What I've Learned

I recently went on my first visit back to Peru since living there from May 2007-May 2008. One of my best friends there was getting married, and I had promised I would come back for his wedding!

It had been about 18 months since I left, so I was expecting to find a lot changed, and I did. The gritty street boys' center in Lima that had first brought me to Peru had moved out to a lush suburban property, which will totally change the way the boys grow up, the kinds of kids that end up there, even the experience that future mission teams will have there. A couple of the older boys who had previously been living there were now living on their own for the first time, and struggling; one got arrested in Lima the day before I left. In Trujillo, three of the seven missionary families I had known were back in the States/Canada. There were a whole bunch of new interns I'd never met, and of course all of the old ones I'd known were gone. A few of my Peruvian friends were engaged; a few more had gained some weight. :-)

I thought it would be a little sad visiting with so much changed, but it wasn't. Instead I was thrilled to be back. I slipped right back into the Spanish, the rattling cab rides, the mix of dust and humidity and Latin music everywhere. Perhaps even more than I remembered, Peruvians were warm and friendly and accepted me instantly. It may have helped that I was so thrilled to be there; I'm sure during my year of living there, I was not always the easiest person to get to know as I battled homesickness and stomach bugs and a frequent feeling of being underequipped and overwhelmed. I guess comparatively speaking, a 12-day visit was a piece of cake. (I did get a little sick, though. I got a great piece of advice for my next trip: to take probiotics in advance, and give your stomach a headstart.)

Not surprisingly, being back made me think - about why I'd moved there, and how I'd changed while there, and how I'd changed since being back; about my job hunt and my goals when I came home; about my subsequent move to Seattle and my search for a new home.

Here's a few things that I think I got right, and wrong, along the way.

1. I think everybody on some level needs to be part of something bigger than themselves. It's why so many people get unhappy or "in a rut" despite having perfectly good jobs and marriages; it's what got me hooked on "missions" in the first place, and gave me the courage to go abroad; it's why I love my current job at Redeemer.
2. It's also true that being adventurous and wandering off the beaten track comes with plenty of sacrifice and hardship. I was pretty unprepared for all of the challenges that came my way, both in living abroad and coming home afterward to unemployment and lack of health care. I grew a lot, and don't regret any of it, but it was definitely more than I bargained for.
3. I left New York partly to escape some things about it that were hard. I moved to Peru and wound up with even harder challenges. I've moved twice since then, and have finally got it through my thick skull - you never fully escape your problems, they just change. Ironically Peru, the hardest place to live, is probably the closest to my heart. At the end of the day, it's not about how hard life is, it's about how much you're learning and growing and who you're doing it with.
   
4. In other words, sometimes we don't know what's best for us. Sometimes it takes God leading us somewhere we don't even want to go (I didn't initially have any interest in Peru or Latin America!) to find out who we really are. In general, I find that when I am trying to engineer my own life, I am stressed out and unhappy. When I accept a "calling" I wouldn't have chosen for myself - which usually means doing the right thing even when it's hard - I feel less anxious and more like I'm where I should be.
   

I'm sure there's a lot more to glean from the past few years. But this is some of what I've been realizing.