Finding a Home

By the time that I’m able to post this, we will have completed our third week of village ministry here and be just shy of having only two and a half weeks left in Peru altogether. It’s crazy to think about how much time has passed. On one hand, it feels like I’ve been living on this farm for an eternity. I’m no longer petrified when I see a tarantula making its way across the inside of our tin roof, and I’ve made my peace with the fact that no matter how often I’m able to shower (which, if I’m being real, is usually every 3-4 days), I will feel clean for approximately two minutes afterwards before I’m covered in mud and sweat from the hike back up the two steep, often slippery hills to our home. The things that were once uncomfortable have become the new normal, and from holding seven-foot long boa constrictors to eating fried piranha, I think it’s safe to say that we’ve embraced the jungle culture.

But on the other hand, I feel as if I only just arrived yesterday. When I think about how I’ve already spent six weeks with my team, six weeks of living together and adjusting and seeing things that we’ve only seen on “River Monsters,” it absolutely blows my mind. The weeks go by so fast, and I know that they will only continue to increase in speed as the final countdown until we’re all home begins. And if I could somehow transport back in time to that first night here when we were all huddled under one giant mosquito net trying to watch a movie on a dim laptop screen, I would. Because it seems like I have so much more life to do with these people, way more than two and a half weeks could ever hold. Even though it rains more in a single night than I’ve ever seen in my entire lifetime, even though the bugs are massive and the creatures are loud, I can’t imagine leaving here anytime soon.

I’ve found a home here.

But as I sit here scratching my many (MANY) bug bites, thinking about how much I love this life that I’m living, I’m reminded of the weeks (okay, months) that I spent pre-trip being absolutely consumed with anxiety over the very notion of spending two months in this home. I’m not kidding, there were at least a solid two or three days where I was 100% convinced that I would come here only to be swallowed alive by a giant anaconda or to get some obscure disease that would make my face melt off. And then there were the normal things that I was scared of, such as whether or not my team would be weird (PSA: they’re not, so that’s cool) and how I would be able to leave home for two months to live with a bunch of strangers in the middle of a rainforest. What if it was too hard? What if it was lonely? What if God, in His sovereignty, wrecked my life completely?

I’d be lying if I said that all of those things weren’t true. Too hard? Absolutely. This is a place where every single thing is a thousand times more difficult, and a thousand and one times more inconvenient than what we’re used to. Lonely? Yes. No matter how great of a team I have (and trust me, I have a great one), there are still days where I feel as if nobody understands me or my heart at all. And yes, God COMPLETELY wrecked this season of my life. He took the summer that I had in mind and smashed my expectations. Like with a sledgehammer or a divinely dropped anvil. As well as I’ve adjusted to the lifestyle here, every day is still incredibly hard. I’m living a sweaty, dirty, uncomfortable two months.

And yet here I am, sitting at our kitchen table looking at fourteen pairs of muddy shoes piled up beside our makeshift door, perfectly messy and perfectly normal, more at peace than I ever thought I could be in a place that’s this excruciatingly difficult.

But why? If all my fears (sans anacondas and having my face be melted off) came true, then why on earth do I not want to leave this place in two and a half weeks?

You see, before I came on the trip, I was all too familiar with the understanding that God calls his followers to hard places. Countless times throughout the Gospels, Jesus tells his disciples that they should count the cost of Christianity, because it requires your life. And although foxes have holes and birds have nests, Christians have no place to lay their heads. Essentially, our Savior has mandated that we live lives of homelessness.

You might be scrolling back up, saying, “Wait, but didn’t you just say that you’ve found a home in Peru?”

Yes.

Because God is here.

In the midst of humidity, poverty, and mosquitoes, God is here. In the brokenness, in the darkness, in the chaos, God is here. And there is rest wherever He is. The more helpless and homeless that I feel in these moments, the more I embrace this insane jungle life and extreme discomfort, the more that I feel the surpassing peace of Christ and His promise to be our enough.

My home here can’t be found on top of our massive hill. It can’t be found in our screened windows or our seven bunk beds. It can’t even be found in my team. Home does not exist here in a physical sense.

My home, my rest, my peace, my comfort, my normal, and my enough are all found in the God who brought me here, not to leave me, but to fill me up more and more with each passing minute. And as I fix my eyes on Him, the jungle around me vanishes, all discomforts diminished by his glorious sufficiency.