Well, at least I'm sort of back! I've been home from Peru for three weeks now. In some ways it seems like the trip was ages ago, and at the same time it doesn't seem like I'm really back to my "normal" life yet. Certainly part of my heart is still in Peru.
The first couple of weeks back, I was dealing off and on with illness - stomach bug, sinus infection, major headaches, fatigue. Nothing serious, but enough to keep me down a lot of the time. Several days, it was all I could do to get myself and the kids fed and in clean clothes - and I had help from Robert with the kids! By last weekend I was feeling much more like myself and I've spent this past week just trying to get back into the routine and catch up on all the things I'd neglected for the previous two weeks (well, really two months if I'm honest!). In the midst of all this, I've been trying to process my experience in Peru and see what God is trying to say to me. As any of you who have been on mission trips know, you always go with the intention of helping and blessing others, and you pray that God uses you for just that purpose, but it seems you always come back the one changed by your time away. This trip was very different for me than my first mission trip to Peru, and I'm just not sure yet what to do with the experience. It was a fantastic trip and so much good happened which I plan to write about in the next week or so (along with posting some pictures from November and December); for now, I'm going to post this poem that I copied from a friend's blog. I think it conveys a lot of what I'm feeling right now.
Prayer of Francis Drake, 1577
Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push back the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.
This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ.
1 comment:
Great post! Im sorry you were so sick! Ick! But Im pretty sure that's normal...at least its been the case for pretty much everyone we know that has come and gone within a month.
Nice poem. Looking forward to your next post!!!
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