War. It has upended our lives and brought missile attacks, loss of jobs, split families, living in darkness, family members and friends out of contact behind Russian lines, the death of friends, uprooting to another continent, constant air raids, listening the the lies churned out by the Russian propaganda machine, listening to those same lies being repeated by people you meet on the street. There are days when all of this can feel like too much to handle.
As I have talked to people in Ukraine, I have found it very interesting to see how different people cope with what is happening in their country right now. I know a few guys in Ukraine who started smoking (in their 40s) to calm their nerves. Some of my friends spend hours and hours following gossip feeds that analyze every movement by Putin, always coming to the conclusion that he is deathly ill and the war will be over as soon as he dies. There is even a significant number who are convinced that he is already dead, and his recent appearances are a major hoax. I don’t know very many people who aren’t praying for Putin to die, even though most of them confess that they have never done this for anyone and feel slightly guilty.
I would love it if Putin’s days were numbered (particularly in the single digits), but I know that it is simply desperate, wishful thinking. It is, however, desperate, wishful thinking that I choose not to disparage.
There are also people who simply choose not to see the war. They do everything that they can to just go on with their lives. At this point, everyone in Ukraine knows someone who has been killed, so you would think it would be impossible to ignore or deny. But people still do. We humans have an amazing ability to not see what is right in front of us when we choose not to see or believe it.
“Things are getting better.”
Everyone has their own little stories that they tell themselves. In November, when I was in Ukraine, I met our landlord to pay for several months of rent. He asked about our plans, and encouraged me that we should come back and live in Kyiv. He told me that things were getting better. People were coming back. The war should be over soon. There had been some power outages, but those were fewer and fewer. Everything was looking up.
I didn’t respond, and I hoped that my face didn’t show my thoughts of “Are you CRAZY!” His words didn’t match with reality. What do you say to that? This was just a few weeks after Russian forces had started their series of massive missile strikes on Ukraine’s power infrastructure. The power outages were becoming fewer and fewer since the LAST strike, but were more frequent on the whole and more strikes seemed to be inevitable (and indeed they were). In fact, several people in the Ukrainian government had specifically made a plea to those who had fled the country not to return during the winter if they could avoid doing so. The Ukrainian army had made significant progress in places, but there was still so much left to take back. Most of the smartest people in the world are sure that a Ukrainian victory is going to be slow, painful and expensive.
The thing is, what my landlord said that day was strikingly similar to what he had told me four months ago. Almost word for word. That was when it occurred to me, “This is his script. This is what he is choosing to tell himself is the truth at this time.”
I think he has to keep telling the story this way because he is trying to convince himself this is true.
We all do this. It's nothing new. But once I noticed this narrative and the conspiracy narrative around Putin’s health, I started to see the coping mechanisms other people were using as well.
“Life is hard. Keep going.”
Anya’s mom raised two kids alone in the Soviet Union after her husband abandoned them. She told me that no one EVER helped her. No family members ever stepped in to give her a little bit of time to rest. As a result, her mindset is, “Life is hard, but you have to keep going.” That mindset served her well in the months of occupation when she would only eat once a day, and there was a Russian tank parked in the playground behind her building. But it impacts the way that she interacts with those around her. As we talked, she asked me how Janna and Oliver were, and I told her that Oliver was sick and coughing all night and throwing up. It was hard being in Ukraine for a week knowing that Janna was having a hard time and I wasn’t there to help. Anya’s mom, in a cheerful voice, reminded that she was alone during every sickness that both of her kids had. What Janna was going through wasn’t as hard as that. She stopped just short of saying, “Tell her to suck it up.” This was true of course, I knew that these few days alone weren’t going to finish Janna off. But I want to be a present father, and always want to have compassion for those in my life who are struggling. I felt that it was cynical to disparage that.
My story reminded her of a time a few months ago when Bogdon had called her in tears because he didn’t know if he could make it without Anya. Anya’s mom gave him a similar speech to the one she gave me. There are plenty of people who go on living without their spouses. Basically, “life is hard, suck it up.”
What she said was true. Life is hard, and there are times when you do have to just press through even if you feel like quitting.
A month and a half before, I was at Safe Haven, when Bogdon had a similar breakdown with me. He cried on my shoulder for 30 minutes. The whole time he kept apologizing for showing so much emotion. I just held him and let him cry. My only stern words were to stop apologizing, that showing this side of himself was just being honest.
Who knows, maybe someone like Bogdon needs both sides: someone who will hold him and tell him to let it out, and someone else who tells him that he needs to suck it up and get back to work. I don’t want to lose empathy, but I do know that I admire Anya’s mom’s determination.
Anger or serenity.
When I visited Bogdon’s parents, I got to glimpse an interesting contrast. Bogdon’s dad railed against the things that the Russian forces were doing. Apparently, he got so worked up as we were talking that he broke into cussing, which I wouldn’t have actually known except for Bogdon’s mom’s look of shock. She told him that he needed to apologize.
That was when I saw the contrast. She said we have to be better than them, what they do in this war is not our affair. Then she sat back, took a breathe and a look that I would describe as peaceful aloofness came over her face again.
The Russian forces are destroying Ukraine, killing civilians and children, torturing people, raping women and children, mining apartments and kids’ stuffed animals, and her response was that her husband couldn’t get worked up about this and cuss a little.
Anyone who isn’t angry about this war isn’t paying attention. But as we talked a little longer, I saw that Bogdon’s dad was wallowing in his anger. At one point he even criticized the young people living at Safe Haven because they would try and go watch movies. “They can go watch movies when the war is over.” So, apparently, life is supposed to stop until the war is over? We are just supposed to be angry and think about nothing else until then? I don’t think so.
I really don’t want to come across as too critical here. I’m just noticing these things and processing them for myself. I’m certain that every person whom I analyze has more nuance than I have seen in my limited interactions. I think anger in the middle of the war is healthy and completely justified. I also know that one thing so many historians have said about WWII was that it was a time when so few people acted in ways that could be considered good. So, yes, be good. Please.
Not long ago, we were talking with our therapist, and he really encouraged us to make lists of the things that we can control and the things that we can’t. Then, try and release the things that you can’t control. Serenity.
Both are needed. So maybe it's good that Bogdan’s parents are married to each other. As long as they can actually work through their experiences together.
“It’s too hard for us”
Kolya and his family lost their house. There are thousand of Ukrainians like him. But he is the person that I personally know that has lost the most in this war … so far. Kolya is active now with a ministry delivering aid to some of the most needy people in his area. His family has been provided with a place to live. In the brief time that I was with them, it seems like they were actually doing OK, and not just putting on an act. But as we talked, he said that they haven’t been back to their house because it is just too painful.
Facing those painful moments is really hard. But it is necessary for healing. I hope Kolya and his family can work up the courage to go back and face the pain of what they lost. And I hope they can do it together and support each other. I hope that none of them feels left out in that, and that none of them feels like they have to be the strong one for everyone else.
I for one, am not in a place to try and rush that step for them. After having their home destroyed in front of their eyes, they have earned the right to choose when they take that painful step.
“Being a Christian is the only way things will work out.”
This war has separated millions of families between the women and children who fled the country, having to leave their partners behind, to the million plus Ukrainians who have been mobilized to defend the country. The week after Christmas, I was in Ukraine and around Sabina, who had more spare time. With that increase in time to think, she spent more time worrying about her husband who is on the front, and dreading the possibility that he may not be coming home.
This war is a huge strain on relationships.
Anya has been the house mom of Safe Haven for more than 20 years, and has had about 80 young people that they have welcomed into their home. She is the most responsible mother that I know. And yet, on every drive that we have to or from Ukraine, we have a very long conversation where she talks about her ideas of how she could just leaving her kids in the Czech Republic because she doesn’t want them to be in Ukraine where something might happen to them. On the other hand, she herself wants to be in Ukraine with her husband, Bogdon. Making that decision would be paralyzing for me. Anya keeps bargaining with herself.
On Christmas Day, a lot of Anya and Bogdon’s friends came over to visit, and one couple stayed with them talking late into the night. The next day, Anya told me that these friends were having problems in their marriage. He was serving on the front lines and she was left waiting at home. She said that this was happening a lot. Another friend had dropped by Christmas day, and blindsided her and Bogdon when he told them he was newly divorced. His wife and kids had fled to Western Ukraine. After a little time apart, she let him know that she thought it was best if they divorced.
As Anya told me these, she said that she was shocked at how many people were getting divorced. Many were circumstances that she understood. There was a mother of two who had fled to the Czech Republic who had already decided that she was never going to go back to her alcoholic and abusive husband. For Anya, these stories made sense … because they weren’t Christian. But as she ticked off a handful of her Christian friends who had already decided to separate in just the first ten months of the war, she looked at me and said, “How is this possible? These are Christians!”
For years, I’ve heard Anya talk with the kids who have come and lived in her house, and she has a constant refrain that if you want to have a good marriage and a good life, you have to find a Christian to marry. One of their daughters married a man who is a good man but not a Christian. This man is not a talker, and wasn’t before they got married. Now, our friend finds it hard from time to time because they don’t have much to talk about. To Anya that isn’t because this young man doesn’t ever have anything to talk about. She is convinced that it is because he isn’t a Christian, therefore they don’t have spiritual things to talk about. So many of the young people who live or have lived in Safe Haven repeat this sentiment, especially when they are looking at the lives of their friends who have problems, or when something bad happens in their own lives. Igor’s girlfriend stopped talking with him a few months after she fled to Poland, and he simply said, “It’s because she isn’t a Christian. Anya is right, I need to find a Christian girl.”
The young people who come to live in Safe Haven have come from VERY broken homes, and then they have lived in the state-run orphanage for years. They will never get the nuanced parenting that I hope that I will be able to give my son. They need very clear instructions. Firm boundaries. For them, ideas like “the only good marriages are between two Christians” and “things will only work out if I stay close to God,” are important messages and we’ll never know how many of our young people have been kept out of prison or how many girls didn’t end up pregnant and alone because Anya and Bogdon kept hammering these simple, black and white messages.
But the other side is, I know plenty of Christians who are total jerks. And so does Anya.
I think Anya has this idea that if she is a Christian and is good enough, then things will work out. She is far from the only person to have that construct. This is a message I was taught most of my life. Its constantly playing in the back of my head. But it also hasn’t been my experience. I haven’t seen that Christians are more moral than other people. I would say that my experience reflects the stories that the Bible shares. The people who claim to serve God are as equally capable of doing despicable things as they are capable of great good … just like everyone else. They are also just as likely to have things in their lives fall apart.
The world is a complicated place. And there is no magic fix to make us change from selfish and imminently talented at self-justification into humble and selfless people.
The downside of staking your life on “If I’m a Christian everything will work out” is that when life doesn’t work out, then people’s faith and even their whole world can fall apart.
There are plenty of people whose faith has been deeply shaken because of this war. They were convinced that God was suppose to look out for them and it sure seems that he hasn’t kept his end of the bargain.
Bottle it up
I recently took one of our friends with me into Ukraine. She had to leave her very young child in the Czech Republic and went to spend a week with her husband. This child has seen dad once in the past ten months, and now mom was leaving for 8 days.
That first night, while we were still on the road to the border, the daughter called us up because she desperately needed to talk to mom. She was sobbing, saying how much she missed her mom. It broke my heart.
But my friend’s response shocked me. She started desperately begging her daughter to stop crying. During the entire ten minutes they were on the phone, all she said was that she needed to stop crying. There was only the barest acknowledgement that her daughter had an actual reason to cry.
This strategy didn’t work at all. As I listened, the more the mom begged, the more uncontrollable the crying became. I had this very clear image of trying to hold the lid on a pot that is boiling over.
What kid wouldn’t cry in that situation?
As I sat and listened to this exchange, I had a thought: “If she won’t allow her child to feel strong emotions, does she allow herself?"
Looking at myself
I hate this war. As I am writing this, I am sitting in my car waiting at the border to cross into Poland. In the past months, I have spent over 30 hours sitting in my car at the border. Janna and Oliver haven’t been in our apartment, our home, in over a year, and every time that I am there without them just hurts. Yesterday, we left Kyiv driving through Bucha and Irpin and I saw entire city blocks that didn’t have a single building that was left standing, and there were blocks where everything seemed untouched. It was arbitrary. It has been eleven months of senselessness. The reasons for this war are senseless, or rather blatant lies. Every day the news brings some new level of horribleness.
I feel all of the emotions that my friends feel. I make my own bargains with God. At the same time, I am scared to really pray for the end of the war because I’m afraid of what it will do to my faith if that prayer is not answered. I’m afraid that I don’t really have faith.
I have a whole bag of unhealthy coping mechanisms.
I’m recognizing that the most unhealthy thing that I do is to not make space for what is troubling me at my core. I hate feeling sad. In the first month of the war, when there wasn’t much that I could do, I would work myself into anger simply to avoid being overcome by sadness. I’ve found that anger is only about a half step away from sadness and mourning.
Lately, my tendency is to try and keep myself busy, or at least distracted. (I have an amazing distraction machine in my pocket most of the time.) I can even distract myself from what is going on internally by trying to examine and figure out what is wrong with those around me. In fact, when I started writing this, that was my subconscious plan. I would put everyone else’s coping mechanisms on paper, judge them, and avoid looking at myself.
I am really good at that.
All of us have already lost a lot in this war. Chances are, we will lose a lot more before it is over. Not creating space to sit with that loss and mourn it, is very unhealthy. That can lead to a host psychological issues and keep you trapped. I know that I am not good at mourning. But I’m trying to learn.
Janna and I try and check in with each other regularly. It is, however, an easy thing to justify skipping simply because it feels like every day is a rehash of the same things. But we try. And it is comforting when I say that I am still sad and frustrated and hate living without knowing what tomorrow will look like … just like every other day for the past three months. Then Janna looks at me and says “Yeah, it's really hard.” Creating space for each other’s stories is so important. And it's important for my mourning to sincerely ask the question, “How are you?”, to those around me.
I have a hard time letting my emotions out when around others. Earlier, I mentioned that Bogdon cried on my shoulder for a half an hour. I patiently held him that whole time, but even though my heart broke for him and his situation, I didn’t cry. But I’m finding things things that can help me open up my emotions. The BBC’s Ukrainecast often gives space to focus on the personal impact of this war, and I can sit in solidarity with those who have lost the most just by taking the time to sit with their pain. Most episodes bring me to tears at some point, and sometimes I just need a little help to cry.
Ukrainian music brings me to tears both with its beauty and with what it means culturally.
The area that I want to work on is to be able to sit and cry with my friends. I have this mistaken belief that I have to be strong and keep my emotions suppressed when others are sharing theirs. This is something I want to change.
We develop these ways of coping to protect ourselves. And these coping mechanisms are really
helpful ... until they aren't. It’s good to be aware of your coping mechanisms, and also to give a healthy dose of grace to those who are struggling. We’re all in this together.
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