Love Language

Love Language  (a selection from Passionate Life coming fall 2017!

In January 2013 my sister became a mom for the first time to three amazing teenagers.  They  just happen to be from Ukraine.  After a two-year spiritual, emotional, and financial battle to legally call them their own, I decided to board a plane and fly across the ocean to see them!  My sister and brother-in-law were serving as missionaries when God finally made them parents.  Of course Auntie Heidi had to meet them!  Although they were going to come to America just 2 short months, I wanted to meet them in their culture, with their language and food and all the weird things I will come to love about them.  If my sister birthed them, of course I would be in the hospital room, so why not meet them in their origin of the birth of a new family.

My flight got in really late, and my niece and two nephews were not there to greet me at the airport (bummer).  My sister had waited 13 years for these babies, she was going to start them on great sleeping schedule, although they were 14, 15 and 16 years of age.  When we got to their house, she told me I could go upstairs and hug them.  The minute I opened the bedroom door this angel sat straight up and even in the dark I could see her perfectly-white giant smile.  IT WAS IMMEDIATE LOVE.  I cannot describe it.  My heart literally leapt out of my chest and I knew I was the aunt that would cry with her when that boy breaks her heart, that will eat chocolate and watch movies, that will take her shopping and buy her anything she wanted.  It was indescribable.  She wrapped her arms around me and said in a very thick Russian accent “Good Morning”.  (she meant Good Night and I was smitten).  And that exact scenario happened twice more with my nephews.

My sister and brother-in-law had been on a team to translate the Bible in the Tat tar language.  Tatars are a people group living among the Ukrainians.  This group of people have always been ostracized, a group less then others.  They are the outcast and overlooked.  My sister has always had a heart for this kind of a people so it was no surprised when she was called to translate God’s Word for them.  While serving, she also worked at an orphanage.  This is where she had met Dima and Victor.  She volunteered in their first grade class, taking them on field trips, providing gifts, educational material, workshops, and spiritually pouring into these 8-9 year old institutionalized kids without parents.  She fell in love with each and every kid.  Dima was the golden child; the bright one, the favored one, the teacher’s pet.  Victor was not.  He was picked on, beat up, and a little awkward.  My sister loved each and every one, but these two had a special place in her heart. 

After years of battling infertility I asked why she would not just adopt. Like go to the orphanage and pick a kid and come home and live Happy Ever After. (so naive)  Her words exactly and a pierce right to my heart-- “How do I pick?!  How unfair!”  But I knew she wanted to be a real mommy to these kids. She was weary and tired of leaving each day to not know what happens at night, when they were sick, not be taken care of.  Her heart was longing but how in the world could she chose?  After much prayer, and one after another child got adopted from that class (Which is completely a miracle in itself.  Kids in that “special” institution just don’t get adopted, especially almost an entire class)  God was parting the waters.  And guess who was standing right there in the middle:  Dima and Victor.  The ones she was meant to have.  (Three years later I still cry tears of joy.) 

During the entire process of major ups and downs, victories and losses-(which I highly recommend you read her blog- she should be writing the book not me!)** (In fact, please read her blog-grinnlife.blogspot.com)  She and Matt found that Victor and Dima had sisters and brothers.  Ukrainian law, at that time, stated that you have to adopt the entire sibling groups   So they opened the paper work to accept not just two kids, but five!  Through the investigation process they found one brother was too old, one sister was already with a foster family some how (pray for her) and then there was Tanya.  Our bright-eyed-giant-smiled-curly-red-headed precious Tanya!

Apparently Tanya was exactly a little orphan-Annie.  She was confident, in charge, and mothered everyone in that orphanage.  She did not need a family and she was apprehensive.  Some how though, my sister wooed her into our family and we cannot imagine life without her.

The first morning I really got to see them in the light Tammy let me do a devotion and she translated.  I so badly wanted to talk and ask questions and get to know my new family but the language barrier was discouraging.  So I tried to act out everything.  Each evening that week I would lie in bed with Tanya and read children stories in English and try to act out the story.  She would laugh until she fell out of the bed.  We fell in love.  With hardly any words exchanged she, Victor, Dima and I bonded. I WAS THEIR AUNT HEIDI!  And we didn’t have to say a word—we all just knew it.

First Morning I ever saw them!

I hear all the time how hard it is to believe because they can’t ‘hear’ God.  They talk and talk but receive no response.  The week I met my new family we shared maybe 3-4 real-understandable words, but it did not deter love from growing.  We couldn’t understand one another and it didn’t stop a bond from cultivating.  I can just imagine God jumping around trying to explain His love in a way we will hear it.  He is hugging, laughing, creating, and totally in love with you.  It is possible friend.  You can feel His Love without ‘hearing His voice’. 

Gotcha day!  They were a family!  From left to right: Victor, Matt, Tammy, Tanya, and Dima

I am just the Aunt and 100% into my niece and nephews.  Imagine being their parents.  They went through hell to get them, and will do it again.  In fact they are doing it again! (true saints ya’ll)  Same with our Heavenly Father.  He went through HELL to bring us home.  He is holy and perfect and we are not.  That mere fact separates us.  There had to be something to bridge the gap, something to overcome the language barrier and he provided it.  He is so smitten in love with you, He demonstrated it through a cruel death.  Just like me trying to act out Three Pigs with my niece- He acted out love by covering our un-holiness so we can be adopted into his family.  Omy word that is Love and it is YOU He loves.  Do you see it beloved?  He knows every freckle, thought, white lie, stupid joke and He is still totally and utterly and completely in love with you.  Enough to die to be with you!

Dima, Tanya, Victor

Tanya and Me (Photo bomb with Grand Parents!)