From: Ira Kapitonova in Kyiv (Day 1103)
God looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.
Psalm 53:2
In the past three years, there have been days when we felt terrified, overwhelmed, frustrated, or angry. However, we don’t have the luxury of dwelling on those feelings for a long time. If we want to exist, we need to do something and progress from denial to acceptance in a matter of hours.
On Saturday, I could barely drag myself out of bed, but we had a Book Fair at our school to attend. Seeing our families together picking new books for our reading month, kids sitting down to read right away, and our upper-schoolers setting up, cleaning up, and running the event brought me hope and showed me that even though I might feel helpless and defenseless against big lies and “big people,” there are still battles I can fight. That’s why I will keep fighting for our kids and for the hearts of future generations. I will do whatever I can to protect them from getting discouraged and thinking they’re too small to make a difference. I want them to be inspired, dream big, and make a difference in this world. These may seem like baby steps in the grand scale of events, but it is my responsibility and the difference I can make.
When we came home on Saturday, I had a desperate desire to create something tangible that would be a visual reminder of that inner resolve. So I sat down to paint. I am not an artist. Someone once told me I was bad at drawing, and I believed them so much that I had never even tried. Until the fall of 2022. During massive missile attacks and blackouts, a thought occurred to me, “What if I die without ever trying to paint?” So, that night, I used the last minutes of my internet connection to order painting supplies. I would sit by the candlelight and try to recreate the tutorials I found. It gave me a sense of control and capability. That’s what I needed on Saturday. I was mixing colors on the paper, and my son was painting next to me. When he looked at my paper, he said it felt like the storm was coming over the wheat field. That’s when I decided to add the drawing of wheat stalks. And then I realized it was a reflection of what was going on inside of me. It feels like the storm is coming, an unpredictable and sinister one. The wheat stalks cannot run away and hide in the face of the storm, and they may look pitiful and helpless, yet even if their only option is to tighten the grip on the soil and weather the storm, they may come out a little bent, but it’s still better than giving in and being blown away like chaff.
May this storm pass and may our harvest be plentiful.
Voice of Ukraine 