Meet Ru! I’m pretty sure that’s not actually how it’s spelled…heck let’s be honest Ru isn’t even her real name. Her real name is something very Vietnamese sounding that I could not pronounce but for the sake of this story lets just go with Ru. Over the course of the last month in Vietnam Ru and I have been on a rollercoaster together and so I decided to tell you all about it.
So, this past month my team and I were teaching English to Vietnamese students. Every morning we taught toddlers and 3 afternoons per week we taught older kids. Day 1 at the daycare one of the kids we met was Ru. I vividly remember this encounter because Ru was screaming at the top of her lungs. That’s right… from day one Ru was terrified of us. The director tried to place her in our arms and she screamed and flailed her arms and you would have thought we were trying to kill her.
The first few days we came around Ru would run away and hide behind one of the teachers. Then I noticed that she wasn’t hiding from my teammates anymore. She even let one of them feed her. So I thought oh okay she must be warming up to us. So I smiled and waved and she literally screamed and ran to the other side of the room crying hysterically. In that moment I realized she wasn’t afraid of all of us anymore she was only afraid of me.
For some reason she was TERRIFIED of me. If I entered the room she would just start screaming and crying and running away as fast as she could. I would wave and smile but that did nothing to calm her fear. I was strange and unfamiliar and she wanted absolutely nothing to do with me. Honestly, the only time I saw another black person during the entire month in Vietnam was the one-day we went to the district where a lot of transplants from other countries live. So she had probably never experienced someone like me before. I tried to giver her space and let her warm up to me but the daycare is only so big and we inevitably crossed path’s many times and every time her reaction was the same…TERROR. I know she saw me playing with the other kids, feeding them, laughing, and being kind but for some reason she wanted no parts of that. She was going to do anything in her power to stay as far away from me as possible.
Then it happened. One day we were put in a situation where she couldn’t avoid me. After school a few of my teammates and I rode with our host to a soccer game. Well Ru’s dad was also playing in the soccer game so Ru was riding with us from the daycare to the soccer field. When Ru got in the car and saw that I was sitting right next to her she had her usual reaction. She screamed and she cried and again you would have thought we were trying to murder the girl. So Jasmine puts Ru in her lap and starts singing “The wheels on the bus.” Thankfully this distracted her until we got to the field. Once we got to the field Ru kept a very close eye on me. She didn’t cry or scream but she made sure I kept my distance.
I guess if I was going to turn into a 3 headed monster and try to chew her arm off the ride to the soccer game would have been my chance. So, in the days following the soccer game Ru no longer cried or screamed or ran away when I waved and smiled at her. Instead, she would put her face in her hands and pretend she couldn’t see me. Maybe she thought as long as she pretended I wasn’t there that’s all that mattered. So instead of being terrified she decided to just ignore me. This phase lasted for quite a while.
I honestly don’t even know when the shift from there actually happened. But some time after pretending I didn’t exist she decided to drop the act and acknowledge my existence. Not only that but she started to show me love. She started waving, smiling, and actually hugging me! She would literally run full speed and crash right into me wrapping her arms around my legs. Before I could look for her, she was already looking for me. One day someone did something to her on the playground (toddler drama) and she ran to me in tears pointing at the culprit and telling me what happened. Now of course she was speaking in Vietnamese and she’s a toddler (who can understand them in any language) so I had no clue what she was saying. But the important thing was that not only was she no longer fearful of me but she came to me in one of her lowest moments.
I was reflecting on the journey I had in my relationship with Ru over the course of the month and God gave me incredible insight. In the moments as they happened I didn’t understand the story that was unfolding before my eyes but in hindsight I see it all so clearly. Can you guess what it is?
SPOILER ALERT: I’m God and Ru is every single one of us.
Through this little girl God showed me the love story we have with the Father. Everyone starts off afraid. Asking questions like who or what is God? How could I ever trust something so seemingly foreign? Why would I ever invite this strange thing into my life? I’ve been doing just fine without Him and I don’t need Him now.
Then perhaps a situation happens in our lives where we are forced to face the existence of God. A financial hardship, an illness, or any other situation where we are forced to look God in the face because the situation is completely beyond our control and there is no way to avoid it.
After something like that so many times we convince ourselves that what we experienced was a fluke. Yeah maybe there is a God but what happened was probably a coincidence. In the back of our minds and in our hearts we know that He’s there but we hide our faces and pretend that if we just don’t acknowledge Him maybe it will all just go away. Some of us have hidden our faces because of shame of the things we have done before, or from frear, or simply because we don’t know how to accept love. We lay in our beds at night with this nagging feeling that there has to be more but then when the sun rises we put back on our faces of self reliance and go out to try to face the world alone. When all along the ultimate helper is standing right there waving and smiling and saying here I am let me show you how deep my love for you really is and how amazing your life can be with me.
Ru reached a place in the story that so many people still have not. She pushed passed her fear of the unknown, the unfamiliar, rejection, and many other things and she chose to accept the love that was right there in front of her all along. Like I did in my encounters with her God also won’t force you to love him. There is beauty in the free will he gives us. Because in the end we know He didn’t strong arm us into relationship with Him but we freely chose Him. It meant so much to me when Ru showed me love because I knew it was real. We are all on our own journeys and things happen in different timing for us all but for some, maybe even you, the time is now. What is holding you back from the love of the Father? What is stopping you from accepting the amazing gift He is placing before you?
No matter what phase you are in in the story of Ru and I or you and God just know that He is there. He loves you and he is patiently waiting with open arms for you to come crashing into Him.
