A Reprieve From Seclusion  

I (Raechel) have a friend here in Lima who keeps an amazing blog.  She does a great job of sharing her struggles with her reading audience, and I have been encouraged and edified by her willingness to be vulnerable.  Her transparency has inspired me to communicate some of my trials and the lessons that I have learned from them.  So, for better or worse, here I go.

Honestly, Peru has been exceedingly difficult for me.  Living in a city has been a change in itself, but add to that the cross cultural component and it has made for a huge adjustment.  Everything is a challenge.  Sometimes something as simple as buying fruit at the market takes all of the energy I can muster and never knowing exactly what is going on around me takes an emotional toll.  

During our first year in Peru, Geoff and I would put the kids in bed at 7:00p.m., collapse onto the couch, drooling and staring off into space until around 9:00, and then lug our exhausted bodies into our bed.  The tasks of normal daily living and parenting our four kids, combined with the process of acculturation, often left me feeling like an amoeba, void of all attributes common to mankind.  

Although things have gotten easier over the years, they still come with various challenges.  Ordering pizza still requires unceasing prayer and unfaltering fortitude.  Going anywhere without Geoff incites dread and trepidation.  And there are still some days when my Spanish seems barely adequate to communicate the most basic ideas.

I have always been a homebody, but as I have been faced with the laboriousness of living in another culture, I have found myself less and less willing to leave the house and engage the outside world.  My home is my safe haven, my comfort zone, the place where I am understood and where I am free from the burden of dealing with the pressures of the foreign milieu outside my door, so at home I stay.  

Now, this withdrawal did not happen over night.  Sure, I always preferred being at home, but in the beginning I gave it the old college try.  When we first arrived in Lima, we tried to get involved in a variety of activities with our kids.  We did cooking lessons and soccer, and Lily even participated in a drama class.  We had Zeke and Chi in a local preschool and kindergarden, and even discussed putting Lily in a Peruvian school.  But these efforts to engage the culture soon began to cost us more than they seemed to benefit us.  Little by little, I disengaged and found myself, and unfortunately my children, secluded in my "safe haven."

Aside from the general attempt to adjust to life in Lima, there was the more specific endeavor of finding my fit in the ministry.  It did not take me long to wrestle with the tension of feeling the need to do ministry and the reality of not desiring to participate in ministry events.  In the beginning, I told myself that things would get better with time and that I would want to be out there doing more ministry after I was more comfortable with living here.  But as time went on, I found that my aversion to working directly with the ministries only increased and that my focus on the ministry that I had at home consumed more of my energy and time (homeschooling and being a wife).  

In addition, I slowly began to come to grips with the tension that pulled my heart in divergent directions.  In reality, I love my calling.  I love being a wife to Geoff and a mom to my four crazy kids.  I feel so blessed to be able to do these things full time and could not imagine doing anything else.  Yet, after the first year, the tension still existed.  I felt guilty for not wanting to be out there doing more.  I felt like I was not being a good Christian because I was under the impression that good Christians go out and do ministry.

Then, God challenged me, reminding me about the all-encompassing nature of the Gospel of grace.  I was reading A Prodigal God by Tim Keller and through this, as well as Geoff speaking truth into my life, I was brought back to my true identity in Christ and the completeness of the salvation I have received in Him.  I realized that the tension that I had been wrestling with stemmed from my prideful desire to earn my place in the Kingdom of God.  I was no different than the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son, thinking that I could earn God's favor by working for my keep.  

I would have never been able to articulate this at the time, but the move to Peru to do missions, in a lot of ways, was, for me, motivated by a yearning to become a "better" Christian.  I was doing what I thought all good Christians should do, working to please my Father.  Over the last few years, my works, born in my own strength, efforts to please God and earn His commendation, have only served to bring me to my knees and humble my prideful heart.  

I am who I am in Christ because God has reached down and pulled me from the pit and set me on solid ground by His grace.  In Christ, I have already received an inheritance that I could never earn in a thousand lifetimes of overseas missions.   So, I do not have to have a ministry outside my home to please my Father.  My Father is pleased with me because I have been clothed with the righteousness of Christ, not because of my work with any ministry.  There is no tension when I remember this, only freedom to be the best wife and mother I can be in Christ.

So, what does this have to do with the pictures below?  Like I was saying, I am a homebody.  I prefer to be secluded than to be amidst the hustle and bustle of this insane city.  But one of the goals for our last few months in Peru is to acquire pleasant memories from our time here.  I am aware that the problem is not Peru.  This is a beautiful country with precious people made in the image of their creator.  So, I want to experience and remember some of that beauty.

I confess that even with this new commitment to get out and see more of Peru, Geoff had to convince me this week that it was time for a reprieve from my seclusion.  On Monday we left for a three day trip to the mountains and spent an enjoyable few days outside the city.  Below are some pictures from our trip.