Unconditional Love on Russian New Year
“But I don’t know what I want!”
One of my discipleship girls turned into a gray rock emotionally for a few weeks over Christmas and leading into New Years. I came home from a much-needed vacation in the sunshine and quickly realized the girls had been spiraling when I was away… Asking for help is hard when you were stonewalled by parents and shamed into not being in touch with your needs (relational, physical, spiritual – we all have God-given needs!). One of them was slumped on my bed like a cornered mouse, scared of moving in any direction and shut down.
She was discouraged that it was New Years Eve, and she had no beautiful invitations or bold plans made… New Years Eve is a cultural emphasis for one of my Peace House girls, even beyond Christmas is to cultural Americans. After a painful season of rejection with her family, it seemed like things were adding up to one more miserable night alone being sad on the couch.
But God was about to show off for this dear one.
We had talked previously about risk – how God wanted her to step out more boldly in 2025. I connected back to what God had been saying to her and I said, “perhaps this is a good opportunity to obey God on that!”
I asked, “What would be so preposterously risky you’d never do it? What could be a really fun thing, but totally out of your comfort zone?” She responded, “Fly to Russia?”
“That’s great creative thinking,” I replied enthusiastically.
“Now, what feels so safe it would be zero risk at all?”
“Staying home.”
“And that’s a guaranteed sad night, right? So you for sure shouldn’t do that, right?”
She nodded in agreement.
“Ok, what’s one step further towards Moscow? Still within the safer realm, but taking a little bit more risk?”
“Going to my friend’s New Years worship night.”
“Ok, that’s a good, safe option, there will be some people there you don’t know which is a little bit of a risk… what else? What do you think you might want to do?”
I got a blank stare as she struggled unsuccessfully to come up with another idea.
I grabbed my ever-present whiteboard and drew out some circle-within-circles like a target.
“This is you in the center, feeling like a sad, gray rock tonight. To get out of here you need to connect relationally. And right now, you and God isn’t proving to do the trick – you need to connect back into the body of Christ and experience his love through people. You need to re-engage. There are people who are safe at varying degrees. Sometimes if you want to break a cycle jumping to the outside edges is really good because it jolts you so out of your comfort zone that things have to change.”
I looked over and saw a blank face and knew that jumping too far was not going to happen tonight.
“Let’s think about people instead of activities. Who are three to five people that feel the safest?”
She quickly listed 3, myself included.
“What is it that makes us feel most safe for you?”
“I feel known, it’s easy to connect, they’re people whose character I trust, and I can have fun with them.”
We took that list and developed two more – people who were a bit more risky, who don’t know her deeply. And a final list of people on the edge, who have character and seem like she’d connect easily with, but who she had not spent much time testing the relationship’s workability.
I was hoping she would start to open up as we discussed people I knew she admired and had easily engaged with before. Nope. Same gray rock.
Ok, let’s go back here… if you are super tightly closed off, sometimes you need to go towards people who will most unconditionally love you, who have no expectations from you and can pour into you. Who are those people on the board for you? We circled three.
“Well, girl, since I’m one of them, it looks like you just need to spend some time with ME!”
Her shoulders visibly relaxed and a plan hatched in my mind. In the next ten minutes I asked more questions and we put more on the board.
This sweet, emotionally shut-down young woman transformed into a glowing, excited, dancing and laughing one two hours later because she received unconditional love in the language of her heart.
After listening to her and identifying what would be meaningful and special for New Years Eve, we threw together a wild last-minute plan and roped in my enroute boyfriend to participate.
We got all dressed up and scrambled across town together to get the essentials – complete with Russian salad, chocolates, presents, and mandarins with the leaves attached. We even stopped at Target to have a 20 minute shopping sprint to pick out gifts for each other and a wrapping contest once we got home since we were on a time limit. We listened to old school techno Russian New Years music and my dear Zimbabwean boyfriend and I butchered Russian phrases exuberantly doing our best to be as dramatically festive as possible. We put out a whole Christmas/New Years spread and danced and sang to songs from an wintry old cartoon she loves.
It took 2 hours and maybe $60 to radically love this dear one back into the land of connection. Today, a few weeks later, her eyes still shimmer with the hesed of connection, lacking the dull wall of internal isolation.
When you’re cut off from the rest of humanity, you suffer. For those abused in childhood by their parents, unless they learn later on how to identify and go to mature adults for unconditional love, those old cycles can play over and over.
Who are you being poured into by? Who with trusted character makes you feel known, connected, relaxed? Seek safe people out – we all need them. But “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13, KJV). Who have you loved in unconditional ways recently? How can you help them understand how to pass on these same patterns of love to others?
May you each be blessed to pour out the unconditional love you have received – with robust, fully thriving relational circuits that make connection easy.
Happy New Year from Walking in the Light and especially the Peace House <3