Those meaningless irritants

Two months ago our neighbors' girl forgot her colorful belt at our house after a play date with Keetah. That evening I noticed Keetah playing with the belt and thought, "I better put it away so that I don't have to look for it later", but I was too lazy to get up from the couch and do it right away (I blame the pregnancy:). Really, how can a belt be lost in a rather small house anyway?

Well, a couple of days later I started looking for the belt as another play date was on approach and I wanted to give it back to the girl. Guess what, it vanished. I did an extensive cleaning of the whole house (and BTW, no, my house is not that messy!) five or six times, looked in every imaginable nook, interrogated Keetah numerous times, all to no avail. Meanwhile I was growing mad at Keetah (and letting her know about it very clearly), mad at myself for not lifting my butt from that couch, secretly suspecting Kevin of thoughtlessly misplacing it, and (ashamed to admit) getting a bit cranky at God.

In addition to the above mentioned turmoil, after two months of unsuccessful search the girl's dad finally made it very clear to me that the girl's mom really wants the belt back because it was part of a retired and very expensive American Girl outfit that she was very fond of. I went online and my jaw dropped at the price of the outfit coupled with the sad fact that it was sold out and the only way to buy it was at ebay for a DOUBLE price. Given the fact that my husband has been jobless for two months and we were struggling to pay bills you can imagine my level of frustration with the occasion.

After that last straw my crankiness at God turned into…well…personal offense, to say the least. I know He is all-powerful and all-knowing. Of course He knows where the belt is. He knows we have no money. He knows my life is difficult enough without this additional MEANINGLESS irritant. I am praying to Him every day and asking Him to help me find the belt, yet my prayers go unanswered. Does God really care about the small details of my life and my everyday frustrations? Why did He have to hide that belt from me? I did not have any answers to these questions that would be in God's favor.

We finally decided to compensate our neighbors for the lost belt with the American Girl gift card for the amount of the outfit when we would have enough money to buy it.

Last Monday I was getting the kids ready for preschool and had to take to school a registration form for Sebi. I decided to fold it and put it in a small pocket in Sebi's backpack. When I opened the pocket I gasped. Voila! The belt neatly folded into a roll was there! Keetah saw it and said, "Oh, I was just decorating Seba's backpack!". What a relief! I truly felt like the woman from one of Jesus's parables who found her lost coin. Without God's mercy and providence I would have never found it because it had never occurred to me to look in that tiny pocket in Seba's backpack, and I usually never use it anyway.

God does care about minute details of my life. But more than anything, He cares about my heart and my attitude toward Him. Yes, it is more than easy for Him to answer my prayers in a split second, yet He chooses to test me to show me what is really in my heart by sending "meaningless irritations" into my life. It is not a meaningless or a trivial thing in His eyes, for my tested faith is more precious than gold to Him (or my comfort!). Am I quick to doubt His goodness on every minor occasion? Am I quick to rebel at His providence and brand His ways with me as "meaningess" and "uncaring" because they are not according to my liking? Alas, it is so, which takes me back straight to Genesis 3. What would my heart say to God if it was not a lost belt, but a lost child, or a lost house, or a lost husband, or a lost health??? In the end I am grateful to God for "meaningless irritations" and for gently testing my weak faith with such minor trials, and for reminding me of His sovereign goodness and perfect plan for my life.

Holodomor in Ukraine: Killing by hunger

Was history one of your least favorite subjects in school? Were you weary of endless dates, names and boring accounts from the remote past that seemed to have no connection to your present life? If so, welcome to the club of recovering history-haters! 

Nevertheless, would you be interested to learn about a shocking event that was never mentioned in your school history books? What if this event was unsurpassed, both in its scope and cruelty, even compared to Hitler’s Holocaust? Would you be interested to hear from a real person affected by this event? 

Created by the Soviet totalitarian regime, Holodomor of 1933 was one of the most brutal events in Ukrainian history, still debated by scholars and politicians today. The word itself means “Massive killing by forced hunger”. This tragic event directly affected my family. My grandfather had 12 siblings, and only he and his sister survived during 1933.

George Santayana said, “Those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. I am speaking today in hope and prayer that atrocities like Holodomor are fully acknowledged, learned from and never repeated.I would like to present to your judgment today the causes, the cruelties and the controversy of Holodomor. 

For those of you who don't know, Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe, and its size can be compared to the territory of Texas with twice as much population (around 46 million). It is famous for incredibly rich soil good for farming and a variety of natural resources. It is also famous for its freedom-loving and talented people. 

What caused Holodomor? I would like to briefly summarize the series of events that led to it as presented in The Curriculum for Educators on Holodomor for Illinois schools, where the study of genocides is now mandated.

In 1917 the socialist revolution led by Vladimir Lenin sweeps over Russia. 

In 1922 Ukraine is included as one of the 15 Soviet republics. 

In 1924 Stalin replaces Lenin as the Soviet Union leader and turns out to be one of the worst dictators in history. 

In 1928 Stalin decides to take over private farming by turning private farms into collective farms (so-called collectivization). He wants to finance his industrialization ambitions by exporting humongous amounts of grain. Since people by nature don’t part very readily with what they consider their own, the collectivization is done by force, through regular troops and secret police. Ukraine, having an especially freedom-loving population, shows a strong resistance, and since agriculturally it was a very strategic place (called “the breadbasket” of Europe), Stalin resolves to break the resistance at any cost. 

And then the Holodomor began. 

What makes Holodomor stand out as one of the most brutal events in human history? Cruel policies, shocking death toll and lack of international support. 

In spite of bountiful crops, the government ordered full confiscation of agricultural products, followed by full confiscation of all food. Through constant searches, literally every grain of wheat and every crumb of food was taken out of houses before the eyes of starving families, including already cooked food on the stoves.

To top it all, military blockades were set up between the villages and the cities, to make sure people didn’t get any help and nobody escaped the famine zone. People were trapped. 

These policies resulted in the shocking number of deaths, especially among children. According to the report for the Congressional Commission on the Ukrainian Famine, submitted to Congress on April 22, 1988, death toll varies between 5.5 and 9 million.  In 1933 people in Ukrainian villages died at the rate of 25 000 per day or 1,000 per hour or 17 per minute. The population was reduced by 25% in one year. 

People were dying slow, torturous deaths in their homes. There were no dogs or cats in the neighborhoods, they were all eaten. People ate dead animals, grass, leaves, dirt. Parents did not let children out into the streets in fear that they would be caught and eaten by neighbors, until parents themselves started eating their own children.

People were too weak to dig graves and bury the dead. The dead were lying around and decomposing in the streets and in the houses. The Soviet officials hired those still alive and strong enough to collect dead bodies from homes in order to bury them all in big anonymous graves.The price for collecting one dead body was 200 grams of bread. In order to get bread the dead body collectors would take people who were still alive on their beds and put them into graves still alive. The reasoning was, “They will die anyway, and it will save us an extra trip to your home tomorrow”. 

The saddest cruelty of all was that the Soviet government skillfully and persistently lied through the media to the outside world about the state of affairs in Ukraine. In spite of these lies the U.S., as well as some European countries knew about the famine through its secret diplomatic channels and brave journalists.

Thus, a famous Welsh journalist, named Gareth Jones, as stated in official Gareth Jones archives, made two trips to Ukraine during the famine and wrote numerous articles about its atrocities in British and U.S. newspapers, as you can see on this slide.  

Yet the U.S. and other countries chose to take a passive position in this matter because of the lucrative economic treaties with the Soviet Union.

Today nobody denies the reality of Holodomor anymore. Yet there is a significant controversy around it among politicians and historians as to its causes and scope. The driving force of the controversy is what I would call a blinding political agenda. There are two camps that have been arguing about Holodomor.

The first group claims that Holodomor was an act of intentional genocide of Ukrainian people by the communist regime. Holodomor was officially pronounced as genocide by Ukrainian government in 2006. 8 other countries have acknowledged it as genocide, including the U.S. and Canada. 

The second group claims that it was a tragic, yet unintentional time of hunger due to bad crops or unwise economic decisions. It also reduces the number of victims to 1 or 2 million people. Guess what, the second group actually consists of people who are still in love with the communist ideology and who don’t want to face the role they or their country played in this event. Russian government is part of this group.

November 25 is an official National Day of Remembrance for the victims of Holodomor in Ukraine. There is hardly a family that has not lost someone that tragic year. In the evening people bring thousands of candles to a big square in downtown Kiev and light them in rows in front of St Michael's orthodox cathedral. They also light candles and put them in the windows of their homes. It is their way of saying, “We remember, we repent, we don’t want to ever repeat it again”. Let us remember, too.

June 1, my CORAM DEO birthday

My story is about how I was looking for love and how I found much more than what I was seeking.

                I was born and raised in Ukraine in a good “moral” family. The first 15 years of my life I lived under communism. My parents were not Christians. In fact, my father was an atheist and a communist party member. It was strictly forbidden for communists to have a Bible in their home or to baptize their babies, even in the official orthodox church. As a child I heard nothing about God and never held a Bible in my hands. But even then in the depth of my heart, like in the hearts of many in my country, there lived a vague faith in Someone Ultimate and Superior. I simply knew nothing about this mysterious "Someone".

                When I was about 12 I developed my own new faith that controlled my life and dictated many things I did. This was faith in “true love” – genuine, strong, faithful, everlasting, selfless. I thought this was the only reality worth living for. I looked for it in books and in people. My dream was to meet someone who would be able to love me like that and to love him in return. So I have set out on a search for such a love. I looked for it in people but was disappointed over and over. I got frustrated even more when I looked into my own heart and realized that I was not able to love like that as I was very selfish. I saw it vividly in my relationship with my grandmother. I shared a room with her and I hated her. Her whole person irritated me, I yelled at her a lot, snapped back at her and sometimes we even had fist fights. This was a real war and no one wanted to capitulate. I knew when I was in the wrong but my pride kept me from admitting it and asking for forgiveness. I considered that she should change first. Day after day I lived in this domestic hell with an empty and miserable heart.

                When I was 14 I was put in a hospital with the prospect of a serious surgery on my spine. Now I was haunted with new questions. One girl I got acquainted with at the hospital went through a similar surgery and died three days later. I started asking myself," What's going to happen to me after I die? Do I have an immortal soul? Is there life after death?" But life scared me even more than death. What does the future hold for me? What "surprises" does life have in store for me? What if it's an incurable disease, severe trials or loneliness, and what if I won't be able to endure these trials and they will completely annihilate me? I was scared of the unknown, I was afraid of pain and I didn't want it. Life seemed shaky and unpredictable.

                After the surgery for the first time I started seeking a contact of some kind with the Unknown Being in whom I believed intuitively. I was out of school for a year and started reading the New Testament that my mom somehow got for me. The book attracted me like a magnet because it sounded very simple, truthful and unusual. No one ever tried to persuade me that it was the true Word of God but just by reading it I came to that very conclusion. The person of Jesus Christ was the one that caught my attention. I didn't know who He was yet but one thing I was sure about – He was someone greater than merely a man.  In the New Testament I read the words of Jesus Christ that greatly intrigued me:

                But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

                All of a sudden I realized that God is a living and real Person. More than that, He is the Father and I can TALK to Him and not simply throw words into the void but get real answers. I decided to try it. So I said to God something like that,

"God, if You really exist I want to know You, I want to live with You. Please reveal Yourself to me."

                Three months later I learned from my sister who was a university freshman in Moscow that she had become a Christian. It was 1990, the beginning of the religious freedom in the Soviet Union, and American missionaries were flooding behind the former “iron curtain” to preach the Gospel. There were big Jesus film campaigns in Moscow that year, and my sister was hired by some Campus Crusade missionaries as a translator together with many other non-Christian students who majored in foreign languages. As a translator she had to attend all the Jesus film showings and translate the Gospel presentations that missionaries made from the stage. That’s how her heart was touched by the Lord.  

I was very curious to know what she meant by "becoming a Christian". My sister gave me the "Four Spiritual Laws" booklet which turned out to be the answer to my earlier prayer and helped me to know God better. I realized that I was sinful and lost in God’s eyes, but in spite of this God offered me His love: selfless, everlasting, unwavering and strong, through Jesus Christ and His death on the cross for my sins. The only thing He wanted me to do was to say yes to His love by asking Jesus Christ into my heart as my Savior and Lord. I felt like I finally found the true love I had been looking for. In prayer I asked Jesus Christ to come into my heart, to forgive my sins and to take my life into His hands. This took place June 1, 1991. Our mother also heard the Gospel from my sister at that time and became a Christian.

                Since that day the truth about the everlasting and perfect fatherly love of God has cast away my fear of tomorrow, of sickness and loneliness. My life has been filled with peace, stability and power to overcome every difficulty. But the greatest miracle is that I have gained power from God to love people and to accept them just as they are. The miracle took place in my relationship with my grandmother. The war came to an end and for the first time in my life I was able to ask for her forgiveness and was able to forgive her. Moreover, after 9 years of praying and sharing God’s love with her, my grandmother who had been a stubborn atheist with communist mentality her whole life finally surrendered her heart to the Lord and is with the Lord now. The reality of God’s love also led me to full-time missionary work, and I had a great privilege of sharing the love of Christ with young people in Ukraine for 10 years. Now, 20 years later, my adventure of experiencing God’s love continues and I am looking forward to my future with Him.

The King's Speech and Coram Deo counseling

The King's Speech was another movie my hubby and I watched recently that has left me with some refreshing thoughts in an area unexpected to myself. In the middle of the movie I couldn't help exclaiming, "This is good counseling indeed!". Truly, it was not difficult to notice that Lionel was not just a speech therapist, he was acting as a counselor. I am not trying to say that his counseling was biblical/Christian in the classical sense of this word, but his approach had some REALLY good elements that were a refreshing reminder to me and I think can benefit any Christian who has a friend that needs help with a problem. So, here's what I gleaned from the irresistible figure of Lionel Logue.
1. I found it strikingly true in the situation with the King's stammer that when a person is stuck in a bothersome problem his initial desire is nothing but to get immediate relief for the immediate/surface issue. "Just fix my speech, it is making my life miserable". "Don't dig, don't probe, don't get too personal, just stick to your business, which is the business I prescribe". This attitude is very natural for us in our fallen human state. I want to be happy, but don't touch the roots. In light of this reality I really admire how Lionel did not buy into his patient's agenda even under the great pressure of his intimidating "kingly" position. It should be true, I think, of every good counselor. Yes, a counselee will come to you with his own agenda, but you need to realize that there is an agenda higher than his that you need to stay faithful to, no matter what, even if you are facing a king or even if you are going to lose your counselee after the very first meeting. Because ultimately you are serving the Greater King, and He is the Only One who can help your counselee/friend, and true help cannot happen by brushing over the surface and without digging into the roots of the immediate issue. You will never be a good soul helper if you remain a slave of your counselee's agenda or won't be bold to make yours clear.
2. I love the moment in the movie when Bertie (the King) finds out that Lionel has no formal training and credentials and the King is full of indignation at the "impostor's" insolence and presumption in taking upon himself the role of a counselor. And I love the fact that Lionel is not intimidated by the accusations and boldly defends his calling. The scene makes me chuckle because that's how we often feel living at the age of "professional therapy". We make so much of education, training, degrees, licenses, certificates. We are looking for an expert and his couch. I am sure education can be helpful, but we need to realize that CORAM DEO (before the face of God) it is not necessary and can even be a hindrance (any trained counselor knows the pitfalls of the trust in his professional knowledge). Every Christian has a license to counsel from the living God, he has the all-sufficient Wonderful Counselor at his side and the all-sufficient counseling manual in his hands. Moreover, it's not just a license, it's a call to obey for every Christian, not a prerogative of experts. Let us be faithful to this call with great confidence and no fear, no matter how inadequate we may feel for the task. Let us not be intimidated by the complexities of human problems. Let us not be like the Greeks who seek after human wisdom (1 Cor. 1:22). But let us trust in the all-sufficiency of Scripture and Christ crucified, Who is adequate for the most complicated human issue that bears the most sophisticated psychological label (1 Cor. 1:23-31). God prefers the untrained and the unwise of the world if they are humble and eager to learn from Him. Lionel's platform for counseling was his experience with the soldiers during the war that had taught him so many things, not just some head knowledge. This is so true for us, Christians. Our experience of CORAM DEO living, our wrestling with personal issues and trial and suffering, our experience of victories and failures and the lessons learned in the heat of the battle, our personal vision of Christ crucified - all this arms us to be the best possible helpers for the people God sends our way (2 Cor. 1).
3. From the very start of his relationship with the King, Lionel made a point to enter his patient's world and he insisted on "being on the same level" with him, in spite of all the worldly barriers and rules of propriety. He insisted on being called "Lionel" and on calling the future King of England "Bertie". I admire his boldness and I think it illustrates a very important principle of good counseling. Just like Christ stepped down into our humanity through incarnation, we should be bold and willing to enter the world of the one we are trying to help by putting ourselves on the same level with that person - on the level of a fallen, weak, struggling human being. Lionel was willing to become the King's soul friend, and that's how we should see our helping role. Not an expert or a doctor, but a vulnerable and transparent friend willing to be "with you" through all the mess, to the end. Ultimately what made the King's speech a success was the fact that he was looking into the encouraging face of a true friend the whole time. Our role is even greater than that. In helping people we are called to be CORAM DEO friends. A CORAM DEO friend is the one who boldly and tenderly takes you by hand and brings you before the wonderful face of Jesus on the Cross, the Ultimate Friend, for healing and wisdom and victory. Our human friendship is but a reflection and imitation of the true Friendship of Jesus, of His compassion and faithfulness. And it better be a good and truthful reflection. Ultimately the counselee needs not me, but a gaze into the loving face of Jesus, His Savior and Friend.
4. I really admire Lionel's humility and readiness to admit his mistake as a counselor, ask for forgiveness and wait in hope for the restoration of the relationship. At the moment of passion Lionel got carried away and pushed too hard, when the counselee was not ready to face some truths. I think every CORAM DEO counselor will have moments like that and should handle them with great humility.
5. There is no counselor without good, probing questions. I think Lionel was right on target when he focused on the immediate emotions the King was experiencing (anger) and he asked him really good questions about his anger. Our most powerful emotions are the best doors into our hearts, and a good counselor will seek to enter through these doors by asking good questions.
6. I also appreciate the fact that Lionel understood very well the connection between our physical problems and our hearts. He learned from experience that stammer is never simply a mechanical problem, it involves the whole man and starts with the heart affections. Truly, out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks (or refuses to speak), as the Good Book says. Ultimately our heart passions can deeply affect the tension in our muscles and the overall health of our bodies. Vice versa, our physical health can affect our spiritual life in big ways, too. The one who recognizes this precious reality of how fearfully and wonderfully we are made by God is on the way of becoming a good helper to others.
7. The last and not the least - the importance of hope at the very first meeting. Bertie meets Lionel for the first time and presents his painful and embarrassing problem. He is full of skepticism, feels uneasy and doesn't have much hope after years and years of futile struggles. Lionel does a brilliant thing. He makes a point to prove to Bertie that his full speech restoration is possible by recording his voice against musical background. When at the end of the meeting Bertie is overcome by anger and despair and is determined to leave and never come back, Lionel gives him the record as a gift, almost like putting his foot in a slamming door at the last moment. The record does its work - some time later at one of the hopeless moments Bertie decides to listen to the record, regains hope and comes back to counseling. Lionel's wisdom in this matter is hard to overestimate. True hope is what your counselee lacks most when he comes to you for help and true hope is what he needs most, especially at first when he is completely overwhelmed and crushed by the immensity of his problem and his failures in trying to solve it. Do not let your counselee leave his meeting with you without pointing true hope to him in God's Word and the face of His Son, even if you have to resort to a clever trick to do it.
I feel like I could go on and on, but let me finish by saying, Thank you, Lionel, for your counseling wisdom and for reminding me of my calling. Thank you, God, for the movie that points to Your realities.

Coram Deo movie watching

My husband and I watched the movie GOOD today (with Viggo Mortensen) and it turned out to be a pretty GOOD movie. Very unsettling and thought-provoking, just the way I like it. In general, I have been thinking, reading, watching a lot lately on the history of Nazism (the book about Bonhoeffer and The Soviet Story movie kept me occupied for a while). Probably because I never studied "real history" in a Soviet school, nor had I the Christian worldview at the time to place historical events into the big CORAM DEO picture of life or understand what lessons should be learned from the past. That's why as a student I always hated history and found it incredibly boring. Now I am enjoying studying it in a new way, looking at it with the new eyes and the new mind graciously given to me by the Great History Maker. In the movie the main character who is a writer and a university professor is being slowly but steadily seduced and sucked up by the emerging Nazi regime, without being aware of it for several years. At the beginning he seems to be a man of well-defined convictions and ideas, though untested. In the course of the movie he goes through a series of tests/seductions where his officially professed convictions prove non-functional. He is drifting, and in the course of his drifting he leaves his terminally sick wife and two kids for a young woman who is fascinated with the new regime, he unmaliciously betrays his best friend, who happened to be a Jew and ended up disappearing in the abyss of a concentration camp, he serves the new regime with his literary gift helping portray to the masses euthanasia of the weak and handicapped as a highly humane and ethical thing. He drifts and drifts and even enjoys it at first, until he finds out that his new wife, "the embodiment of Arian motherhood", pregnant with a child "for Fuhrer", was the one who turned his Jewish friend in. At the end of the movie the guy stands in the center of the concentration camp where he has come using his gestapo privileges in hope of finding his Jewish friend and watches in complete horror how people are being treated like cattle, tortured and killed. It's his moment of awakening, his moment of looking straight in the ugly face of the gods he has been serving.
I feel greatly for the main character and for his moral drama. Mainly because I see how susceptible he turns out to be to the great force of the fear of men (the ancient biblical concept), how alive to flattery, lust and just plain desire to be comfortable and enjoy life free of suffering. All these human weaknesses and ills were skillfully played upon by the Nazis, helping them acquire great numbers of obedient, utterly scared and enslaved followers. I see myself in him, in his weak, depraved human nature that walks and trembles before men rather than God. Fear of men/people-pleasing has been a big theme of my life, in big part because I grew up in a communist country where fear of men has been a big cultural component and driving force for generations. Humanly speaking, when I think about the possibility of history repeating itself and some new "hideous strength" taking control of the world, and I try to picture myself looking in the face of some neo-fascism demanding my full worship, I tremble in utter weakness and feel that moral compromise would be very easy for me, especially if the threat to my children is present or physical suffering is involved. On the other hand, my only hope is that I have Christ and He has me, and He is the only One who can strengthen the spineless worm like me to stand up for His truth in the face of an ugly, insolent and seemingly omnipotent evil. Only He can help me see the invisible reality with my spiritual eyes when my physical eyes have to witness the most excruciating scenes of human suffering and humiliation, even of the most loved ones. So, I am sobered, unsettled, questioning myself, praying that He may keep me from the sweet seduction of moral compromise, from self-deception, from drifting, and that THIS day may prepare me for THAT day, so that I am able by His power, to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand (Eph. 6:13). My prayer is also for this country, that through "the good men doing nothing" and letting their rights and freedoms quietly taken away and their base appetites being played upon the gate for unprecedented evil may not open wide, and that the awakening may not come too late.

Why Coram Deo everywhere?

It's obvious from my blog address and name, as well as my email address (you can only guess what my secret passwords for different web-sites are :)) that I seem to be pretty fixated on one phrase. It just summarizes so well what I believe in and how I want to live my life. I learned about the CORAM DEO concept in 2003 when I started my three-year training in biblical counseling. I was surprised by the realization that CORAM DEO is actually a phrase from the Bible itself (Latin Vulgate). There are 59 verses in the Latin Bible that contain this phrase. It is composed of two Latin words: coram - adv. personally, face to face, openly (coming from cordis - heart); with a noun - "in the presence of",  and deo - God. It literally means, "before the face of God". It carries the notion of our living constantly in God's presence, under His authority and for His honor and glory. CORAM DEO life is what each of us has been designed for by the Creator. This way of life is probably best captured by the Reformed tradition of the church. Since my first introduction to the idea it has been a growing passion in me to live CORAM DEO in every aspect of my life, to learn to relate everything to Him and to consciously live in His presence every moment. I have not arrived by any means, but I am enjoying my CORAM DEO journey and love to share it with others.