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| Our Team at another orphanage being built |
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| Our awesome hippy skirts and t-shirt ensemble |
So I went to my leader and
asked for advice, I told her that I liked Ruslan as a friend and wanted to get
to know him more, but that I didn’t want to confuse him or lead him on, cuz
what if he wasn’t “the one”( I was a bit afraid of making a mistake – I wanted
God to tell me what to do, I didn't know if I could trust my heart?). I loved hanging out
with him, but it was now confirmed that he did like me more than a friend, so I
didn’t want to lead him on, but I didn’t want to stop getting closer to him. I didn’t know the future, so I wanted to
keep moving forward but I was confused, I felt afraid that I might hurt him if
he didn’t turn out to be the one I married. My leader strongly suggested that I needed to close
any doors of "false hope" for Ruslan so I wouldn't be falsely leading
him on. I decided I would write
him a letter to clarify things. At
first I wrote that I really liked him as a friend, and that I wanted to
continue to get to know him and just see what the future had in store. I gave the letter to my leader to see
if it was clear enough. She read
the letter and said, it left too much of an open door, I needed to make it very
clear (She was a VERY sweet leader, but I think maybe she had a few fears
herself about relationships not wanting people to get hurt as well). So I
rewrote that part and basically said "you are great I like you a lot, but
I NEVER see us together in the future." (Ouch! I know ) You would think he would have given up on me forever at that point,
well he almost did. I thought I had lost my chance “forever”
(there’s that dumb word again, that almost ruined my chance with him sheesh)!
Basically I gave him the
note and the next time I saw him he didn’t look happy, I said hi in passing on
the sidewalk and he didn’t even answer, my heart just plopped into my
shoes. I felt a little sick to my
stomach, what had I done??? I felt
horrible.
Well as you can imagine he
was devastated, especially cuz my actions showed more interest than that. I was
a bit confused myself. The weeks
passed with a lot of turmoil inside, for me, and questions to God. I tried to still be friendly with
Ruslan but he was very emotionless with me and I felt like he was only being
cordial. One thing I noticed right
away, was he really did choose to stop caring completely about anything I
thought of him; ironically this revealed another side to him I hadn’t seen
yet. He was so much more relaxed
and funny he wasn’t at all nervous or trying to act his “best,” which of course,
I found even more attractive, this new confidence. I could tell I was really frustrating him as I continued to
be friendly with him, because come to find out he was thinking:
“Why in the world is she now
acting like she cares about me when she made it extremely clear that she NEVER
sees us together in the future?!”
So he continued through out
the next few months to practically ignore me unless I approached him, and I had
a really great friend who I had gotten really close to named Jeni, and the
three of us would often hang out, but Ruslan would always give her ALL the
attention it was really starting to get to me.
“Lord, did I truly ruin my
chance of ever having anything with this guy? Is he falling for my friend now? Were his feelings for me no big deal, and now he ALREADY
likes someone else, who is the complete OPPOSITE of me!??”
I had many nights crying out
to God asking if I could talk to Ruslan about my growing feelings and yet, I
never felt that would help anything except for him to think I was not sincere,
or had no idea what I wanted, or was just playing with his heart. So I kept praying and giving it back to
God asking Him to give me another chance to make things right, so that maybe
someday we could see if we were meant to be together.
Our team of 17, traveled to
Mexico, Vicente Guerrero, together on an outreach and had such a great time, once again I was in
the van sitting next to Ruslan having so much more of a crush on him by
now. Seeing his very playful side
telling stories of his life growing up and making jokes with the team
mates. I also saw that competitive
side come out again when we played volleyball together one evening at the Los
Angeles YWAM base, enroute to Mexico.
He was getting pretty visibly angry as he spiked the volleyball at me on
the opposing team as they were beginning to lose. I knew the frustration had a little more to do with than
volleyball.
In Mexico I watched what a
really hard worker he was and what a great attitude he had about hard work and
serving others, I was even more impressed. We also went on one outreach to some poor children who had
almost no food and we gave them, as a treat, a spoonful of peanut butter and a
cup of powdered milk, I held the huge peanut butter canister and Ruslan dug it
out by the spoonfuls. I was
wondering how silly he must have thought I looked in my mandatory hippy skirt,
t-shirt and tennis shoes. We were
to dress as modest as possible, no tank-tops, no jeans or shorts, they needed
to be long dresses or skirts. I
thought it was so funny how much he hated getting “dirty” he couldn’t stand all
the dirt in Mexico, and yet, he ended up digging a well in a huge pit of dirt
for an orphanage and shoveling huge piles of dirt to bring to other locations,
and he still was hardly ever complaining.
I also loved how his hair would get so full of dust it became wiry and
would stick up all over the place.
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| My future husband working hard ;) |
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| There's me in the back with Ruslan! |
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| Ruslan cracking up some team mates |
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| Peanut butter delight! :) |
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| Well digging |
Yes I was absolutely falling for him. I thought it wasn’t that obvious but judging by the comments
from the team members later, they said that they always joked about the growing
relationship between Ruslan and I, that we both thought wasn’t so obvious,
haha, love is blind is guess.
more to come...
