The Looming Reality of War
Photos courtesy of Sharon T. Markey
On February 25, 2022, Russia began its invasion of Ukraine. Missionaries there for decades, George Markey, Jr., and his wife Sharon were familiar with years of Russian aggression—but never thought they would have to leave their beloved adopted country. Learn more about their journey in Part 1 of a 9-part series. Sharon details coming to grips with the reality of war and determining God’s plan for their family as Russian troops descended upon their city of Kyiv.
Sharon and George Markey, Jr., stand in front of St. Andrew’s Church in Kyiv, Ukraine. “Ukraine has many beautiful churches, and this one … is my favorite,” stated Sharon. Despite years of fighting between Russian separatists and Ukrainians, the Markeys served as missionaries in Kyiv. When Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and began bombing Kyiv, they were forced to flee their beloved adopted country.
We meet lots of refugees from Ukraine here in Budapest, Hungary. It’s easy. All you have to do is go to a park and listen for people speaking Ukrainian or Russian. Then you ask them where they’re from and how they ended up in Budapest. People are desperate to tell their refugee stories. They often start with the morning of February 24, 2022, with the moment they realized the full-scale war had started.
This is my story, but to tell it properly, I have to go back to the moment when I first started to take the threat of invasion seriously.
George and Sharon along with their boys and Jack, their dog, stand on the front steps of their apartment building in Kyiv just months before the full-scale Russian invasion. “We had no plans to leave. Kyiv was our home,” Sharon proclaimed.
Missionaries in Ukraine
My husband and I, our six kids, two pet rats, and one dog were living in Kyiv, Ukraine, where we were planting a Calvary Chapel. We had been living in Ukraine for a long time. My husband moved to Ukraine with his missionary parents at the age of 16 and had helped them plant the very first Calvary Chapel in the country. I had been in Ukraine since shortly after we had gotten married 19 years earlier, and our kids had all spent their entire lives there. By this point, we had lived through two revolutions, the Russian takeover of Crimea, and eight years of fighting in the eastern part of the country. The unofficial war with Russian separatists in the east was a daily fact of life. It had been frightening at first, but as the years dragged on and the violence stayed far away from us, we had gotten used to it.
Preparing & Planning
In October 2021, Russia began to amass troops on three sides of Ukraine. For a while, I was blissfully unaware of the gathering storm, but in early December my husband's brother-in-law, a veteran missionary and all-around savvy, knowledgeable person, asked us what we planned to do if Russia invaded. The conversation that followed had a sobering effect on me. As a result, I packed two small suitcases with our important documents, valuables, and items that had sentimental value. I stacked them next to my desk, ready to go at a moment’s notice, and talked to my husband to develop a family evacuation plan.
The plan was very simple: Pull our five-seat sedan out of the car-sharing fleet where it was generating passive income, cram all eight members of our family plus our three pets inside, and head west. In retrospect, it was a laughably stupid plan with far too many aspects that could fail.
As we progressed into January 2022, concern over what [Russian President Vladimir] Putin was planning continued to mount. We started to receive emails from the United States Embassy advising us to leave Ukraine, and my family in the U.S. started to contact me frequently. They refrained from telling us outright what to do, but I could tell they were terribly worried about us, and their fear was contagious. I fought to trust God, find peace, and live one day at a time. Sometimes I found the blissful peace of Jesus that defies human understanding, but it was a daily—sometimes an hourly—struggle.
I will hear what God the LORD will speak, for He will speak peace to His people and to His saints. Psalm 85:8a
We had no plans to leave. Kyiv was our home. Where would we even go? Moving back to the U.S. never entered our thoughts, though my dad and my brother repeatedly assured us we would always have a place to stay with them. Our family has never lived in the U.S. While we enjoy visiting, it’s not home, and it would take a whole lot more than the threat of war to cause us to give up on the missionary lifestyle we know and put ourselves through the major upheaval of transitioning to life in the U.S. It would take the clear leading of God. But assuming we had a place to flee, we still hesitated—because how much do you disrupt your family over fear about a what-if that you don’t believe will ever become a reality?
Even though I didn’t believe Putin would launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as the weeks passed, I started to feel mounting suspense. The hardest thing for me was not the fear of the what-ifs, but the uncertainty about the now. What were we supposed to do? I felt that God had told me I didn’t need to be afraid, but were we being irresponsible parents by not evacuating our kids? Or were we being obedient to God?
Weighty Decisions
I remember telling my husband that if I knew for sure that none of us would die as a result of our decision to stay, I would be at peace, no matter what happened. But without that foreknowledge, I was in a torment of suspense. Should we go or should we stay? How long did we have to make a decision? I began to feel suffocated, crushed under the weight of indecision.
In early February, my two brothers-in-law who lived in the city of Ternopil in western Ukraine came to Kyiv for a few days. They were both missionaries working with the Calvary Chapel in that city. When they headed back to Ternopil, we decided to send our three oldest boys with them. That way, if we found ourselves needing to evacuate, at least the rest of us would fit in our car.
Kyiv schools were shut due to COVID, so it seemed like a perfect opportunity for the older boys to get some coveted time with their cousins. The rest of us planned to make a visit to Ternopil in a few weeks, to see friends and relatives there and bring our boys home again once things on the border with Russia calmed down.
In the meantime, we decided to pull our car out of the car-sharing fleet. We wanted to keep it parked by our apartment so it would be ready to serve as our getaway vehicle, if need be. But the same night that my husband was going to go retrieve it, a renter totaled it.
To make matters worse, the emails from the U.S. Embassy had become increasingly urgent. Now they were saying that all American citizens should leave Ukraine immediately by any means available. They were even chartering flights back to the U.S. and offering tickets to U.S. citizens. Any citizen who chose to remain in Ukraine, we were told, had to understand that the U.S. government would not evacuate them if Russia invaded. If we chose to disregard their warnings, we would be on our own. One day I even got a call on my cell phone from an unfamiliar number. I answered hesitantly and was shocked to find a representative of the U.S. Department of State on the other end. He wanted to know what our plans were and make sure we understood the gravity of the situation—and that the U.S. would take no responsibility for us if we chose to stay.
Listen to counsel and receive instruction, that you may be wise in your latter days. There are many plans in a man’s heart, nevertheless the LORD’s counsel—that will stand. Proverbs 19:20-21
If the suspense and indecision had been difficult to manage before, now they were absolutely overwhelming. I went back and forth in my mind multiple times per day: Should we go or should we stay? I was tormented and paralyzed. Five days before the start of the invasion, my husband offered to call a friend who is an army chaplain to see what her take on the situation was. The general mood among Ukrainians was that nothing too awful was going to happen, because Putin was too smart to launch an invasion that would cost him so much and would be destined to fail. So we were a little stunned by what our chaplain friend said to us: “George, if I were in your place, I would get Sharon and the kids out of Kyiv. LISTEN TO ME!! Get … them … out!”
Ternopil-Bound
We didn’t argue. We immediately bought four train tickets to Ternopil for the next day, Sunday, February 20. It was almost a relief to have someone whom we trusted a lot more than the Western media give us a definitive answer. Since our getaway bags had been standing at the ready for months, it wasn’t hard to finish packing. I put a few changes of clothes in each of the kids’ backpacks and told them to add anything they would be really sad never to see again. I was trying to downplay the gravity of the situation, but I wanted them to take anything with sentimental value in case the worst came to pass. I explained we didn’t need to take toys, because we could always buy more toys, but if they had something that was special because of who had given it to them, they should take that. I also packed a backpack for myself and collected my musical instruments.
George chose to remain in Kyiv to continue our church planting work with our team. He would come to Ternopil in a few weeks to help me bring our whole family back home by train. We met with our house church that Sunday morning. We had no way of knowing it was the last time some of us would see each other for a very long time. … I’ve been separated from over half of those dear people for [two years].
A Guitar, Flute, & Cake—Precious Belongings
As I was getting ready to leave our apartment, a friend gave me a large cake to take with me. It was a sweet gesture, but I wanted so badly to refuse it! I was already feeling stressed about managing three little kids (ages 3, 5, and 8), their backpacks, my backpack, two small suitcases, and my musical instruments—and now I had a cake to top it off! But I tried to accept it graciously and adjust.
And then, just as we were about to walk out the door, my 5-year-old came up and said he wanted to take his toy electric guitar. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around trying to transport one more item, so I explained that we couldn’t take it because it wouldn’t fit in any of our bags and might get broken if it wasn’t packed properly. He started to cry—huge, choking sobs. Surprised, I got down on one knee to look into his face and asked him what was wrong.
“What if the Russians bomb our house and break my guitar?” he wailed.
At that, I almost started to cry too. It’s a messed-up world when a 5-year-old has to be tormented by such thoughts. To my knowledge, we had never talked about the possibility of Kyiv being bombed in his hearing, but somehow, he knew the grave danger our home faced.
“And the LORD, He is the One who goes before you. He will be with you, He will not leave you nor forsake you; do not fear nor be dismayed.” Deuteronomy 31:8
I clasped him to myself in a desperate hug saying, “Of course you can take your guitar, buddy.” So he wore his backpack on his back and used the guitar strap to hang the bright red plastic toy on the front of his body. He attracted a lot of bemused looks at the train station, but he was so pleased. We were quite the pair, because I too wore a backpack and had a musical instrument (my flute) slung across my front. I also carried my violin and my 3-year-old’s backpack in one hand and held the 3-year-old by the hand with my other hand.
The 5-year-old and the 8-year-old managed to carry the cake between them by each holding one handle of the plastic shopping bag it was in. George went to the train station with us, and he and my 8-year-old managed the two small rolling suitcases. (The 8-year-old insisted that he be allowed to take one.)
Leaving Kyiv, Sharon and three of her sons take precious belongings—including musical instruments and a cake—as they await the train to Ternopil.
Our goodbye on the platform was cheerful, as if we were just going away for a short time. I was relieved to be free of the suspense that had plagued me for so many weeks, and as far as I was concerned, all this upheaval was simply a pretext for some unexpected vacation time with loved ones in another city.
How very wrong I was.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of Sharon’s story: As Sharon and the boys leave Kyiv for Ternopil in western Ukraine, George stays behind. Thinking they would be safer farther away from the invasion, Sharon is panicked by unexpected air raid sirens. Alone and feeling stranded, she describes how she sought the Lord in prayer over the safety of her family and George as the bombing began in Kyiv.
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Sharon T. Markey was a Calvary Chapel missionary in Ukraine for 19 years prior to the full-scale Russian invasion. Her husband George served there for 30 years as a Calvary Chapel church planter. Since evacuating to Hungary with their six sons, they have been ministering to Ukrainian refugees all over the country. Sharon is writing a book about their experiences. You can connect with her at MommyJoys.com
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