Is it possible to hate to love someone? Or maybe love to hate someone? Well, this month I had an experience unlike any that I have ever had before. The 10th month of my Race, my route said that I would be serving in Moldova, but my team was placed in Transnistria. For two weeks of the month, we worked on a construction site thinking we would be hauling bricks the whole month. In one swoop of a conversation we were signed up to plan, organize, prepare, clean, and run a summer camp. As three teams of Racers, we joined in with a group of youth from the church to staff an English Summer Camp with our church contact. This was nothing but a small undertaking. The learning that took place in just the first week of the camp will be with me for years.
One of the lessons that hit me the hardest started in my “studio” of girls. (The theme for the week was Hollywood so we were separated into Hollywood studios. My girls were called Paramount Pictures Studio). Day one of camp rolled around and the excitement and complete oblivion of what was coming energized us to greet our campers at the grand entrance of registration. Each girl showed up at our Paramount sign ready for the unknown of a week at English camp introducing themselves.
“Hi, I am Sasha.”
“I am Inna.”
“I am Nastya.”
“I am Kristina.”
“I am Nastya.”
“I am Alina.”
“I am Vica.”
“I am Nastya.”
I soak it in and memorize their names. As I look into their faces and they look into my face, I may be the only Jesus they ever see. Day two, three, and four blur into one as the week blew by full of arts and crafts, sports, meals, singing, and bible stories. One thing that didn’t seem to escape the fast paced week was one of my three Nastya’s behavior. This cute little girl struck me the moment she walked up to me at registration. She was a little girl, clothed for a real red carpet entrance with a lurking mother steps behind her, friends that stood on either side, and Hollywood sunglasses to block me from seeing into her eyes. Her ability to make friends, laugh at all situations, find joy in the activities, and bat her eyes to get her way built as the week took off. She was the ideal friend for many of the girls in my studio, and she was a good camper when she wanted to be. Her quick acquisition of my lack of Russian added to our relationship. She would bat her eyes at me and shyly ask, “…toilet?” knowing there was no possible way for me to say no and keep her from a human necessity.
Time after time of her bringing about this question, I began to pick up on the language barrier that she was using in her favor. My answer soon sounded like a broken record… “No. No. No.” To sum up a couple of days, we rapidly became adversaries. Her constant disrespect of me as her counselor with lying about the toilet made it very difficult for me to love her throughout the day. Combining my feelings with her general hate for me when I wouldn’t let her go to the bathroom every 5 minutes, or skip out of activities because she simply didn’t want to didn’t help our week long relationship.
Photo Credit: Amanda Tuten
The week was coming to an end and I was starting to notice this little girl’s hate for me more each day. There were moments that all the girls would come hug us to say goodnight and Nastya would avoid me at all cost. There was even a day when I stood too close to her and I received in return a scoff, rolled eyes, and a huffing walk in the opposite direction. I couldn’t blame her for holding such distaste for me from our week of interactions. I can’t say that I didn’t feel the same way at times.
With the week coming to a close, we planned to end the week with a smash! Our final night celebration time was filled with a camp video, awards and one last skit. We performed the Lifehouse “Everything” skit. If you haven’t seen it yet, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyheJ480LYA for my favorite, quite professional rendition. Here at camp, and on the race, we did the best we could do with what we had. (Video coming soon). To sum up the skit if you have or haven’t seen it, God creates the main character, a girl. She dances and loves life with God. Then walks in temptation in the form of a man of the world; He takes her away from dancing with Jesus. She is passed into the hands of greed where money is thrown at her like it is the only thing that matters in life. She escapes only to be met by drunkenness and friends. She dabbles in the peer pressure, but doesn’t stay long. She turns to find vanity walking past her to represent all the things the world calls beauty, which teaches her that she needs to rid herself of all the ugly before she is cherished in the eyes of the world. She cannot fully escape before addictions meet her in the form of cigarettes/drugs. As she is starting to feel numbed to the world, she is taught to find momentary surges of life through cutting her arms. Just as she is beginning to weaken, satan comes in for the final mark when he teaches her to take away her pain completely with encouraging her to commit suicide. Just as the gun goes to her head, she looks back at Jesus who was waiting there the whole time through all the things of the world and she decided that He is more than all of that. He is more than the easiness of death that would take her from the pain and emptiness of the things of the world. It isn’t an easy road back to Jesus though; she has to fight her way through all the things of the world, continuing to choose Jesus. Life takes one last push on her and she falls to the ground, but it isn’t over for her. Jesus comes to the rescue and saves her from everything. He defeats death, sins, the world, and he leaves dancing with the girl that he created and pursued from the beginning.
This time performing the skit, I was asked to play the main girl. Let me tell you…I have NEVER acted before. I was anything but calm the week approaching the performance. I was so scared, but I was also waiting for these kids to hear and see the gospel and truth of Jesus Christ.
Without warning, our skit was announced and the music was ready. We were set to go and… it was over before I knew it. It went off perfectly and was received by the grace and sovereignty of God. The kids let out huge gasps when they saw my character cut herself (we taped a red market inside of two knives…it looked real), and they were in tears by the end of the drama.
Here is when I learned the reality of hating to love someone.
The performance finished, the alter call completed, and we began to pray over our campers. I started my walk to my group of girls, and seconds later, my Nastya was standing right in front of me hugging me, drenched in tears, saying, “I love you.” I quickly wrapped my arms around her and replied, “I love you!”
The week of miscommunication and building hatred fled like a cat chased by a dog. There was no hatred in her eyes. There was no grudge held from not seeing eye to eye over the last couple of days. She showed me the depth of her heart.
Even if we disagreed, didn’t speak the same language, knocked heads on some ideas, or even fought in a passive aggressive way there was no way that the real and honest depth of the human heart could be taken away. We were made to love. She couldn’t help but love me. I couldn’t help but love her. It may have taken her to see me in the role of the skit to see that if it was real I could have “died” and her true heart was broken from that.
Love broke through the language barrier.
Love broke through the hatred or disagreements.
The world wants us to fill our lives with the things of that skit and the hatred of those around us who don’t fit into a cookie cutter relationship. The world wants us to loose patience, speak harshly, and embody everything BUT the fruit of the spirit and of love. But when you clear away all of that, you see a simple heart loving you and wanting you to love back.
So I think my little camper just hated to love me, and loved to hate me. But in the end, she still loved me and I loved her. Not by my human abilities, but because God gave me the depth and beauty of my heart.
As I look back on that week of camp, I look at my girls with warmth in my heart. I spent one week with girls that I had never known before; I couldn’t even speak to them in the same language. After one week, I still don’t know their life stories, I don’t really even know their last names, but I was given a love for them that had to be from God. I loved seeing their little smiles when I spoke some Russian phrases. I loved seeing each one of them give their life to Christ during our arts and crafts period when I got to tell them the truth of Jesus. I loved their hugs the final night covering me in their tears when I was given the opportunity to see their true hearts. I loved loving them for a week being their camp counselor, and for many weeks to come remember to pray for their new found faith in the Author of Love.
For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.
1 John 3:11-24
A wonderful message indeed.
