Camp Hope

 It was like the most gripping story of fiction coming to life, a mythic tale of death and resurrection that had viewers transfixed around the globe as thirty-three men emerged alive – one at a time – in a space-like capsule from their underground tomb a half mile below the surface of the earth. For sixty-nine days they were trapped in the belly of the planet in a hell-like chamber – claustrophobic, dark, squalid, sweltering – the size of most living rooms. When the world came crashing down around them, the miners thought they would be entombed forever, with little chance that rescuers would find them, let alone reach them in the dark cavity of their subterranean existence under the Atacama Desert in a remote region of Chile. Never, in all of humanity's recorded history, had so many been trapped so low for so long and emerged alive. It was a miracle of biblical proportions, a saga that truly displayed the astonishing power of home, birthed in the most inconspicuous of places, a desolate desert in the southern hemisphere, a barren wasteland that became known as Camp Hope.

Florencio Avalos was the first to surface to a tearful reunion with his youngest son. Minutes before he emerged in the specially designed rescue capsule, cameras focused on his son's face covered with we drops of anguish and fear slipping from his eyes. When Daddy stepped out, his son rushed into his arms, never wanting to let go again. The second miner up, Mario Sepulveda appeared an hour later and bounded out, ebulliently pumping his fists and running around chanting "C-H-I-L-E! Chi-Chi-Chi-Le-Le-Le-!" Then they began to arrive every forty-five minutes. Number seventeen was Omar Reygadas, a 56-year-old father of six, a grandfather of fourteen. The eighteenth was Esteban Rojas, whose life was so transformed by the near death experience he promised a church wedding to his wife whom he wed in a civil ceremony twenty-five years earlier. When Victor Zamora emerged as the twenty-seventh out and held his pregnant wife Jessica in his arms in an extended embrace after sixty-nine days of stark separation, the moment – despite the penetrating glare of the world – was theirs alone, one that will never be forgotten.

These unforgettable moments that displayed the best of humanity, were birthed by hope. Hope worked its magic in the most unimaginable place. Hope fueled this entire ordeal; a story of the world coming together, of miraculous survival, of happy endings and joyful reunions; a tale filled with drama and tension, engaging all emotions found in the human experience. You did not need to speak English or Spanish to understand what you were seeing in the rolling climax of happy reunions because the story did not end in death and pain, sadness and despair. No, it ended with luminous smiles, joyful tears, savored hugs, and grateful prayers. It ended with lost families reunited, lost lovers finding each other again, lost fathers holding their children one more time. In a world plagued by a good-news deficit, it was a story that displayed the supernatural power of hope and what it can do in conditions of overwhelming odds and distressing obstacles. It was the triumph of hope, of the best of the human spirit.

The three great pillars of life are faith, hope, and love. Much is written about faith, even more about love. But hope is the quiet brother, the forgotten son. It's the resilient warrior, the rushing wind that pushes back dark clouds of despair, enabling faith to take root, allowing love to work. Hope breathes life in suffocating conditions, freeing us from choking elements that crush our spirits, from experiences that bring death to our dreams, birthing emotions that revive our will, connecting our hearts to life outside of us, to life bigger than us, linking our impossibilities to God's possibilities. Hope is a hidden message revealing to us that God hides a smiling face behind a frowning providence, fueling our lives with the primary energy of the will to live, the will to survive, pushing us to do things that are unimaginable, enabling us to survive conditions that appear insurmountable. Hope is goodness in a tight spot, an ambitious force that creates new realities. And it was this goodness – hope – that powered the initial search for life in a very bleak situation, preparing the way for a new reality that would be created for thirty-three families, a reality that would be astounding and miraculous.

After the world lost contact with the miners, most presumed they were dead. But one person would not give up, Topographer Macarena Valdes. Her job was to set the direction of the drilling rigs that sent probes deep into the rock to try to locate any surviving miners. "It was a daunting task like using a shotgun to hit a mosquito at 700 meters," she said.  After two weeks of futile efforts, of empty probes and no signs of life, she augmented science with a touch of gut instinct to help guide probes through two thousand feet of rock, in hopes of finding survivors. As she looked into the eyes of children who longed for their fathers, wives who longed for their husbands, parents who longed for their sons, those longings empowered her resolve. Through sixteen days it seemed hopeless. After some thirty probes failed to find any sign of life, she stuck with a hunch. She shifted the angle of the drill about one degree lower than recommended by geologists. Her hunch worked on the seventeenth day –when most thought it was over – as the probe she directed bore a tiny five-inch hole into the underground cavern where the miners had taken refuge. There was a tap on the end of the drill; someone was alive a half mile below the surface of the earth. When the drill ascended, there was a note attached:  Thirty-three men were still breathing; they were barely hanging on; they were fighting for their lives. And it was at this moment that hope impelled and united the planet in an awe-inspiring rescue operation that captivated and riveted the world.

People arrived from all over the globe and pitched their tents in the high desert north of the capital city of Santiago, creating a makeshift village of foreigners and nationals, giving rise to the tent city known as Camp Hope. The rescue drill was brought in by a forty-truck convoy, built buy a small company in Pennsylvania. The drill operator came from Denver. Austria made the rescue capsule's winch and pulley system while Japan and Germany, along with other nations provided crucial technology. NASA provided design requirements for the capsule along with food packs for the miners. France shipped a half-ton of protein bars. Schoolchildren from multiple nations sent letters of support to the families. Volunteers from nearby towns came to cook and baby-sit for the families of the miners at the camp. And messages from all over the world were placed on a website for the miners and their loved ones. Hope united the entire planet, strengthening the miners, enabling them to survive another forty-three days as the main shaft was drilled that would eventually be used to rescue them and bring them from the suffocating depths of a dark tomb to a world of color and life.

The saga of the San Jose Mine is ultimately a story about the power of the human spirit when divine hope is birthed in fragile hearts. This is most obviously true of the trapped miners, and of the example they set for resilience, cohesion, and resourcefulness. But it is no less true of the people above ground who believed –when belief seemed improbable – that the miners had survived and that the ingenuity of the world could be enlisted to rescue them. Hope made this happen, powering humanity to believe for the impossible and to accomplish the unthinkable.

As I sat in suspense with the rest of the world, anxiously awaiting the rescue capsule carrying the first miner, this thought hit me: how many times in my life have I failed to establish hope in someone's world that has caved in? For that matter, how many times in all of our lives have we failed to set love into action by not rushing to the aid of those who are trapped in a difficult and overwhelming situation that appears insurmountable? Often we pay no attention to people buried in life's tragedies and failures, leaving them alone to dig their own way out of the rubble. Fortunately, the world did not allow this to happen in Chile.

In the harsh environment of the Atacama Desert, it was the outpouring of love, concern, and hope that helped those who could not help themselves, the trapped miners. When individual lives are falling apart, when marriages are collapsing, when people find themselves in ruins, we must create a presence in their lives, doing all we can to enable hope to work in their hearts. Often we pray from a distance. But God calls us to pitch our tents and roll up our sleeves. He wants us to engage the rubble, to help remove the debris so new foundations can be laid. In doing so, we birth hope in the hearts of the hurting. People can survive when they know there is a camp of support above their collapsed world. No one understands this more than myself. It was at the nadir of my journey, a depth I never imagined I could sink, when help arrived in the form of people who cared about me, establishing my Camp Hope.

In the early days of my present crisis, I found myself in the darkest, most suffocating cavern of despair, a place of impenetrable hopelessness. I was locked in a filthy cell twenty-three hours a day facing a daunting and frightening future. Weighted media reports were circulating and my family was being torn apart in the midst of what I perceived as a probable hope and a marriage commitment where my wife and I agreed we would stand together and survive. As I learned of acts of cruelty, lost contact with my youngest daughter for eighteen months because of another's deliberate choice to bring further alienation and pain, and carried the burden of my personal sins and failure, I was trapped in a depression I cannot even begin to describe. It was in this place of darkness where others came to my rescue, pitching their tents in my collapsed world, drilling for life in my shattered surroundings with probes of hope.

My first wife Robin came to visit. This is a woman who has been a part of my life since I was sixteen. She rose above the wounds of our past and the hurts that damaged our hearts. I remember staring at her through bullet-proof glass on her first visit. As I sat in orange, in a world of chaos and confusion, she reminded me of God's call on my life. She brought back memories of God using me. She spoke of the gifts and talents that God gave me. She wept with me and she prayed with me. And as I looked into her piercing blue eyes, I saw hope. Seeds of faith were birthed in my heart.  Love began to do its work.  She pitched her tent of hope in my collapsed world.  And she visited frequently, always reminding me that God was in control, that His purposes would be accomplished in my life.

My best friends – Scott Barclay, Scott Sorgea, John Harris, Rich Shearer – came regularly. Our lives have been connected and committed to one another since our teenage years. We have traveled the world together. We have been teammates. We have stood with each other through difficult times in each of our journeys.  And in the midst of my greatest failure, as I was buried in shame and hurt and depression, they loved me. They never spoke to the issues, they spoke of friendship, of love, of support, of the future. They birthed hope in my heart. They pitched their tents in the desolate desert of my life.  A man could not ask for better friends than these; God gave me the best friends in the world.

My parents visited every week. Never did they abandon me or give up. They rose above the shame and embarrassment that my failure brought to their lives. Along with my brother, they were a pillar of strength amidst the ruins. My friend Hal Donaldson flew in numerous times from somewhere on this planet, sacrificing time with his wife and four beautiful daughters. His genuine love for me was a light of hope in my dark world. Sam Huddleston, who holds a prominent position in ministry and spent years in prison himself, lifted my spirit with his visit, reminding me that God can turn the wreckage of our lives into something beautiful. So many more came. Individuals from my youth ministry days – one from China, two from San Diego, another from Texas, and many others – visited and birthed hope in my heart. Because of their acts of love and sacrifice, my life has been transformed. I am back to the man I once was, a man consumed with Jesus, a man who wants nothing more than to reach people with His love, to create hope in the hearts of others. Hope always births more hope.

No Matter where you find yourself today, hope awaits, hope is standing, hope is on your side.  Perhaps, in some form, your world has collapsed and you find yourself trapped in a hollow and cavernous place, an empty pit, an emotional mine filled with the dirt of despair, the rubble of regrets, the silence of sadness.  Allow the wind of hope to enter your heart, to fill the vacuum of uncertainty, to push back the murky clouds of failure and fear, of guilt and gloom, of loneliness and loss.  Permit the candle of hope to flicker the light of belief in your dark cavern, reminding you that all the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the flame of that single candle; the flame of hope cannot be extinguished.  And maybe, just maybe, no one understood this more than miner number thirty-one, Mario Gomez, as he came back from the dead, rediscovering life at Camp Hope.

In the days before he was rescued, he had reached a breaking point.  Though he was the oldest and most experienced miner, he began to feel strong explosions in the shafts around him and started panicking that another cave-in was imminent.  When Gomez finally surfaced, he crawled out of the capsule and dropped to his knees in prayer.  His wife rushed to his side and fell to the ground hugging him intensely, overwhelmed with emotion that she could hold the man she loved one more time ... hold him while he was still alive.  It was hope that created this moment, a moment where the world witnessed the rare blessing of the earth giving back those it trapped, returning love that appeared lost, reuniting hearts that had been broken.  And this same hope is available to you.  It's a simple prayer away.

Proverbs 13:12 "Hope deferred makes the heart sick.”

A Note of Gratitude

So many of you who have read this have played an integral part in birthing hope in my heart.  Your acts of kindness, your words of encouragement and love, your prayers of support and blessing for my life, for my daughter's lives and for my family, will never be forgotten.  I am forever indebted to you, each one of you, for helping me rise from the ashes of failure, enabling me to see beyond the rubble to the new foundation that God is building in my life.  Because of you, hope was birthed in my heart, causing me to climb the mountain in front of me.  Though I have not reached the summit, one day I will.  And once there, I will plant my tent of hope for all the world to see, a tent that each of you had a hand in making.

A special thank you to so many of you who sacrificed a portion of your life and visited me in prison, for reminding me that God has given me the gifts to be able to make my wrongs right.  My greatest desire and deepest longing is to be given the opportunity to bring full restitution to those who suffered losses in the Investment Fund I was managing.  I pray that God would grant me this opportunity.  I would also like to thank a very special friend, Toni Tobin, who not only visited me, but also encouraged me to start writing again (something I did not want to do) and to establish myself on Facebook to reconnect with so many of you who have been an important part of my life.  Thank you Toni for the many hours you give to my life and my world.

Creating Life

His war began at birth.  Born to a heroin-addicted mother, he came into this world addicted himself.  His toddler years were filled with neglect and aloneness.  Both parents were absent from his life, one physically, the other emotionally.  He never knew his dad and he barely knew his mom.  Growing up in the worst projects on the south side of Chicago, without someone to lead or guide, the hood became his example and gang members and drug dealers were his teachers.  At the age of seven – shrouded in the invisible cloak of childhood and perceived innocence – he developed his own covert hustle of running narcotics from sellers to buyers.  By his late teenage years, he mastered the crack cocaine trade, reaping enormous profits, enabling him to live a life that temporarily buried painful childhood memories of an upbringing absent of love, devoid of family, entombed in oppressive poverty.  His life would become the bi-product of an ever-present treachery of circumstance, environment, and choice.

In due course, he married the love of his life, was blessed with four beautiful children, finally finding fulfillment and joy in something he had craved since childhood, a family.  His war shifted from an external battle to an internal struggle.  After becoming a father, he saw the world differently.  He wanted out of the game.  He was tired of the underworld, exhausted from its trappings – the women, the binges, the seediness – disillusioned with the duality of crossing back and forth from family man to kingpin.  He saw the destruction his trade brought to humankind, the addictions it caused, the hopelessness it fueled, the families it destroyed, the lives it ruined.  Internally, he awakened to the fact that he was a peddler of death.  The war between right and wrong raged within and gradually he was filled with an insatiable desire to help people, not hurt them.

Encouraged by the love of an amazing woman, his wife Stephanie, he set out to make his wrongs right, to exit the practice of dealing substances that killed.  Once free, he was determined to use his resources to heal and to assist, to build and to create life for others.  He tried to walk away, but it was too late, he had passed the point of no return.  His empire was too big, too connected.  Bigger crime organizations knew he could bring them down.  Slowly the threats arrived – intimidation, stalking, phone calls – escalating into random acts of violence, ending one night in a barrage of bullets, piercing his body five times, leaving him for dead.  Amazingly he survived, but not without great cost; his left leg was severely injured and had to be amputated.  Fearing for his life, and the lives of his wife and his children, he knew the only way out was to take the fall for others.  Once indicted, he did not cooperate with the Government as an informant in lieu of a lower sentence.  As a result, he received the maximum penalty for his crime, twenty-two years in prison.  He paid a severe price to do the right thing, to leave the game, for the opportunity to redeem himself and pursue the newfound passion in his heart, an earnest desire to create life.

Jerome Williams has a cheerful, vivid, and dazzling smile, projecting a glowing and sunny disposition.  His face is a constant beaming beacon of joy and hope.  His words never cease to encourage and lift you up.  Everyone loves this African-American man as he rolls around the compound in his wheelchair.  In an environment of racial divisions, a place filled with aversion and sorrow, a grim terrain of despair and depression, he is a shining light of love among the dark shadows of human failure.  I met him for the first time on my second day at the Federal Correctional Institution in which we are confined.  Walking into the gym, hoping to get in a pick-up game of basketball, I was greeted by an intimidating scene of thirty-plus guys waiting to play.  Not one was white.  Scanning the scene, I noticed a man in a wheelchair cheering everyone on.  Eventually he noticed me – my skin color stood out – and he rolled over and introduced himself.  After some small talk he asked if I played basketball.  I said yes and within minutes the whole gym was made aware that I was playing in the next game.  No one argued or contested his proclamation.  Halfway through the contest, he became my cheerleader, hooting and hollering, "We have a white boy that can play.  We have a white boy that can shoot.  After that first game he bequeathed me my compound nickname, "Steve Nash."

From that point our relationship grew and we developed a friendship.  We shared our life stories and have spent many hours talking, praying, and singing.  He is never bothered by my lack of melody and harmony.  He just always smiles and invites me to join in when he launches into a worship song or some timeless Motown classic, usually his favorite, "Just Don't Want To Be Lonely," repeatedly singing the same lines, "I'd rather be loved and needed, when you're gone, when you're gone, I just don't want to be lonely, I want to be loved."  Then that smile, that ever present smile followed by his usual joyful words, "Steve I am so loved, so loved.  Jesus loves me and has given me a brand new life.  And my wife, Steve, my wife, wow, she is the most amazing woman ever, she just loves me so much.  Can you believe it?  She loves this bald, one-legged man, I mean she really loves me.  She has stood by my side all these years.  If she were not a woman she would be Jesus."

One afternoon, I spoke to Stephanie on the phone.  I was absolutely astonished; she was as positive and uplifting as Jerome.  She was so warm and friendly, personable and engaging.  I told her, “Your husband is one of the most amazing men I have ever met." She responded, "No Steve, he is the most amazing man.  God blessed me and our children with the best man possible.  I winked at Jerome as he sat in the background listening, his smile sparkling and glowing, blinding all those around.  Midway through the conversation, she asked for the names of my daughters and wife.  She went on to explain what God did in her heart, how He watched over their children all these years, and how He caused her love to grow for her husband.  She told me she would pray for my family, reminding me that God will move the mountains of doubt, pain, and failure.  When I handed the phone back to Jerome I felt renewed.  Her words of faith and hope and love birthed life in me.

The indomitable spirit of this remarkable couple, their courage through these exhausting years of pain and separation has been an inspiration to me.  They have resisted the temptation to marinate in umbrage, to live in steep resentment, choosing not to wallow in ruin but instead to use the years to create life in their world.  Seventeen years ago, when Jerome limped into the most dangerous and violent level of the Federal Prison System, a U.S. Penitentiary, he figured his life was over.  He had lost everything.  Only his wife and children remained.  And he was convinced he would soon lose them.  He was scared and alone.  During his first year of incarceration he had an encounter with Jesus, and his life has never been the same.  Simultaneously, in the free world, his wife was transformed by the love of God.  And now this beautiful couple is possessed with an indissoluble unity and resilient disposition to share their story, their transformation, their lives, driven by the desire to create life for others.

Everywhere Jerome goes, he leaves a trail of life.  He creates life with his words.  Without fail, he leaves everyone smiling and feeling better.  I have never heard him say an unkind word.  He laughs, he encourages, he builds people up.  He has made the most of the years and creates life in every facet in which he finds himself.  His words constantly lift one's spirit.  He understands the most powerful gift we all possess is the ability to speak.  Our words create life or death.

Jesus created life with all he came into contact with.  People found hope and healing.  All walks of society were drawn to him.  He constantly spoke words of life, projecting hope and love, kindness and compassion.  His words lifted people, they inspired, they brought healing, enabling individuals to see past their insecurities and doubts, beyond their failures and misfortunes.  His words birthed life into lifeless hearts.  This is what God does.  He speaks life.  We must do the same.

We all have the power to create life.  Why do we spend time and energy hurting others, speaking callous words, thinking unkind thoughts?  Why do we easily speak negative things about others, wounding their hearts and damaging their spirit?  When a person stumbles, fails, falls short, often we magnify their pain through abandonment, through gossip, through indifference.  Crucial moments in which we could birth life, bring restoration and healing, we choose to remain silent and distant.

When we speak kind words, positive statements of affirmation, of love, of hope, we not only create life in someone else's world, we birth life in our own hearts.  I hear it on the phone with my daughters.  When I remind them of how beautiful and wonderful they are, how they are so brave and strong, so brilliant and amazing, they giggle and laugh.  I hear the joy in their hearts, the happiness in their spirits.  And this produces amazing feelings of joy and love in my heart.  As we create life, we discover more life.

Life is something that grows or dies.  It is never stagnant.  Everything living follows this pattern.  Relationships must be nurtured, fed, and watered with healthy nutrients – our words – enabling life to bloom and unfold, to flourish.  Many times we pass on opportunities to create life with the people we treasure and adore.  We grow accustomed to our surroundings, taking people for granted.  When is the last time you complimented the love of your life, telling them how beautiful they are, how much you appreciate them, acknowledging something they accomplished, validating their uniqueness, reminding them of how they are the most important person in your life?  Marriages and relationships die for one reason, the failure to cultivate and nurture life.

One of my failures in my present marriage to Christina was that I lacked consistency in creating an environment where life could grow, where love could truly help another flourish.  Our relationship was complex, filled with much drama and dysfunction, resulting in a marriage of incredible highs and lows.  The emotional ground on which our relationship stood was not tectonically stable, causing a large portion of our marriage to be lived in a tension of emotion, passion, and difficulty, creating a rotating cycle of vertiginous triumph followed by humiliating failure.  Often, when confronted with behavior and thought processes I had never seen or experienced before, I found myself reacting, not responding.  There is a great degree of separation in the two approaches, and the results each approach will produce.  Reaction comes from a defensive posture, a place of insecurity.  Response comes from a position of security.  Reaction causes death.  Response creates life.

Much of this was a result of my own dysfunction, hurt, and internal pain, which silently and unknowingly resided in my heart.  Instead of recognizing and understanding the insecurities, fear, hurt, and damage from her past, from my past, from negative experiences in our relationship and using those as an opportunity to create life, I would go quiet, speak words from my own insecurity, words that would injure and hurt.  Looking back I see this now; at the time I was blind, very blind.  I carried a lot of hurt from the failure of my first marriage.  It was the first real failure of my life and it was devastating; I lost my first true love.  For years, I unwittingly and mistakenly buried all the hurt and pain causing me to change so much as a person.  I lost my moral compass.  I felt things did not matter.  Life became fleeting.  I subconsciously built walls, walls to keep people out.

Our marriage reached an impasse, mostly as a result of my own moral failure.  After a brief separation, we decided to reunite and do everything we could to save the marriage.  Our last seven months together were some of the most beautiful, rewarding, and challenging times in our relationship and in my personal life.  With God's help, I began to change as a person, finally recognizing how far I had fallen, beginning to identify and understand the carnage in my heart, slowly returning to the man I once was, awakening again to God's call on my life.  God helped me walk away from vices that brought great destruction to my personal life and hurt to my wife.  As a couple, we prayed together and committed ourselves to counseling.  We seemed to turn the corner.  We both were dedicated to creating life in our marriage, in our family, for our three beautiful, wonderful, and amazing daughters.  We worked hard together, standing through tremors of misunderstandings, surviving earthquakes of unfulfilled ambitions and unresolved pain that flowed from a reservoir of individual failure that haunted us both.

In the end, dark decisions of deceit, lies, and unconscionable actions of betrayal doomed the relationship and marriage.  But the painful death of our union is no excuse for us to not press forward, wanting and desiring the best for each other, doing everything within our power to work together to create life for our daughters.  Nor is it an excuse for us to not stand in support of one another as individuals.  We will forever be connected because of our girls.  I stand in full support of Christina as a person and what God is doing in and through her.  We both have been through trying times and still find ourselves in such an environment.  However, if we continue to pursue the source of life, pressing toward God, allowing His life to be lived through us in our actions, in our words, we will experience life in our respective worlds.  Life will blossom and unfold for our daughters.  And this life will lead to healing and blessing for our girls, for us on our individual journeys.

When our lives are adversely affected by actions of another that brought us deep hurt and pain, we must guard our hearts from falling into a venomous valley of self-pity and anger, stewing in resentment.  At all costs, we must continue to speak life to the party who brought us injury.  We must pray blessing on them.  This can be a very difficult place to reach in our minds and hearts.  Often, a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions cyclones through our inner self, leaving a trail of havoc and wreckage and devastation, throwing our lives into a barren field of a shattered self-image, of a bruised and broken spirit, a place filled with an inexhaustible ache of the heart.  But this barrenness also serves as fertile soil for new life to grow, for new love to be discovered, for new dreams to be birthed.  If we sow seeds of life, not death, then cultivate with goodness and kindness, over time, our barren field will become a place where life flourishes with immense beauty, blossoming with fresh beginnings and bright hopes.

The road to joy in our lives is the road out from grief and unwarranted suit.  There is a providence out there as well as deprivation, a benevolence running counter to the general drift of bad bounces, painful loss, poor choices that bring failure and shame.  We simply need to choose this providence, determining in our hearts and minds that we will create life in whatever environment we find ourselves.  It's this choice that enabled Jerome to become the man that he is today, a force of positive energy, a magnet of joy and love, a completely transformed and changed man.

Jerome was released last week.  Seventeen years ago he entered prison because he promoted and distributed death; he left promoting and creating life.  I watched him roll through the gates a final time.  As he turned to look, his amazing and ever present smile caused the whole world to stop for a moment, resonating all things good, reflecting life and hope.  Through that wide grin, he shouted words to me that I will never forget, causing my eyes to moisten quickly, "Nash, I will see you again in a few years.  We are going to move mountains of doubt and unbelief, mountains of death and torment, mountains of pain and hurt.  God is with you and has a mighty call on your life."  And with that came a final wave, coupled with that radiant smile that would light up the darkest night – doing what it always does, creating life.

The Magic of the U.S. Open, Tennis, and NYC

My love affair with the U.S. Open began in 1991 during the late hours of a warm August evening in my Bay Area bedroom.  Tossing and turning, restless and fidgety, I grabbed the remote and powered on the idiot box, hoping to find something that would lull me to sleep.  Scanning the channels, I settled on a tennis match.  For a moment I thought it was a replay of the match I had skimmed hours earlier, a boring, monotonous first round slaughter of a has been who should have retired long ago.  Then I realized this was no replay, this was the same match in progress, still undecided at two in the morning in New York City.

Three hours earlier, I turned off the television after Jimmy Connors was down two sets to love and was getting crushed in the third, one game away from elimination.  At the age of 39, I figured this would be his last match at the Open, a sad ending to an illustrious career.  Now I sat wide-eyed and shocked at what was unfolding before my very eyes.  Connors somehow had turned back the clock.  Father time was put on hold.  He managed to rally from the brink of defeat, winning the third and fourth sets.  It was deep in the fifth and Connors was serving for the match.  While I was away, something happened.  Something shifted.  Something astonishing took place, no, something incredible.  Jimmy Connors, the oldest man in the draw, miraculously overcame every obstacle on a tennis court to win his first round match, beginning his historic march to the semi-finals.  Such story lines never seem to develop at Wimbledon.  Rarely does something so unreal take place at the French Open.  And down under, at the Australian, forget about it.  Only in New York.  Only at the U.S. Open.

I have always been a spontaneous person by nature.  My life seems to be driven by an innate optimistic belief that anything can be accomplished.  So it was no different for me on that night in 1991.  Connors’s historic comeback energized and inspired me, fueling an all-night excursion of phone calls to secure a flight, a car, and a hotel room.  Within hours I was on a pre-dawn flight from San Francisco to La Guardia.  Upon arrival, I grabbed my bag, picked up the rental, and headed straight to Flushing Meadows, the site of the Open.  Later that evening, I was in a courtside box seat, two rows from the court, watching John McEnroe in the middle of a meltdown, lost in a vituperative rant.  Sitting directly in front of me was Bill Murray.  Across the aisle were Donald Trump and Marla Maples. And two rows behind me was Alec Baldwin.  Only in New York.  Only at the U.S. Open.

The U.S. Open is the highest attended annual sporting event in the world.  Every year, over 700,000 fans walk through its gates.  It's the best venue to see everything and everyone, the best of what tennis has to offer, and in some sense, the best of what life can give.  It's a magical experience that everyone should encounter once in his/her life.  It's magical for so many reasons.  It's in New York City.  No city in the world makes you feel more alive.  Everything is larger than life--the skyscrapers, the shiny stuff, the lights, the energy.  New York causes you to believe in your dreams, in yourself.  The city simply inspires you, lifts you, heightens your sense of hope, willing your imaginings into happenings.  There is no place in the world that can compare.  Host cities of the other Grand Slams – Paris, London, Melbourne – all have their unique charm, cultural ambience and the allure of foreign soil, but in the end, they are not New York City.

New York has given my life some of its fondest memories – memories of adventure and exploit, of faith and risk, and wonderful recollections of love and romance.  The Big Apple births this in you, triggering a surge of endorphins, causing you to want to love as deep as you can love, to reach as high as you can reach, pushing you to believe in yourself, in your dreams, in your hopes, calling you to rise above the voices of doubt and critique and mediocrity, enabling you to experience the absolute wonder of being alive.  And nowhere is this seen more compellingly and spectacularly than at the U.S. Open.

Tennis mirrors life in so many ways.  It uses the language of life.  Serve.  Fault.  Break.  Love.  Advantage.  Approach.  Error.  Life's lessons are found in every match.  Persistence.  Focus.  Endurance.  Overcome.  Change.  Battle.  Recover.  There is always something you take with you when you leave the court, both as a player and a spectator.  Tennis is the sport in which you talk to yourself.  No athletes talk to themselves like tennis players.  We rant and yell.  We scream and grunt.  We whisper and plead with our own psyches in self-talk ramblings.  Often we stare at our racquets and have conversations, inquiring of them, looking like lunatics who escaped from some mental ward.  Tennis forces you to ask questions, to find answers, and its metaphors carry over into everyday life.

In tennis, it's you against your opponent and you against yourself.  Modern tennis is not for the meek.  The athleticism, power, and speed push bodies to the brink.  Players sprint, stop, twist, swing, torque with unprecedented force and regularity.  It's a sport that calls for everything physically, mentally, and emotionally.  You must retain your poise and confidence, and silence the malignant sounds of negativity, overcoming swings of emotion from elation to despair.  No match is over until the last point.  There are no time constraints.  The possibility of a comeback is always there.  In every scenario, there is always hope.  And there is no better place to witness this, to learn life's lessons, to watch life's metaphors be played out than in New York, at the U.S. Open.  Every year, some magical story line develops.

Last year's Open gave us a story of enchantment – the magical run of a fairy-tale figure who etched "Believe" in her brightly colored shoes.  Only 17 and unknown, Melanie Oudin stunned three of the top ten players in the world as she broke through to the quarterfinals where her thrilling ride ended.  Along the way she captured the heart of America, the heart of the tennis world, reminding us again, fairy tales do come true, dreams can be reached, life can be filled with moments of magic, if only we believe.

My most memorable Open was my last one in 2006.  It was special for two reasons.  First, I had my beautiful family by my side.  My three wonderful and amazing daughters attended their first Open.  Secondly, it was the last Open for one of my heroes – Andre Agassi – one of the most beloved athletes in history and one of the most gifted men to ever set foot on a tennis court.  His career completed a stunning metamorphosis, from non-conformist to elder statesman, from dropout to education advocate, from a career based on image to a career defined by character.  And my two oldest daughters and I witnessed his last win as a professional tennis player, a grueling epic battle and punishing struggle, a match for the ages.  Little did we know when an aged and injured Agassi – a quasi cripple who needed cortisone injected in his back just so he could move – walked into Arthur Ashe Stadium to face the eighth ranked player in the world, Marcos Baghdatis, that history would be made, that something magical was about to take place at the U.S. Open.

Four hours later, a little past one in the morning, knotted at four-all in the fifth set, the unbelievable was happening in front of our eyes.  I glanced at Abby and Shayne.  Their eleven-year-old eyes were glued to the blue court as two gladiators traded blows with relentless force and exquisite precision.  One was cramping; the other could barely walk.  This was more than tennis now; it was a battle of raw wills.  Something extraordinary was taking place.  The ninth game was unlike anything I have ever seen in all my years at the Open, or in tennis for that matter.  Eight deuces later, on the twenty-second point, Agassi won the game and went on to win the match.  For almost five hours, the stadium shook with a bouncing rhythm, with gasps and cheers, with chants and roars, with pumping fists and flying sweat and stomping feet.  It was an unforgettable moment in sports history.  And my girls knew it as they sat there transfixed.  Only in New York.  Only in Tennis.  Only at the U.S. Open.

Everyone's imagination was dazzled by that match, reinforcing one of life's great truths: belief in oneself – authentic, inviolable, and unshakeable belief, not the undercutting kind – is necessary to all human achievement.  And the U.S. Open is where you see this truth lived out on a grand scale of enormous proportions, reminding you no matter how bad things get, how low life sinks, you can always rise from the ruins.  Agassi's last career win, a colossal comeback, shows us that anything is possible, that life can be filled with magical moments, if only, if only you believe.

* The 2010 U.S. Open can be seen on ESPN and CBS from Aug 30 to Sept 12.  Don't miss the magic!

The Transforming Power of Forgiveness

Over the course of our lives we come across certain places we will always remember.  We encounter certain individuals we will never forget.  We live certain experiences that forever will be indelibly seared at the forefront of our memory.  Sometimes, once in a lifetime, maybe twice, all three elements combine to create a happening, a phenomenon of sorts, an event that changes who we are, sending our lives through a series of transformations, shaping us in new dimensions.  For me it happened in a war zone, in a place of ethnic cleansing, a land of unspeakable atrocities, inside Bosnia.  The place was the city of Mostar.  The person was a Muslim woman who found Jesus.  The experience was an implausible lesson of forgiveness heard with my ears, seen with my eyes, felt with my heart.

Bosnia-Herzegovina experienced a painful and devastating ethnic war between Serbians, Croatians, and Muslims with the break-up and collapse of the former Yugoslavia.  During this period, the city of Mostar was overwhelmed by Serbian military units, and shelled from the surrounding mountains.  A campaign of ethnic cleansing began, forcing the majority of people from their homes.  Over one hundred thousand individuals were displaced.  Thousands lost their lives.  Of those who survived, many were the victims of unspeakable crimes.

Mostar sits at a strategic crossing of the Nretva River.  Its hinterlands consist of a broad agricultural plain on the west bank and steep terraces on the east surrounded by barren mountains.  For centuries it was a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural settlement.  During the war the city became a carcass.  Serbian soldiers gang raped Muslim women with one goal in mind—impregnating a Muslim woman with a Serbian baby.  The systematic raping shredded the ethnic, tribal, and social fabric.  If a Serbian soldier refused to rape, he could be shot by his comrades and no questions were asked.  Some soldiers forced Muslim men to use their own teeth to castrate their sons, and the sons were forced to castrate their fathers.  This type of filth and squalor barbarism, coupled with other merciless and ruthless acts of personified evil, created calamitous conditions.  The malevolence was so cruel, traditional enemies were forced to unite to drive the evil out.

A Croat-Muslim alliance was able to push the Serbian army back and expel them from keeping Mostar in their grip.  Within months the alliance fell apart.  It was then that an all-out ethnic, religious, and civil war broke out and completely destroyed the city, turning neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend.  It was in the context of this environment that I arrived in Mostar.  It was there I met one of the most amazing individuals whose life taught me an astounding lesson on forgiveness.

You could not understand the smile, the joy, if you knew her story.  You could, if you knew her Savior.  She had the biggest, most dazzling, most brilliant smile--infectious and radiant, like an exploding sun, leaving everything and everyone brighter.  She glowed with a radiance, a shining, revealing a joy that was contagious.  Despite every disadvantage she suffered, despite every tragic wound, she was filled with a gleaming, unwavering faith that she knew could transform her people, her city, her nation.  Where others saw rubble, she saw repair.  Where others saw wounds, she saw healing.  Where others saw death, she saw life.  She believed in an opaque future that she was sure, unquestionably sure, would one day be glorious.  She was unshakeable in this thought for she had experienced the power of forgiveness.

Jasmina Dankovic lost everything in the war, everything she owned, everyone she loved.  She had been forced to scale the mountain of pain.  They had killed her husband and two young boys.  They had crushed her strength and her courage.  They had shattered her hope and her spirit.  Now she was on the final leg of her journey.  She sat in her bombed-out home and saw her last hopes.  Then darkness.  Then Jesus.  Then hope.  Then healing.  Then life.

She woke up after a dream and found herself lying on the floor covered in debris.  The last thing she remembered was sitting on her bed wanting her life to end.  Suddenly there was a cacophony of noises, bright flashes, and fragments of concrete exploding all around.  Then darkness and silence.  She thought she had crossed the line.  A man came to her in a dream.  It was not someone who wanted something from her.  It was not someone who was going to hurt her.  It was someone who loved her.  He had nail-scarred hands and spoke these words "Follow me and you will find peace."

Awakening, she stumbled from the rubble and looked for a church.  Most were destroyed or blown up.  She heard there was one that established itself on the frontline, the street that divided all warring factions and their claimed territories.  Supposedly, it was a neutral zone, a small sliver of peace in the midst of mayhem, a place of refuge on snipers alley, the exposed stretch of road that separated conquered and unconquered territory, the road that divided good from bad.  After a few hours she entered this haven of hope and walked right into a prayer meeting.  She describes what happened next, "After a lifetime of practicing my Muslim faith, I felt the presence of God for the first time.  I collapsed in exhaustion, began to weep, and all the hurt and anger seemingly flowed from my innermost parts.  Those in the prayer meeting gathered around me and prayed for me.  I invited Christ into my heart to be my Lord and Savior.  I was completely changed at that moment.  Overnight, I had this unbelievable love for my people, for my city, for my nation.  I knew the only answer for my land was forgiveness."

Over time, Jasmina grew in her faith and shared with others her transforming experience and the peace she had found.  She started underground prayer meetings throughout Mostar – in places she was a friend, in places she was an enemy – calling them gatherings of peace and healing.  One night she took me on a journey to one of these secret services.  We set out just before dusk on a cold evening filled with leaden skies and wind blown snow.  Crossing a temporary footbridge of planks and ropes swaying and bouncing with every step, we entered enemy territory.  Hurriedly we made our way through darkened streets of damaged buildings.  Fog rose from ruins in a clinging ragged aura, seeping from shattered windows, puffing its way through bullet-holed structures.

After some time, we snuck into a bombed out edifice, opened a hatch in the ground and climbed down a wooden ladder into a basement of sorts.  In front was a large door with iron hinges.  Three coded knocks.  Silence.  In a timed fashion, three more knocks.  Dead silence, and then the slightest of noises, the sound of voices quietly singing.  After thirty seconds, the door slowly opened and we were greeted by the soft warm glow of candlelight.  Reflections of orange and yellow flickered off the walls.  Inside, holding hands, singing and praying together, united in love, were representatives of all warring factions of Mostar.  There was no sign of the war that enveloped them; there was no hint of hatred for the hurts they all suffered.  They all had three things in common.  They had seen death, they had lost loved ones, and they had experienced the transforming power of forgiveness.

In the Balkans, I felt as nowhere else I had ever been the chronic, constant presence of evil.  In a world of unspeakable atrocity, forgiveness seemed irrational.  My experience in Bosnia filled my mind with questions.  How could a war be conducted by rape, murder, and genocide, targeting innocent civilians?  How did perpetrators explain themselves to themselves?  How could anyone commit such acts upon another human being?  Unless you understood the history of the conflict, you could not find the answer.  The Serbs never forgot the battle for Kosovo in 1389, when the ottoman Turks defeated them and began the 500 years subjugation of Christian Serbia by the Muslim conquerors.  During World War II, Nazi Germany included the Serbs in their ethnic cleansing campaign.  Hundreds of thousands of Serbs were exterminated in Hitler's goal to establish a perfect race.  Aligned with the Germans, assisting in their effort of genocide were the Croatians. The answer to my questions was found in one word, one word alone, unforgiveness.

Where unforgiveness reigns, revenge is mandated.  For every atrocity there must be an equal and opposite atrocity.  Evils arise from not forgetting.  Terrible evils.  One round of unspeakable acts and killings somehow justifies the next round, conducted in the opposite direction.  In the logic of the victim, not to strike back would betray ancestors and the sacrifices they had made.  But the law of revenge never settles the score; it never gets what it wants.  It ties both the injured and the injurer to a rollercoaster of pain.  The ride never ends as long as parity is demanded.  Histories of nations, their rise and fall, borders shifting, point this out.  The stories are the same.  Only the names change.  Auschwitz.  The Killing Fields.  Somalia.  Darfur.  Kashmir.  Omagh.  Kigali.

Unforgiveness is a wandering presence in the world, metastasizing here and there, descending into places where it finds conditions ripe.  It has an unfortunate transformative effect, turning the lowest, most rotten impulses of human behavior into something darkly grand and important.  People justify unforgiveness in their minds and hearts by feeling sorry for themselves, marinating in self-pity.  They solve their formidable moral problem by declaring themselves the injured party, the victim.  A sense of narcissistic self-pity that is merely contemptible in an individual is transformed to heroism in this context.  What normally would be individual shame now becomes shameless, virtuous and honorable.  Evil portrays itself as injured innocence, fighting back, protecting truth, fueling the cycle of unforgiveness, and justifying acts that are incomprehensible.  This is what happened in Bosnia.  This is what happens in families, relationships, and marriages on a daily basis throughout our world.  And sadly, this happens in the church, among the people who are called to spread a life-changing message of hope and healing.  What stops the cycle?  Only forgiveness.

Forgiveness frees and releases.  It permits all parties to lay the past to rest and to proceed with a new beginning, uncontaminated by the infections of past wrongs, halting the cycle of blame and pain.  We remain bound to people we cannot forgive.  Forgiveness is the only way to release ourselves.  Not to forgive imprisons us in the past and locks out all potential for change.  We yield control to another, dooming ourselves to suffer the consequences of the wrong over and over.  We forgive for ourselves, not just to fulfill some higher law.  Forgiveness breaks the cycle of blame.  Through it we realize we are not as different from the wrongdoer as we think.

Forgiveness unlocks new blessings.  Often we can't see ahead to the good things that forgiveness would bring to our future when we are confronted with the need to forgive.  There is a part of us that likes to control, to play the victim.  It's an attempt for us to feel vindicated.  But unforgiveness never vindicates.  It binds and it steals, robbing us of who we can become, of what we can become, destroying our minds and our hearts, devouring the present and severely impairing the future.

Forgiveness does not change the past, it changes the future.  It births new dreams and new hopes.  God will enable you to live in a new realm if you do things His way.  He will give you supernatural strength and love you could never conjure up on your own initiative, causing miracles to take place, giving you feelings and emotions you never dreamed you could experience again.  And He can do this in the midst of your pain.  He can heal your marriage.  He can mend your family.  He can repair your life.  He did this in Mostar, inside Bosnia, in the heart of a woman who experienced the horrors of genocide.  He can do this for you.

Yangshao

Silence.  For a long while I stood in a prism of Chinese air, drinking in the tonic of the mountains.  I am surrounded by a grand mountainous landscape free from the mark of man.  Spending time in a place like this, one is reminded of what is truly important.  The scenery does the talking.  Through God's craftmanship lectures are heard.  Values are re-shaped.  Lessons are learned.  Serenity is discovered.

Only a few hours earlier, I stood in the fast lane.  Allow me to take you there.  Cars speeding by.  Bicycles pedaled frantically.  Voices heard in all directions.  Phones ringing.  Vendors shouting.  Sidewalks filled with thousands of individuals, all being pressed by some agenda.  They arrive and meet from a variety of places.  Offices.  Schools.  Stores.  Trains.  Taxis.  They cross paths for a few seconds and off they go to another destination.  The sidewalk is a mere juncture on the path of life.  Every person carries with them a sense of purpose.  Wrinkled foreheads.  Unwavering eyes.  Accelerated strides.  All have one thing in common.  Finish the project.  Complete the deal.  Accomplish the task.  This is life in the fast lane.  Many spend all their time here.  Tragic.

More than likely, you have been in the fast lane this week.  Maybe today.  Life has become hectic, jumbled, overwhelming.  There seems to be little time for the things you really want to do.  And just when the moment arrives that you have blocked out for yourself, your family, your spouse, an emergency seems to arise.  The result, cancel the activity that will cause you to slow down and move back into the fast lane.  Good-bye Serenity.

Today I took some time to ponder and reflect.  After a few hours of writing and thinking I came to this conclusion about most lives in the modern world: importance is measured by how busy we are and by what we are accomplishing.  We tend to derive our worth, our value through our busyness and productivity.  The more we do, the more we are involved, the better we feel.  Earning our worth, not realizing this false illusion of value has a high cost.  Along the way we pay a severe price – families, relationships, memories, discovery.  Life was not created to be lived like this.  Sometimes we need to let go and bring balance to our lives by involving ourselves in activities which are truly important, acts which truly matter, moments that brings the greatest joy and most rewarding pleasure.  Play with your children,  do something special for the love of your life,  phone your parents and tell them how much they mean to you, visit grandparents and brighten their world, write that special letter,  find that perfect card, and spend some time alone to think, to reflect, to ponder, to discover the beauty of serenity.  I did ... in Yangshao.

The boat is only six feet wide.  The stools are eighteen inches high and when I peer over the edge, the Li River comes within inches of rushing inside.  The craft is propelled by a small outboard.  It makes a loud clattering noise.  The skipper is wearing a white polyester shirt, black slacks, and maroon socks.  He is navigating the bends and twists of the glassy greenish-blue as it winds its way through mountains whose splendor and grandeur are beyond description.  He cuts the motor and I am surrounded by the serenity of the most picturesque formations in the world.  I feel as if I have drifted a thousand years back in time.  The sound of the river is like a mantra, its current like a metronome.  The river is approximately sixty meters wide with run-offs here and there begging for exploration.  The left bank is lined with bamboo trees.  On the right, two water buffalo play along the shallow edge.  Directly above, a man methodically pushes his plow in green and brown rice paddies.  A fisherman floats by standing watchfully on a makeshift raft – eight logs bound together – guiding his drift with a bamboo stick.  Everywhere I look, I am encircled by lush green mountains.  No roads lead into this serene dreamland.  Only waterways.

The Chinese call Yangshao God's homeland. One cannot argue with them, the beauty is breathtaking, awe-inspiring, uncorrupted by tourism.  Time has not changed a thing here.  The local people are dressed as they have been for hundreds of years.  In this part of the world there is no such thing as fashion.  Nothing is in or out.  Life is about what you have, not what you want.  There is no need for anything more.  Beauty is found in the simple.  In the stillness of these pristine surroundings, I have rediscovered that life's greatest values are not seen through the eye, they are felt in the heart.  Sometimes the greatest challenge is not in speeding up, but in slowing down, and discovering while drifting, that serenity is the place where the still small Voice is truly heard.  The greatest joys in life come not from accomplishing; they come through discovering.  Usually, our greatest discovery is found in solitude, the most serene moment.

As I prepared to go to bed tonight, the southern lights of the universe came out, faintly at first, because dusk still lingered, but with growing intensity, and I stood to marvel at the green mountains staring at me from the distance.  Only one other night have I felt so drawn away to another world and that was in Zermatt, Switzerland at the base of the Matterhorn.  On that night the moon had tucked itself behind the famous peak, creating a silhouette illusion, causing one to feel the greater forces in this life at work.  Stars danced across the sky, singing and causing my heart to long to be with the Maker of all things.  That night, the stars were singing His anthem, paying tribute to the One who gave them light.  Tonight they are singing a different song as the summer moon smiles in the heavens and quietly hides tomorrow like a secret ... in Yangshao.

Love That Will Not Let Go

They were beautiful.  They were gorgeous.  They were the youngest of four sisters, identical twins, darlings of their family and their quaint Romanian village.  They looked like two precious porcelain dolls in their matching burgundy dresses adorned with cute curly bows accentuating their long, lovely locks.  And at the age of ten, they were thrown into an unimaginable nightmare with their arrival at the concentration camp known as Auschwitz-Birkenau.  Holding hands, refusing to let go, they clung to each other as they entered the closest imitation of hell, a man-made world of torture, agony and anguish.  They entered alone.  Moments earlier, their dad, mom, and two older sisters were torn away, torn from their lives forever.

They arrived on a train.  For four days they were packed together like caged animals without food and water.  The car was filled with sounds of despair; broken mumbled prayers of desperation, dispirited words of assurance to horrified children, weeping cries of fear and worry.  The doors of the cattle car were thrown open and for the first time in days they saw light.  They felt air.  They were touched by wind.  Standing next to their parents and older sisters, Eva Mozes held tightly to her twin sister Miriam's hand as desperate men and women climbed, trampled, and pushed each other out of the car in which they were entombed.  Shoved onto the platform, they were frightened and confused.  They stood there in utter terror, two little ten-year-old girls in matching burgundy dresses.

They sensed something awful was about to happen.  Sounds around them escalated.  Everything started moving faster and faster.  Nazi guards started grabbing people--pushing, pulling, shoving, kicking.  Family members were torn from one another.  Husbands from wives.  Children from parents.  Brothers from sisters.  Within seconds a guard noticed their matching dresses and shouted "Zwillinge! Zwillinge!"  Twins! Twins!  SS guards rushed over and grabbed Eva and Miriam.  As they were pulled from their mother's grasp, they reached back screaming and crying "Mommy, Mommy, Don't let us go! No Mommy! Don't let us go!"  It did not matter how much they cried and how loud they screamed.  With each step the SS guards took, their mother's flailing arms, wailing cries, and anguished tears faded as they were dragged away.  They would never see her again.

Hours later they were herded into the care of one of history’s most iniquitous men, a man known as the Angel of Death, Dr. Josef Mengele.  After losing their entire family, they were to experience evil beyond imagination.  They were thrown into a melee of daily sadistic medical experiments created specifically for twins-- group nakedness, castrations, unneeded blood transfusions, probing of their body cavities.  Weekly, the sisters received countless shots, some to extract, most to inject.  Syringes were filled with diseases, solutions, and unknown liquids. In an atmosphere of children sobbing, their cries resonating the most unimaginable pain of human suffering, Eva and Miriam would not let go.  They would not give up.  Over and over, they told themselves:  just one more day, just one more experiment, just one more shot.  These were not grown adults who already learned the ways of life by being exposed to the dark side of human behavior.  No, these were little girls who knew only of innocent life, innocent love, innocent days, innocent times.  Until the Angel of Death.  Until Auschwitz.

Inside the camp they lay in a wooden bunk on a straw mattress still clothed in their matching dresses.  Grieving for their lost family, cradling each other, they cried and cried. The pain of separation crushed their already shattered hearts.  In the middle of the night they had to use the latrine.  Amidst the darkness they hurried to the back of the barracks.  The latrine had no toilets.  Only holes in the floor.  Vomit and human feces were everywhere.  Stepping inside, they froze.  On the floor were the dead bodies of three naked children.  Miriam trembled and wept.  Eva stood in horror.  In that moment, Eva vowed to do everything in her power to make sure they survived.  She grabbed Miriam's hand and held it in a death grip as they returned to their bunk.  Crawling in, holding each other tightly, Eva spoke softly in Miriam's ear, "One day we will walk out of this place alive."  Love would not let go.  They would give their blood, their bodies, their pride, their dignity.  They would not give their lives.

The commitment, determination, and fierce resolve of love was seen the first time Eva and Miriam were separated at Auschwitz.  Eva was sick from an injection believed to be scarlet fever.  During the night she ran a high temperature.  Her head pounded.  Her skin burned.  Her body shook violently.  Writhing in pain, shivering with chills, standing in the lab, she tried not to tremble.  If seen in this condition she would be taken to the infirmary, the barracks of the dead and dying.  No one ever returned.

After some time, Eva was noticed.  Immediately she was thrown in a jeep and hauled to death's door next to the gas chambers and flaming chimneys.  Bunks were filled with people who were half dead.  No one was fed.  Food was not wasted on the dying.  Lying in her bunk, surrounded by death, Eva could not sleep without her sister by her side.  Her little fragile heart ached for her other half, the only person she had left in the world.  In the dark she heard nothing but moans and screams.  The screams of the dying cut into her.  When she closed her eyes, she saw Miriam's face.  She could not leave her alone in this world.  Through the tears, through the pain, through her broken spirit, she told herself repeatedly "I must survive.  I cannot die.  For Miriam."

The next morning a truck came to pick up the sickest and took them to the gas chamber.  Eva was passed over.  She pressed on without food and water and medicine.  Resilient love.  "I must survive.  I cannot die.  For Miriam."  On the third day she saw a faucet on the back wall of the infirmary.  She needed water for any chance of survival.  On sheer determination alone, she slid from her death bed and crawled on the rough cement, scraping and cutting her skin.  One at a time, she stretched her hands forward, dragging her lifeless limbs along the floor covered in human excrement.  At times she passed out.  When she awoke, she inched onward. "I must survive.  I cannot die.  For Miriam."  The love for her sister overpowered the pain.  Every night, for two weeks, she made the nightly trek for water.  Fourteen days later, her fever broke.  A death camp could not extinguish the love of a ten-year-old girl.  Love crawls, it holds on, it finds a way to survive in pain, pushing through hate and evil, never letting go.

Toward the end, days from liberation, Allied armies attacked the area around Auschwitz.  Bombs lit up the sky.  Heavy artillery shook the ground.  The whole world seemed on fire.  Bedlam and pandemonium broke out inside the camp.  Everywhere people were running for their lives.  Nazi occupiers disappeared.  SS guards were no longer found.  Prisoners ran for cover, clinging to their last thread of hope.  In the confusion, the sisters were separated.  Eva frantically searched for her twin among the huddled masses of emaciated individuals who were indistinguishable.  She scanned identical faces of grief and pain, staring into sunken hollow eyes encased in dark circles.  Every thirty seconds she screamed "Miriam! Miriam!" among the thousands ensnared in mortal fear.  Terrified tears streamed down her face as the hours passed.  Day turned to night.  Night turned to day.  She would not give up.  Her love would not let go.  In a near-stupor of desperation and exhaustion, she stumbled through a doorway, bumping into someone her height.  As she turned to look, Miriam collapsed in her arms.  Gripping one another, squeezing as tight as they could, they fell to the ground kissing and hugging.  Tears poured from their eyes.  Pulling away slightly, Eva caressed her sister's face and fiercely whispered again and again "Always hold my hand Miriam, always hold my hand.  Never let go, promise me you will never let go."

On their last day in the world's worst death camp, as they walked away from evil and suffering that few, if any, could truly comprehend, there were no matching dresses and curly bows.  There were no long locks and beautiful hair.  There were no older sisters, no mommy, no daddy.  There were matching lice infested striped uniforms.  There were shaved heads and deep scars.  There were gaunt faces and skeletal figures.  But for all that they lost--their family, their innocence, their homeland--they gained something that was powerful and astonishing.  They discovered the true essence of love.  They grasped its depths.  Somehow, somewhere, in the darkest darkness they understood love does not abandon.  It continually hopes.  It never gives up.  And it always believes.  Walking one last time through hell's gates under the infamous sign Arbeit Macht Frei, they left the same way they entered, holding hands.  Love never lets go.