New Shoes and New "Blues"

I thank each of you for the comments about my "History of Ukraine" blog. The info. is a compilation of several books Mark and I have read this year. It certainly leaves much detail out, but hits the highlights of the long and tragic history of this young nation. We find it fascinating now because it is the history of our new daughters and their ancestors. We want to be able to share it with them as they get older.

Yesterday we had an interesting afternoon with Zhanna and Ella. We spent time together at church and then at the special "Sweet Table" fellowship I wrote about yesterday. Afterward, Tanya drove the four of us (along with Zhanna and Ella's friends from the orphanage, Julia, Yanna and Kristina) to Amstore. We were looking for new shoes for Zhanna and Ella. The orphanage has a shoe distribution at the beginning of summer, but Zhanna and Ella were not given new shoes because they are in the process of being adopted and will be going to America soon. I say "new shoes," but I'm not entirely sure any of the orphans get "new" shoes. As best we can tell they all just keep sharing and rotating shoes as their feet change sizes. Zhanna was wearing a pair of sneakers for the first two weeks we were here. All of a sudden, last Monday, when we went to court, she didn't have those sneakers anymore. The shoes she was wearing were much too small for her feet, and by the end of that long day of walking and running after buses, Zhanna's feel were blistered terribly. When we went to the bowling alley that day I noticed that another girl had on the very sneakers Zhanna had been wearing. The other girl (not even in Zhanna's living group) also had on a pair of shorts that we had sent Zhanna for her birthday in April. Zhanna had worn them a week prior to that. I don't know the system, but it seems that Zhanna and Ella were just labeled as "privileged" and their stuff was given to others. Wow!

Anyway, we are glad to buy Zhanna and Ella new shoes, and anything else they need. The other kids at the orphanage have so little, that we feel like Zhanna and Ella should just take the minimum amount of clothing required to get them home, and then we'll get new everything when we get there. It'll be fun. Zhanna's feet are healing now, and she and Ella seem to like their new sneakers.

After shopping, Tanya dropped us back at the orphanage. The girls wanted to show everyone their new shoes and then wanted to go play outside. We were happy to comply. It is very warm in Ukraine now, and the girls' living quarters are on the second floor. There is no air conditioning. They've taken down all the lace curtains at the windows to wash them, due to their spring cleaning efforts. In their place they've hung heavy woolen blankets. It's pretty much stifling upstairs. So, outside was great. There really isn't much in the way of playground equipment at the orphanage, but we found a small, broken down "merry go round" with 6individual wooden seats - 4 of which had been broken off. The metal bar remained on the other seats and the girls were gracious enough to give us the seats, while they sat on the bars. At least sitting there and spinning a little was kind of fun, but it wasn't long before everyone was complaining that they were thirsty. Mark asked them what they all wanted to drink, and said he would walk to the small store a couple of blocks away from the orphanage to get them something. Zhanna wanted Coca Cola, Ella wanted Sprite, Julia wanted Orange Fanta, and Kristina also wanted Sprite. What treats for these kids! So Mark walked all the way and back with big bottles of these drinks.

The girls seemed to appreciate the drinks at first, but then began to shake the bottles and then take the caps off to let them explode. We let it go by for a little bit and then told them no more "nyet!" At that point it was about time for Mark and me to get going and walk back to the TLC. We told the girls that. Zhanna wanted to go back upstairs to the living quarters, but Ella wanted to stay outside. We asked them if they wanted to walk us to the gate. We're not quite sure what happened at that point, but Ella and Zhanna began to argue. It wasn't pretty. Ella dug in her heals and closed up and got very stubborn. She wouldn't talk to us or look at us. Zhanna didn't help matters. She was calling Ella some kind of name. I think she was saying, "Frog," over and over, or something to that effect. Ella was responding back, but you could tell they weren't getting anywhere. We tried to say, "Come on, girls! Don't act like this! Be nice! Come walk us to the gate!" Ella all of a sudden shouted, "No!" We tried to respond lightly, by saying, "Come on, Ella Joy! Let's go!" Then Ella said, very bluntly, "No! Evelina Kravets!" That's her birth name. I think she was retaliating to Zhanna more than to us, but it hit Mark and me hard. At that point, I think we realized that this was something we couldn't deal with while the girls are still in the orphanage and all the other kids are around. The best thing for us to do was to just say, "Okay. We're going to go. It's okay if you don't want to walk us to the gate. We'll be back tomorrow." We hugged them both, as well as all the other kids and told them good-bye.

We talked about it on the way home, and realized that this may be the first of many scenes like that we will witness and have to deal with. We're prepared. Sibling animosity is normal, especially in times of stress and change. But what is hard is being parents on paper, yet not being fully parents in deed! Our hands are tied in so many ways, and besides that, language is also an issue. I do believe God will give us what we need in the way of language, but until we have some time with the girls alone, as a family, we can't really go deeper in addressing behavior, or just talking about feelings. We wanted to tell them, "Look girls, we had Tanya pick you up for church today, we bought you new shoes and bought drinks for you and all your friends. Is this the way you show you are grateful? Is this how you should behave? You know we love you very much, but we expect you to show kindness to each other and to be patient with each other." The time will come when we'll get to say those very things. For now, we just get through as best we can.

The interesting thing is, today when we arrived at the orphanage, the girls wanted to go outside for a water bottle fight. As we were walking downstairs, Zhanna turned to us and said, "Dawna, Marka . . . you know yesterday. . . me and Ella sorry!" Ella also turned to us and said, "Sorry!" Then they both hugged us! We assured them that we loved them and we understand and that we're thankful they apologized and said they were sorry. Today was a much better day! Praise God.

Isn't it the same sometimes with us and God? We sometimes get stubborn with God and dig our heals in about our own attitudes or behaviors. We don't always realize we're just hurting ourselves, and our loving Father is always there, simply waiting for us to say, "I'm sorry!" Then He can continue blessing us. But if we never acknowledge our sinful nature, God can get pretty tired of putting up with the nasty negativity we humans sometimes exhibit. Look at how He dealt with the Israelites. If they had simply acknowledged His love for them and shown gratitude and obedience, how different things would have been! Mark and I are seeing so many Biblical lessons coming to life right before our eyes. We are learning much from our Lord. We pray that we can be parents that can share God's love with our children, and that they in turn, will share it with their children.

We are counting down the days to Friday, when our next court date will be for finalizing the adoption. We're not sure what time that will be yet. Tanya is trying to get it scheduled in the morning so we can drive out to the village where the girls were born in the afternoon and get the new birth certificates. If we don't go to court until later in the day we won't be able to drive to the village until Monday. Please pray about that.

God's blessings on all. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.
Dawn and Mark