That’s one of the questions we voice out loud to one another fairly regularly in our new home-in-exile.
We are over a month into the war in Ukraine, now. On our third (and I think, final) apartment in Budapest. I ask myself, how am I doing?
Am I “surviving?” I have a new respect for that state of being.
Am I in the present moment?
Am I on vacation somewhere, about to wake up and find out that all this has been a bad dream?
Am I where I am supposed to be?
YES. Whew. That answer I am sure of; and as I remind myself of it, the tension and gripping that I’m not even aware of in my body begin to release and drain away.
In the limited range of desperate, compromised choices available to us in our current circumstances, I know it’s right to be where my daughter is, as long as she wants me here in her space. Separated from her husband and home, watching her friends literally scatter to the four winds as they flee Ukraine, creating a safe place for her young son as he is torn away from his daddy, his home, his extended family — she bears the heaviest burden of the four of us here.
What a blessing that she welcomes me in her life. What a gift that we can create “home” together still.
This was Moving Day Three in our three weeks in Budapest. We have now acquired far more jetsam than the backpacks we originally fled with — we now have bags of food, and a new suitcase each.
In a perfect demonstration of one of the many ways we have felt God caring for us and so many others, in the next moment after the photo on the sidewalk, above, was taken, Britain just took one step back toward the street, leaned into the open window of a yellow station-wagon taxicab which was paused in a short queue, waiting to turn at the end of our street.
“Excuse me, are you free? Could we possibly hire you?”
Seconds later all four of us and all our things were comfortably loaded, and not even ten minutes later we were deposited comfortably at our new temporary home. Easiest move in history.