Deeper | Wide Awake Family

I’m Baaaaaack!

Posted on October 31, 2024 by kimnjed

It’s been 4 months since I’ve shared this space with you. Can you believe that? It’s gone by fast, but it also feels like a century since I shared my heart with you.

When we first started this journey of “YES” that led us across the world to our life here in Ukraine it was very much the story and journey of our family. I shared the happenings on our blog, mainly just because blogging was “the thing” to do and I thought it could be kind of fun to try my hand at a public journal of such. I wanted a way to remember the process and also a way to fill in family and close friends in one bang. Killing two birds and all that jazz. The process, or journey, we started out on was an adoption journey. It was a personal, intimate journey for our family and sharing my heart and thoughts along the way was the only way I knew how to write. Over the years one thing led to another, which led to another, which led to us starting a non-profit, moving our family of 6 around the world, adopting Vlad, buying the Homestead property, taking guardianship of our boys, building the duplex…then war and refugee life and homecoming and horses and house parents and all.the.things. Over the past 12 years, this whole thing has become much more than our family’s personal journey and much more than my online journal of sorts.

And yet, I know that part of what has drawn people (and maybe you!) to this work has been hearing the personal perspective behind all the things happening around here. And because this work is not just my day job but also my family, my life, and the thing I believe I was made to do, it’s really quite impossible for me to tease out the personal from the organizational- even if I wanted to. I’m just, in general, a “heart-on-my-sleeve” type of person, so writing without getting too personal is just not something I’m able to do. That’s all fine and dandy when I’m feeling all fine and dandy, but it all kind of falls apart when I fall apart.

Over the years we have seen and experienced so much beauty, and we have also experienced a great deal of pain. There were the early years that were so exciting, but also filled with uncertainty and worry (especially about our kids. Remember how worried I was that they would never learn Ukrainian???). There was the huge transition of bringing the boys out and then the disappointment of realizing that they couldn’t all live with us forever like we thought. (By the way, what were we actually thinking, imagining that would work??? My word, we have learned a lot.) Then there was/is the war. The day we had to leave our home and take the boys as refugees in Germany was the single most painful day of my life. All of that I freely and honestly shared with you. I never wanted you to think this journey was all rainbows and unicorns, so I tried to be very honest about sharing the amazing and the heartbreaking. But over the past couple of years, maybe since the war started that honest, personal, and free channel of communication from me to you has slowly become harder and harder for me to access.

I can’t completely blame my “communication barrier”, of sorts, on the war, but I also can’t deny the part war has played in changing all of us to our cores. That time living away with all the boys in a different country was unbelievably challenging and traumatizing. I really hate to use that “T Word” because I’m aware it’s so overused and abused, but I feel like it’s a true way to describe that time. We left our home not knowing if we would ever be able to return. We then watched helplessly as our dear boys who had worked so incredibly hard, along with us, to come so far and heal so deeply and grow so much, slowly and then rapidly lose their skills and decline to such states that it became impossible to continue like we were in Germany. I don’t know if I’ve ever before or since felt such helplessness as I did in that time. I remember crying to Jed “I just don’t want this to be my life!” Rough times, Folks, rough times.

Another barrier to my sharing has just been the fact that I was, honestly, a bit burned out with sharing the story. Gasp! Truth bomb. Hehe. I mean, I’ve been sharing this work and this journey for 12 years now and I just felt tired. I felt uninspired. I felt like, although the work obviously, is just as important to me as the day it was birthed 12 years ago, I just didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I wanted to live it and savor it and love it as much as I do, without trying to figure out creative ways to describe it. I guess it was just a case of good ol’ fashioned burnout. And I’m so thankful to Christiana for lifting the newsletter responsibility from me during our sabbatical so I could just rest. What a gift!

And not to be a Debbie Downer, but there is one more barrier to communication between you and me. That one includes my kiddos and dignity and the whole jumbly casserole that comes out of life and ministry and work and family all being a mostly combined entity. To me, that jumbly casserole is the best ever and I wouldn’t trade that life for the world. But it does make communication a bit hard to splice out.

When we moved to Ukraine our kids were young and it seemed like they were little extensions of my body. Their joys and pains were easy to see and understand, and in those early days of life in Ukraine, I was feeling a lot of those same joys and pains so it was natural to share them with you. Our family unit was like a little island here in Ukraine and we felt and experienced all the things together. Now most of my children are teenagers and sharing their joys and pains online with people who don’t even know them doesn’t feel right or even related to what you come here to read. So there is the need to separate some of the Johnson family sharing from the greater Homestead family sharing.

But, there is a but. You know that our family is an adoptive family (several times over), and adoption has always been a big part of our heart. We heavily and successfully advocated for the adoption of foster children and many children from Ukraine before we moved here and then for several of our boys from Romaniv. I believe that adoption is God’s heart and a necessary act of love in this broken world. Children were made for families. Adoption is important and necessary, and also, adoption is incredibly painful and difficult. That is just the reality. Anytime a child is removed from their biological family there is pain, no matter the age of the child. Add in a history of substance abuse and the pain grows.

We moved to Ukraine to bring people with disabilities into family and to create a model of family and care that can be replicated by others around the country. There are many reasons why institutions like Romaniv exist, but one big reason is because of the lack of social safety net for families who have a child with a disability. There is a huge lack of qualified therapists and mental health specialists. The schools are not prepared for children with special needs and most schools have zero idea of how to actually work with children who can’t learn in the way that is expected and have zero plan for how to successfully educate those children. We see the final outcome of the lack of social safety net in our adult men who have come from the institution into our Wide Awake family, and we have experienced the effects of the lack of social safety net in our own family with one of our adopted children.

To parent a child with special needs in Ukraine is to fight the good fight on your own. There is no team brainstorming. There is no person telling you what they recommend you do. There are no provisions made. There is no support. All of these things you have to find on your own or create on your own. We have been doing this for our child for the past almost 11 years, and it has taken all that I have to give. I can’t tell you how isolating and painful it is to try everything and give everything and feel that at the end of the day, your family is alone in this fight for your child and there is no safety net if you should fail or make a wrong choice or miss a thing, or if you should have known better but just didn’t because you have never seen or known of another child like yours. To parent a child with special needs in Ukraine is to go at it completely alone and pray that at the end of the day, it will be enough.

I haven’t shared as much with you recently because I have been elbows deep in my own journey of parenting a child who desperately needs more than we can give. Our child needs what can only be found outside of Ukraine, but we know that God has us in Ukraine for that very population. It hasn’t really hit me until just while I’ve been writing this that this must be how all the mamas of our friends with disabilities must have felt over the years. We need for our children what can’t be found in our country. And we wonder how things would be different if we had the resources that others have. We do our best but feel at the end of each day that we are failing and pray that God will cover it all. Hope can be hard to find at times. We can only trust that God loves our children more than we do and that He will give us the wisdom we need when we need it.

So, wow, maybe this got a bit rambly (is that a word?) I just wanted you to know where I’ve been; where my head and heart have been. Praise God the work here continues, more beautiful than ever. Our team and our boys are thriving, even during these dark times in our country. Because of the amazing and steady work of our team I’m able to take more of a backseat from the day-to-day work of Wide Awake/Dime Hidnosti to focus on our child. I’m incredibly thankful for that.

I’m back, feeling a bit more refreshed and ready to share with you again. There is never a dull moment around here and we are honored to walk this never-dull journey with you.

Why Quit Social Media?

Posted on September 29, 2020 by kimnjed

Oof. This is a doozy to write. Ha! But, I just have to be me and be real and honest with you, just as I’ve attempted to be all along this journey. There’s no point in trying to be someone or something I’m not. I just don’t have it in me. 😉

A couple years ago I started really disliking how attached I had become to social media. I didn’t like the comparison game I allowed it to incite in me. I didn’t like the time I wasted on it. I didn’t like the demands it made of me to give “all or nothing”. If you want to do well at running social media for a nonprofit you can’t just “kind of” do it. Because of the all-powerful algorithm, you are bound to posting very frequently, or your posts go on the wayside, missed by most people and buried under the next political debate.

I bemoaned the need for social media and wanted to quit, just for my own mental health, but felt I had no option to opt out because of Wide Awake. We HAD to be on social media or we would become obsolete. That’s what I told myself. So, we stayed, even though I often didn’t feel good about it.

Over the past couple of months I’ve been deep-diving into all aspects of tech and how we, as a family, interact with technology (By tech, I mean screens and devices. We’re still okay with washing machines and lightbulbs). Tomorrow we’re concluding a 30 day screen detox as a family and it has been really cool. During our detox Jed and I used screens for our work, but as a family we did zero screen time. We said no to tv, movies, video games, and browsing online. But we said YES to playing tons of games, yes to evening conversations on the couch, yes to just being together and yes to fighting boredom with things besides screens.

During the detox I’ve spent a lot of time educating myself on the impact of screens and social media on our society today. I’m a mom of teens, so I don’t get to turn a blind eye to these things. I need to know what is happening online and I need to be savvy about it. I went into the education aspect of it with a desire for a game plan for how our family would move forward at the month’s end, but I came out with so much more.

Like I said yesterday, social media can be great. Some of our boys’ lives have literally been saved because of the reach of social media. Wide Awake has been on social media since our beginning, and we have experienced great friendship and wonderful blessing from people we have met via social media.

But, Friends, there is so much wrong with social media. So so much. Sex trafficking and pornography and hate and incitement of fear is right at our fingertips. If we at Wide Awake value every human life, and if we believe in bringing dignity and hope, how can we rely on social media to relay our message? Social media can be great for some, but honestly, it greatly benefits a very few and brings great harm to many.

When I started to feel that gut feeling, that prodding from the Holy Spirit that we needed to change course and share our message in a different way, it scared the heckouttame.

A glimpse of my stream of consciousness: I mean, isn’t that like non-profit suicide??? How can you even have a successful non-profit if you aren’t on social media??? People will think we’re some kind of fanatical crazy people. People might think we’re lazy. No one reads emails anymore. People will forget about us. People will forget about us. People will forget.

I’m still battling many of those thoughts as I sit here writing to you. A big part of me is so afraid of what this will mean for Wide Awake- BUT I know that I know that this is what God is asking of us. He is asking us to do things HIS way and not our own way. He is asking us to redefine success. He is asking us to rely on Him for our provision- and not Instagram and Facebook. He is asking us to trust Him to bring us the helpers we need. He is asking us to allow Him to be our provider, our friend, our source, our encouragement, our reason. He wants to be all those things and when He follows through on His promises He will get all the glory. It won’t be because I posted at 1:00pm Monday through Friday. It won’t be because a post had a beautiful photo or a high engagement. It will be because this is God’s work and He is for it. He is FOR US and He will complete His work here in Ukraine with or without social media.

So, we are choosing to trust, even when it may seem ludicrous to some. It’s okay if you don’t understand. We can still be friends. (Just not FB friends…hehe 😉

The work will continue here and we will continue to faithfully share the joys and the pains- just in other ways. I hope you will join us because it’s gonna be AWESOME.

PS: I was thinking of doing a post with resources I learned from on this journey. Would you be interested in me sharing those in a future post?

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As always, if you have any questions, ask away! We are open. You can message below or reach me by email at kjohnson@wideawakeinternational.org

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2019: A Year of Learning and Miracles

Posted on December 30, 2019 by kimnjed

Well this year sure flew by in a flurry! I was just looking through the 2019 blog posts to find the highlights to link here and saw that I really didn’t write a whole lot. That in itself shows what kind of year we had around here: fast and furious. 🙂

Here in our home, with Anton and Ruslan, this year has been unbelievably difficult. There have been many beautiful moments, don’t get me wrong, but the overarching feeling when I sat down and initially looked back over this year in our home was not “beautiful”, it was “stinkin’ hard and painful”. It has been a year of learning to lay down our lives and learning what this dream of deinstitutionalization really is. Of course we already had some experience with Vlad and Boris, but for many reasons it has just been exponentially harder with Anton and Ruslan. We have learned A LOT. We have changed A LOT. And we have so much to be thankful for.

I’d love to sit down and report to you the many great strides and changes that have been made in our boys, and while they have changed and made some strides, the greater changes have been made in the hearts of our family.

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This year has forced us, Jed and me, to dig deep down inside ourselves and deal with our junk, ’cause Lord knows we’ve got a whole lot of it. Many times this year the way has felt so dark. We have felt hopeless, helpless and in way over our heads. We’ve learned, and are still learning, how impossible it is to do this thing of deinstitutionalization in our own strength. We’ve learned that we’ll most definitely burn out and cope in unhealthy ways when we try to do this on our own. We’ll get bitter. We’ll pick up our phones as an escape. We’ll get all judgey. We’ll lose our patience with our kids and we’ll even stop laughing.

There’s just no way around it. We either do this thing with Jesus, or we fail. That has been the big lesson of 2019: Jed and Kim without Jesus doesn’t work. Praise God for his never-ending mercy and unrelenting love toward us, and thank God for your prayers and encouragement that have sustained us in the darkest of times.

We are different people than we were at the beginning of the year, in a good way. So when I look at it that way I am filled with thankfulness for this past year of struggle. We are changed. Our kids are changed. They have grown and stepped up and matured. Our team has grown and stepped up and matured. Our team has grown in love for each other and we have learned so very much about the path that lies ahead of us. If we had never brought Ruslan and Anton into our home we would have been dreadfully unprepared for the next phases of this journey. So, praise God that his ways are higher than ours. All the tears, all the struggles with self, all the sleepless nights have been 100% worth it. I mean that.

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When you look outside our home at the other parts of this Wide Awake machine there are no shortage of miracles. 🙂

In January we sent out desperate plea for our “Preston” to be adopted. The government was threatening to send him back to the institution if he did not have a committed family by summer. A family pretty quickly stepped forward and they met Preston on Christmas Eve. 🙂 Christmas Day at our house was spent with Preston and his new family getting to know each other. Praise God for his love for our sweet boy.

Preston with his new daddy on Christmas Day

In July we sent out another desperate plea for our “Aaron” to be adopted. He was the last boy at Romaniv available for adoption and was going to age out at the end of the year, making him forever unadoptable. That same day, as the post was being written, an adoptive family was at Romaniv for another boy (“Kayden”) and they also fell in love with Aaron. They ended up adding him to their adoption and had court for him on December 18th. Aaron is legally an orphan no more, saved at the very last minute by an AMAZING family. He’ll go home to them in January. Praise God for his pursuit of the ones left behind and forgotten for so many years. This is such a huge miracle!!!

Aaron will go home with his new family in January!

Kayden was adopted in the fall by the same family. Look at him on his first day of school!

If those adoptions were the only thing that happened this year it would be enough to be a miraculous year, but let’s not forget the ginormous building right outside our back door. Ha!

Thanks to the generosity of donors, the next Wide Awake home is well on it’s way to completion. The roof is on and the windows and doors are in. We are looking at a completion date of late spring, early summer. It’s amazing!!! (and did I mention, huge?)

The house is a duplex, so it has the capacity to be a forever home for 8 of our friends from Romaniv- four on each side, plus the people who will live there with them.

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We were thinking the end of the year would be a cool time to do a kind of “Virtual Housewarming” for the duplex. Many people have asked how they can be a part of the work here, and helping us to outfit the duplex with all the needed appliances is a great, tangible way to contribute to the freedom of our boys.

If you would like to contribute toward any of these items, just click on the item and proceed through the form. Thank you!

We are still searching for who will live in the duplex with our boys, so if this is something that your heart can’t let go of, please contact us and we can begin a conversation. I promise we are great neighbors. 😉

As we end the year I want to say thank you to this Wide Awake community for being such a wonderful source of encouragement and support to us and our team. In the good times you have celebrated with us, and in the hard times you have encouraged us, trusted us, and lifted our arms, encouraging us to press on, reminding us of our why. We thank God for you and look forward to the growth that will happen in 2020!

BeLOVE[d]

You can follow Wide Awake on Facebook and Instagram (@wide_awake_international). I update there much more frequently than here on the blog, especially when things get super crazy up in here. But I promise to keep this space alive too, if you still prefer blogs, so no worries 🙂

Superheroes Live in Our House.

Posted on February 12, 2019 by kimnjed

Sometimes I don’t know completely what I’m thinking or feeling until I write it out. You’ve been warned. 🙂

When we moved to Ukraine 5 years ago our mission was clear: to bring hope, love and dignity to people with disabilities. Our main goal was deinstitutionalization. We dreamed of this work. We dreamed of this reality. We dreamed of the day we would begin to bring our guys out and have the opportunity to show them the love of a family. I dreamed of being a mama to them- to those who had no mama.

Now we are living that dream. It is a reality!

Four of the very ones we dreamed of setting free are downstairs drinking tea at the kitchen table. The ones who can speak call me “mama”. I dreamed of that. 🙂

Yes, I dreamed of it, but now that it’s here, I struggle with the reality of it. The day to day of it is harder than I imagined- much less romantic than I imagined. The reality of deinstitutionalization of adults who are so very broken- body, mind and spirit is non-stop work with very little reward. Yet I longed for it. I wept for it. I dreamed of it. But it’s so dang hard. So.dang.hard.

Where’s the disconnect? I love our guys. I can’t imagine not having them with us. Then why do I struggle so bad with their behaviors? Why am I so often annoyed? Why do I (too often) wake with dread in my heart over the hardships I know the day will bring?

I can tell you why. Two reasons:

Far too often I try to do this work, live this life, without Jesus.
As much as I fight for our guys to be included and seen as equals by the people around them, in my heart, I still see them as “less than”.

Friends, this work will bring you to your knees. Spending your life with the broken, teaching them to become human is a work that will break you. Well, I guess I can’t speak for you, but it’s definitely breaking me. Every single day I’m confronted with my own weakness, my own ugliness. It’s so yucky. Here I am fighting for justice for our guys; trying to show Ukrainians a new way, and yet I know that I don’t value them the way they deserve to be valued. Somehow, even after knowing all they have suffered, I still have a bit of my heart that looks down at them.

God forgive me.

I put my agenda before them. I dismiss their feelings as less important than my own. I shower love on them when they behave more human, but when they move into old behaviors I withhold my affection.

God forgive me.

I find myself realizing that those who are “lower functioning” (I hate that term but don’t know a better one) are generally easier for me because they require less of me. I can care for them more on my terms- when it’s convenient for me. The “higher functioning” of our boys demand more. Their struggles, feelings and hurts are presented in more complex ways and I’m exhausted with trying to make sense of it all, so I sometimes give up.

God forgive me.

As you’ve figured out, if you’ve read this far- I am far from a superhero (I’m sure you already knew that). I am a super flawed human who screws up on the regular. I function too often out of my own strength, which is consistently running out.

I need Jesus. Guys, I have zero business getting out of my bed and letting my feet touch the ground without first talking with Jesus. I’ll tell you what happens when I try to do my day in Kim’s strength. I’m short- like I have zero patience. I’m easily annoyed. I find more joy in my coffee than in the people around me. I’m discontent. I search for approval from others. I look for distraction. I compare my life to the lives of others and I either envy them, judge them, or puff myself up. Bottom line: Kim minus Jesus equals HOT MESS.

I’m not sure why I think I can do this on my own when I so clearly stink at it.

And yet-

His power is made perfect in my weakness. God has called us to this work and I know that I know if I turn to Him He will give me everything I need. Tomorrow is a new day and His mercies are new every morning. Amen?

I’ll tell you who the superheroes are around here: their names are Ruslan, Anton, Boris and Vladik.

Our guys have endured unimaginable pain, abuse and neglect. Their childhoods were stolen from them. Their teen years were stolen from them. So many missed opportunities, missed birthdays, missed cuddles, missed “I love you”s, missed adventures, missed family dinners, missed holidays, missed moments of peace and joy. Ruslan, Anton and Boris spent 3 decades as prisoners, innocent of any crime.

They came to us afraid, diseased, malnourished of body and spirit. But every single day they wake up and they try again. They are survivors. They are learning to give themselves to others, learning to become human. I’m certain it hurts them far more than it hurts me.

Our guys are deserving of the best- not because of what they have endured and not because of their likability, but because they are children of God, created in His image, just like you and me.

I’m done. I’m done holding back a part of my heart and selfishly longing for something different. I’m done parceling out my love to those who “deserve it” in that particular moment.

I’m here. I’m planting myself. No matter if our guys are every fully included into society here in Ukraine, they will fully be included into my heart. Not everyone is lucky enough to live with superheroes, but I get to live with 4. I’m one lucky lady. 🙂

BeLOVE[d]

A Different Kind of Hero

Posted on May 4, 2018 by kimnjed

On Sunday we had quite the scary experience. We had been at church, picked up some groceries, and arrived back at home. Seth was helping Boris get out of the van and Boris, for whatever reason, didn’t try to step out of the van at all, but just leaned all of his body weight on unprepared Seth. Boris fell backward and hit the ground- head first with a loud thunk/crack/give.me.a.heart.attack. I screamed (loudly) for Jed and he rushed out to scoop Boris up in his arms. It was so scary. It makes my stomach ache just remembering that moment.

Boris turned out to be fine. Thank you Jesus! Since he is nonverbal and couldn’t tell us anything about how he was feeling, we decided it was best to take him straight to the hospital after the fall to get him checked out. All the questions about blurry vision or pain or feeling confused were irrelevant since Boris doesn’t speak. I found myself watching him constantly for any sign of discomfort or any irregularities. He seemed a bit “off” that day and the next, but since then has been totally himself. We are so thankful.

In those moments after the fall his vulnerability slapped me in the face. In those moments my empathy for him grew by leaps and bounds. I realized again just how incredibly vulnerable Boris is. He can’t verbalize his needs or wants. He can’t cook or prepare his own food. He can’t get to the toilet without help. He can’t get his clothes on and off without help. He can’t bathe himself. He can only walk very short distances. He relies on us for absolutely everything – 100% of the time.

We don’t know if Boris was able to do more things independently in his early years, before he came to the institution. But we do know that for the past 19 years at the institution he was 100% reliant on others to meet his needs. He was completely at the mercy of the institution’s staff. He relied on them for food, drink, cleanliness, safety- he could do nothing for himself. He was completely vulnerable and had to entrust himself into their hands, because he had no choice. But the ones who were meant to meet all of those needs let him down. He wasn’t safe. He wasn’t clean. He was chronically dehydrated and his body was emaciated and twisted from neglect. Because of lack of resources, lack of staff, and an environment that does not value life, he suffered. He suffered so greatly for many years. The neglect and abuse he has seen is more than any human should ever have to endure. My heart breaks.

Then one day, 4 months ago, Boris was plucked out of that environment and had no choice but to entrust himself to others: us. As vulnerable as ever, he came to us broken and afraid. Life has not taught him that people are to be trusted. Life has taught him that he has to fight and manipulate to make sure his needs are met. Boris didn’t know our intentions, and maybe he still doesn’t fully know them, but because of his physical and mental limitations, he must put his trust in us. He is completely vulnerable. He has no other choice.

This morning I was helping Boris to put his dirty clothes in the hamper. He did an awesome job and I was so proud of him! In that proud and happy moment I reached up to give him a high five and he flinched. He thought I was going to hit him and all the happiness of the moment flew out of the room. Oh my heart. He had so much fear on his face. So I tried to repair the moment. I told him how much I love him, I told him how smart he is, how special he is…I kissed his face and hugged his neck. But the peacefulness of the morning was ruined. He went back into his place of fear. Self-harm was again the order of the day. I took him outside to wait for our neighbor to take him for his morning walk. I brought Bluebell (our dog) over for comfort, put his weighted blanket on his lap, turned on some of his favorite music, and after a few minutes he was smiling at me again. He again entrusted himself to me. What a precious, brave soul.

What will we do with the trust Boris gives to us? How will we care for him in his moments of greatest vulnerability? Will we shush him and brush him off even when we see that he is trying to communicate something, or will we take the moment to be patient and try to understand? Will we get irritated when he self-harms, or will we choose compassion and again help him to keep himself safe? Will we become victims to our own life decisions, or will we recognize what an honor it is to care for him and take part in his healing?

I want to always remember what an incredible honor and privilege it is to be the ones who get to care for Boris. We get to teach him a new way. We get to show him that people can be loving. Hands can be for hugs and gentleness. Words can be spoken in love and patience. What joy to watch him learn that there will always be enough to eat. He will always have a place at the table. He will always have a daddy there to scoop him up when he falls. He will always have brothers and sisters to push him on the swing. He will always have a safe, warm place to sleep. Every time we serve Boris we show him a new way. We hold his vulnerable heart in our hands and we care for his vulnerable body. It isn’t always easy, but if we keep our hearts open it will always be beautiful.

Boris is so incredibly strong. His body may be weak, but to have endured the life he has been given and still choose to smile, still choose to love, still choose to accept love from others… I have so much to learn.

There is no doubt in my mind that people like Boris will be the ones at the head of that big feasting table in heaven. The weakest among us has become my hero.