Dear Ukrainian Husband,
Thank you for teaching me how to better be all things to all people (1 Corinthians 9:22) and listen to God as he speaks in the moment.
Love you and Jesus loves you more,
not your future wife Caitlyn
Ukrainian husband?
Being of marrying age, loving Jesus and being the youngest on my team (let’s be real only by like 3 days) has lead to a few suggestions from our hosts that love us so so much on potential spouses within the Christian community we’ve been welcomed into.
One man in particular has at the teasing of my Ukrainian friends been dubbed my “future Ukrainian husband.” He’s one of eight children, we communicate primarily though body language (think charades but for everything from pass the mayonnaise to what’s your perspective on God) and secondarily though google translate.
He loves the Lord. He became a Christian at 16 after many years of not thinking he sinned much. That New Years’ the Lord revealed just how sinful he was, how he couldn’t fix himself or make himself right on his own and his desperate and total need of a Savior.
He played a role in the Lord teaching me through a game of Capture the Flag.
***To be clear, haven’t egged this matchmaking on or asked for this. It’s part of the culture to lovingly tease in this way.
Capture the Flag
Our last big game at this young adults’ retreat that we got to be a part of this past week. Men and women flocked to a field as we divvied up into two teams with the quest to cross a middle boundary, obtain the other team’s flag and return to our proper side.
My team’s strategy (communicated through gestures, translating and more gestures) after a few loses of the flag became for the girls to guard the flag while the boys take the offensive. This “Ukrainian husband” (read with a thick Eastern European accent) was on my team and lead that decision.
If you know me, that’s not really how I roll. I had already spent most of the game on the other team’s side- frozen for having been tagged and stopped on my way to snag the flag.
And yet, to honor the culture of those I was playing with and be flexible I obliged with a smile to chill by the flag. Was an honest fight to resist the urge to ditch guard duty the moment the guys started running across and trying to get the other flag. I waited. Waited and waited. Joked with Taylor, my teammate on the World Race who’s from Oklahoma, who was also guarding the flag and then waited more while it seemed the guys were “having all the fun.” This one dude dubbed my “Ukrainian husband” was off getting closer to the goal of the flag while I was just standing around.
Honestly, culture and gender dynamics have been a struggle for me. My default, how I’m wired, is to serve. I have a powerlifting background (lol can I still talk about high school- probably not) so I’m decently strong. I use that and all that I have to serve the Lord. In the States this has looked like carrying the heavy things a distance or just moving things in general when the opportunity arises.
Here though in Ukraine? I can’t count the number of times I’ve lifted something, even as small as a chair, and been met with “Knee, knee, knee” (Ok it’s actually Ni but it sounds like knee) and a finger waggle as some loving brother in Christ takes what I intended to do and does it for me.
On one hand, wow, how great that these godly men seek to love and serve in this way. On the other hand, WHY won’t you let me help you the way I want to help you? haha. How the Lord has humbled me in this process because wow is it so not about me but about Him. Truly I want to seek to love God well and other like the way he has first loved me. And that means not getting my way all the time, if ever. Even if my way is good intending.
Shifting gears back to capture the flag. We found ourselves as a team with all but one of our guys frozen on the other side. One brave soul on the other team crossed the boundary and got real close to our flag. As I chased them away and tagged them, freezing them on our side I found myself close to the line between our side and with no one really looking at me.
I prayed and checked my heart. Would crossing over discreetly, untagging the boys to set them up to get the flag be about me or is it genuinely for the good of the team and glorifying the Lord?
With the ok from the Lord, I casually walked across the boundary and was able to unfreeze three of our guys, including my “Ukrainian husband” before I got tagged.
The chasing of me that ensued after I untagged the guys served as a strategic distraction for those guys to then get the flag and work out a way to get it back to our territory.
?As we reveled in our victory, one of the guys thanked me for untagging them and my team agreed sharing high fives and smiles- grateful to have won and for the role each of us played in that.
Because I was obedient, and humbled myself to the cultural norms- staying behind to guard the flag created an opportunity. They weren’t paying attention to me because only the guys had been running across because I was available to unfreeze the guys and set them up well to get the flag.
This teaches me about how I can trust the Lord and rely on him moment by moment. That I should have a flexibility to strategies and plans but not immediately throw out plans and norms that are different than my preferences. It also teaches me more about how to “be all things to all people.” (1 Corinthians 9:22) How sometimes that looks like acting in a way that Ukrainian women do within a mixed gender dynamic.
Ukraine has straight up captured my heart. I love it here. The people, the way the Lord is moving among the people and the country itself is just straight up beautiful. Even if things are frustrating every once in a while, it’s all for his glory and he can use things as silly as capture the flag to refine my heart and teach me about himself.
All in all, I’m not married, Jesus uses all things for his glory and listening to the Lord even when it is counter our desires is so so worth it.
just dropped my new single, it’s me. I’m single,
(taken from @pakalupapito on twitter)
?Caitlyn Louise Buell
1 Corinthians 9:19-23
19 For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. 20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. 21 To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. 23 I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.
