it can be kinda fun.

Friendship Bread by Darien Gee. This one was recommended to me as a book I would love. Love is a strong word. I’m not sure “like” is even the right word. But as light, unoffensive reading goes, this was decent.

Oh-Dear-I’m-Going-to-a-Country-I-Know-Nothing-About Reading

I wish I could list several great Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky classics here, but as I’ve only known about my trip to Russia for seven weeks, all I’ve crammed in is A Brief History of Russia by Michael Kort. And I confess, it was in the teen-book section of the library. Still, I learned all I wanted to know about czars and serfs and communists and lots of assassinations. Every time I opened the book it felt like I was crawling into a sad, dark cloud. If my aim was to grow in compassion for the pain and struggle of the Russian people, it worked.

If you have any book recommendations for 2014, send them my way!  

A Simple Answer

“Isn’t there anyone who can tell me what Christmas is all about?”

Don’t you just feel for poor Charlie Brown? He’s convinced there’s more to it than everything he sees around him, yet he can’t find a satisfying answer to what should be a simple question. Then Linus steps up to the microphone and reads from Luke 2: shepherds, angels, tidings of great joy, and a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger. “This is what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown,” Linus says before plucking his thumb back in his mouth. And Charlie Brown smiles at last.

Yes, that’s what it’s all about, but it’s even simpler than that. The true meaning of Christmas comes down to just three words: God with us. God knew we could never be good enough, never follow enough rules, never desire righteousness enough to make it to Him, so He came to us.

He came to a stable in Bethlehem, but it didn’t end there. He came to all of us, everywhere. The God who is with me in Colorado Springs is with the prisoner in Iran. He’s with the hungry child in Bangladesh and the movie star in Hollywood. He’s with the withered old man gasping for his last breath and the tiny newborn taking her first. He’s with the saints in heaven, but He’s equally with the sinners on earth. He’s with us all, for all time, all at once.

One of the things I’m eager to see in Russia is how God is with them there. This will be my first extended look into a different culture. I know what it looks like for God to be with me here, but what does it look like there? What does it look like for an orphan? Or for an older person who lived through decades of “godless” communism? I will have the opportunity to attend worship in a Russian Orthodox church. How will I see “God with us” there, I wonder?

If I think about it long enough, it makes me dizzy. It enlarges my view of God. He is with us across continents, cultures, and time. He is with those who praise Him here on earth just as He’s with my dad and my baby girl and the countless others who worship at His throne in heaven. We are somehow all connected because He is with all of us.

God with us. That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown. 

Finding Orphans

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. —James 1:27

The Bible was so much easier to follow when I thought it was meant for someone else. I was on board with the not murdering or forming idols out of gold, but the harder commands, the one like this one from James or Isaiah 58 telling me to spend myself on behalf of the hungry, surely those were meant for people with special callings, right? I do a pretty good job with not being polluted by the world, but widows and orphans? What do I do with that? My mom is a widow and my best friend is an orphan—love them well and call it good?

Spiritual maturity doesn’t let you wonder your life away on these things. Over a period of a couple years, the Holy Spirit showed me that the Bible’s instructions are for me, too. I don’t get an exemption because I’m working for a ministry or leading Awana or raising a bunch of little kids. That doesn’t mean I knew just what to do for the orphans or the hungry, but I did start asking God to open my eyes and to give me opportunities to live our His commands. The hungry aren’t so hard to find, nor are the widows. But the orphans? They had me stumped, especially because my wise husband knew that bringing more children into our family might very well drive us all over the edge, no matter how sure I was of myself.

I wasn’t looking for orphans when my friend Rebecca and I were waiting for our little girls at dance in 2011. I was really just interested in my friend and hearing about her new job. To my surprise, it involved Russian orphans. To my bigger surprise, over the course of the next two years, it would involve me, too.

I would learn that Orphan’s Tree serves a group of orphans that most of us never think about. I learned that the most critical days of a Russian orphan’s life are when he becomes too old for the orphanage and is suddenly thrust out into the world lacking the most basic life skills. Someone who has never cooked a meal, never navigated public transportation, never paid a bill or used money, never learned to form relationships outside of an orphange—not to mention someone who is traumatized and stigmatized by their history as an orphan—is launched into society with nothing more than minimal support from a government that’s got plenty of its own problems. These kids are usually only a year or two older than my own 14-year-old son. Many of them will end up pregnant, addicted to drugs and alcohol, in jail, or dead. These are not the cute, lovable orphans we picture in our heads. Perhaps these are the most unseen, underserved groups of people I’ve ever encountered.

I encountered them first on paper, as I often do. I helped Rebecca and her dad, the founder of Orphan’s Tree, tell their stories in letters and blogs. As I learned about their lives and hardships, the word “orphan” took on a new meaning to me. Orphans are not just children whose parents have died; they’re also children whose living parents have abandoned them. And they’re not just children; the word “orphan” can follow a person their whole life, effecting every facet of how they think and relate to the world. I began to grasp the inclusiveness of the word “distress” from James 1. 

When I go to Russia in January, I will be immersed in their world. I will meet with them in the ministry centers where they gather and spend time in their homes. I will watch them parent their young children, knowing how hard that is even when you’ve been surrounded by good parenting role models. They most certainly have not. I will learn from the staff who take care of them, many who are orphans themselves.

More than anything, I will simply listen. I’m under no illusion that I can offer them anything, but just by being there, I can see them and I can hear them. I think God is showing me that's a tiny first step in what it means to take care of an orphan in their distress. 

A Longing Revisited

Have you ever had a longing so intense, and so unfulfilled, that you finally had to give up on it just to keep yourself going? We hear stories of this—women who spent years agonizing over finding a husband or having a baby who eventually came to the place where they had to surrender their longing in order to keep living. And then, sometimes, or

even more than sometimes, the unfulfilled longing is realized when they least expect it.

In my late teens and twenties, my longing was for travel. I couldn’t imagine living on this big, diverse planet and not seeing every part of it. I planned trips in my head, and some made it further than that, but none ever came to fruition. The one that I was sure would happen was a trip to Russia to visit two of my closest college friends who had married and moved there to do ministry. It was late 1994, and Russia seemed to be exploding with opportunities and adventure. My money was saved and my plans were made—until they were interrupted. My grandparents died. I became embroiled in a legal battle over their wills. I got engaged and needed money for a wedding. And so I stayed home.

Kevin and I took some wonderful trips in our pre-kid days, but none of them was outside the U.S. My work sent me to various places across the country, but even though I worked for an international ministry, never was there an invitation to go overseas. Over time, I had more and more opportunity to work with internationals and to create books for them. This must be my exposure to the world, I thought. And as the babies came fast and furious, and as I got older and more attached to my bed and other creature comforts, I became content with this. There would be time for travel when the kids were grown—in fact, maybe I would be traveling overseas to see my kids. Even if that didn’t pan out, I’m a firm believer in the new heaven and earth, and I figured I’d see it all some day anyway, at a time when my spry resurrected body wouldn’t have to sit on a plane for 14 hours straight.

But guess what? Out of the blue, I’m going to Russia. Me! How funny that God would send me, of all people, to Russia, of all places, in the dead of winter, of all times. Yep, just when I least expected it.

Given my historical longing, it would seem that I'd be giddy about this opportunity. A longing fulfilled, even twenty years after I had given it up! That’s the stuff “giddy” is made of, right? And yet . . . 

A lot changes in twenty years. As I wrestled with the decision and all the questions it surfaced—Why here? Why now? Can I just leave my life and responsibilities for a week and a half?—I developed a picture of myself in Russia: I’m cold to my core, jetlagged, sleep-deprived and barely functioning, likely physically sick and certainly homesick, heartbroken by what I’m seeing, and emotionally spent. It wasn’t pretty, and it induced no giddiness.

Then God brought to mind the numerous times I have said to other people, “It’s at the end of yourself where you’ll meet God in the most powerful ways.” The picture I saw of myself in Russia? It was me at the end of myself. So how could I resist? My lovely daily life offers me very few opportunities to reach the end of myself; in Russia, it may happen before I even get off the plane.

I’ve known about this trip for almost four weeks, and giddy still has not set in. Intrigued is here for sure, but mostly I’m still locked in at simply “willing.” I think that’s exactly where God wants me for now.

I’ll be writing more over the next month about what I'll be doing on my trip and how He’s preparing me, and I’m sure I’ll have a lot to say about it when I get back the end of January. Between that and the Olympics, you should get plenty of Russia in the next two months! 

Thankful Thoughts from a Stay-at-Home Mom (whose kids are all in school)

At the risk of being terribly predictable, I can’t help but write about thankfulness this week. If I were to write out my thankful list, it would be a thousand pages long, so I’ll stick to just one thing this time.

I am so thankful I get to be a stay-at-home mom right now.

It’s not a prestigious job. Two of my college friends—sharp women who could be eating up the corporate world—have told me recently how let down people are when they give their occupation as stay-at-home mom. I’ve seen that, too, and I used to always find a way to work “writer/editor” into the discussion rather than confess that what I really do is pour juice and fold clothes. It sounds even less noble when your kids are in school and people wonder what on earth you’re still doing at home. I’m thankful that the older I get, the less I care how it sounds and the more I realize how important it is.

I’m thankful for the time I have to serve more people in more ways than I ever have before. I can truly be there for people in a way I never could when I was working and managing my own family. I’m so thankful I get to be used by God that way. I’m thankful that I have time during the day for all the cleaning, cooking, purchasing, scheduling, and organizing that working moms have to squeeze into evenings and weekends.

I’m thankful that I don’t have a job that causes me to view my sick child as a nuisance or school vacation days as a dreaded inconvenience. I’m thankful that I can be home and fully available to my kids at the end of the school day. Last spring my oldest daughter went through a rough time at school. When she came through the front door at 3:35, I needed to be well caught up, well prayed up, well rested, and well nourished in order to help her develop through this in faith and character. I shudder to think how impatient and unmerciful the working me would have been.

I’m so very thankful that in this character-building period of my children’s lives—where they still care what I think and want to talk to me about everything—I can focus on them with little else competing for my attention. I’m thankful that I had a job I loved and was able to do it when they were little, when it felt like all I was doing was keeping them alive. (Yes, I know there was more to it than that.) But, oh, how I love these critical days of their late childhood and teen years when they’re figuring out the kinds of people they want to be. I wouldn’t want to miss any part of this. I feel like I was made for this, and I’m thankful I get to do it full time.

I have the privilege of sitting with each of my kids after school and talking through their day. I get to spend my evenings memorizing Awana verses with them and reading with them and practicing their school poems. Even when I’m not loving these things, I’m thankful.

I’m thankful that I have the time and opportunities to develop relationships with my children’s friends and their parents. I’m thankful—extra thankful—for a husband who doesn’t ask me to earn money and life circumstances that don't require me to. 

Sometimes we stay-at-home moms need a good pep talk to see the value in our work, to feel like we’re contributing members of society even if we don’t step out of the house all day. If that’s you, I hope this helps. Remember these things the next time you have to list your profession on a questionnaire or you’re asked what you do by someone who’s expecting something more grand than the answer you’ll give. Being a stay-at-home mom is a privilege, and for me, there is nothing more grand. That’s why I’m thankful.