I had three dreams come true in the past month, and want to share my joy. While they aren't the kind of huge, once-in-a-lifetime kinds of dreams, they are still things I'd hoped for and wanted for awhile, and make a significant difference in my life.
The first is that I finally got to decorate. Three and a half years we lived with bare walls except in one room, where we taped up a world map, Belarus map, and calendar. When we first moved here household money went to the basic necessities. (We had to leave all those lovely wedding gifts behind.) Then a little somebody's arrival dominated the family budget, and rightly so. This fall when Dan and I were thinking and praying over staying through a doctorate program, one of the things that made me a little reluctant was the feeling that it would be another three-five years of not "settling down" in the household sense. It's admittedly hard for me as a woman to
know that most of our friends back home are buying houses, filling them with furniture and decorations... So, we decided that some money spent making our apartment more like a real grown-up home would be money well allocated. I spent hours on art.com, had posters shipped here in giant tubes, made trips to the one custom framing shop in Minsk, had photos printed to go in frames,
and got brave enough to pound nails into our wallpapered walls. It's amazing what a difference it made in the look and feel of our place! It's hard to explain why something that's so far from buying our own home could help so much in feeling more content, settled, ready for the long haul. Here are a couple of my favorite new walls. Dan was very gracious to agree on getting the abstract art he doesn't care for, which I'd paired together in my sleep after an evening on art.com, and had my heart absolutely set on. :)The second dream come true is the successful start to our church's group for moms of preschoolers, which I'm heading up with a co-leader, Alesya. I was wishing for something like this last winter and spring, going crazy without social interaction with other moms who could relate to this dramatic life change. The fall playgroup I started had a couple fatal flaws and soon disintegrated. This time our group was part of the birth of women's ministries in general in our young church plant. We decided on the structure of meeting twice a month on Wednesday mornings in our apartments, hiring two babysitters, and alternating Bible studies with
discussions about parenting and just life. The first meeting in February I had to miss since the morning of, Yanka lost his milk all over me more than once. (I love Tara's wording of "taking one in the cleavage"--that says it all!) I gave Alesya my Bible study questions over the phone and waited to hear how it went. She called back that afternoon so excited! Only a small group had gathered, but they had a great Bible study. Each of the four women gathered said they had no real friends outside of their husbands! Can you imagine? The next meeting was at our place, and I'd invited my American friend Theresa to talk about grace-based parenting, and answer moms' questions (she's a lactation consultant). Our two-bedroom apartment contained ten children and two babysitters, and ten women whose ages spanned twenty years. We had Belarusians, Americans, and Africans; believers and nonbelievers; a single mom and a mom with seven kids. It was amazing. Besides the distraction of kids who wouldn't stay with the babysitters, it couldn't have been better. One non-Christian mom already visited our church. I'm so encouraged by this good start, and have lots of hopes and dreams for this group. It has the potential to bring lonely moms into friendships with women who relate and support, to bring women to Christ and to help Christian moms grow in faith, and to help us better love and raise our children. And those are just the more immediate, tangible results...The third: I started taking piano lessons. I am too old and have little desire to start classical piano, but have long desired to learn to play by chords. This was actually Dan's Christmas present to me. I want to be able to lead worship, accompany myself singing solos, and use the piano in songwriting. I also just miss playing an instrument. Our worship band at church has a great keyboardist named Slava who agreed to teach me, and our first lesson showed me that he really understands my goals. We went through some music theory and all sorts of different chords and scales, as well as how to train your hands. He gave me some significant homework, too, which is good! This pull towards music, especially to writing and performing my own music, has been there for years, but for different reasons never became anything more than sporadic performances. Part of it is me getting in my own way, but part of it I believe God protected me from becoming successful when I couldn't have handled it. Now if He gives me the inspiration and opportunity to write and sing, I feel, I pray, it would truly be ministry.
