There were a few non-believers who did not hate Christians simply because we were Christians, and who really did (intellectually at least) grasp the Christian message. Some non-believers even defended Christians against the outright haters. Largely, though, atheists believed they understood what they constantly maligned and misrepresented, while either denying their hostility, or wearing it like a badge of honor. It was humorous, to say the least, to listen to them tell us we believed only because we were told to, and then watch them turn around and try to tell us what we should believe instead. Such contradictory stances were a hallmark of the non-believer. Even the ones I thought to be quite rational and logical (and they were few, to be sure) would, at some point, show their complete irrationality and total lack of logic when it came to whether or not it was rational and/or logical to believe.
Perhaps my biggest challenge was to not take what they said personally. I kept meeting them where they were, knowing they were not open to Scriptures at all, and simply showed them the flaws in their thinking, which was not something they appreciated, either
Some were just so hateful, vitriolic, toward any Christian, and Biblical teaching, and they could be corrected multiple times and would come back again with their same line of reasoning and claim nobody had answered them. The blatant lies were hard to take.
Thank you for your well wishes! 
