The Rock

Before travelling to Ecuador, someone asked me if I would ever marry someone from a culture different to my own. My answer was that marriage is hard enough and communication in a marriage is difficult enough without adding in language and cultural barriers!

Three and a half years later, married to the love of my life who just happens to be from Ecuador, I realise I was totally wrong.

Marriage can be difficult, communication can be difficult, but what makes it easy is not being from the same country, having the same mother-tongue or coming from a similar background.

I can say that I am 100% happily married.

Do we have our issues? Yes.

Do we have misunderstandings? Yes.

Do we disagree sometimes? Yes.

Is our life difficult sometimes? Yes.

But the joy that Josias and I experience in our marriage isn't based on those things (Praise the Lord!).

Josias and I overcome any differences we may have because we have the most important thing in common: our primary goal in life is to please God, and to do that we live it according to what He tells us in His Word.

Not only does this mean that half the time it doesn't make any difference whatsoever that we're from two places that are worlds and miles apart, it means our life together is SOLID. Like the wise man that Jesus talks about in Matthew 7, we are building our life on a rock by obeying His words so that, when storms arise, we remain standing firmly in Christ.

Do our cultures have different opinions on marriage? Yes.

Do our cultures have different opinions on how to raise children? Yes.

So on and so forth.

But we don't base how we do life on what our cultures have taught us, we base it on what God has taught us through His Word and it is He who unites us despite our differences.

Our compatibility as people is no where near as important as our compatibility as believers, as followers of Christ. So maybe sometimes one of has to ask, "what does that word mean?" or challenges the perspective that the other has about a certain issue, but that's the beautiful thing about marrying someone who is different than you; as you spend time with each other, as you become more and more one, you discover that you are an expanded version of the person you were before, a richer version. You teach one another things, you show each other a different way of looking at things, you encourage one another to be the best version of yourself for God. And when the differences are felt, God teaches us about grace, compassion and understanding, He uses the issues we have as a way of sanctifying us and making us more like Jesus.

I love being part of a cross cultural family and being of cross-cultural descent: my paternal grandparents are Scots and Chinese-Malay, my Aunt and Uncle are Scot/Chinese and American, my sister-in-law and her husband are Ecuadorian and German and my brother-in-law and his wife are Ecuadorian and American. There is no way more beautiful to see how Christ unites us as believers than seeing people from vastly different backgrounds bound together in the love they have for him and for one another.

I can love Josias and be the best wife possible for him by loving God more, which as we're told in John and 1 John, means obeying Him. Seek first the Kingdom and His righteouness and all these things will be added unto you; put God first in your life and watch how everything else falls into place and rejoice in the peace that you find.

P.S This post was inspired by the video below!

Yoked to Christ

Being at home all the time means it's very easy to be irresponsible with the time that I have; not using it wisely but wasting time checking social media, watching tv programmes online etc. I feel the Lord spoke to me through this verse last night and I felt super challenged. Are the things I'm looking at or watching of any real value? Do they build me up or do they distract me from the important things? That's why this week I'm committing to zero "worthless" activities, literally all of which involve some kind of technology. I'm also very aware that I have a little one taking in everything that I do, and I don't want to teach her- albeit indirectly- that technology is of more worth than simply being present, loving the people you're with and keeping your hands busy; eyes fixed on Jesus, focussed on eternal Kingdom buisness. P.S making a list of to-do's and goals at the start of the day is really helpful!

A post shared by Amy Loachamin (@ecuawifelife) on Apr 24, 2017 at 5:50pm PDT

So, last Sunday evening I felt the Lord speak and challenge me with this verse and decided to take action. This last week I committed to putting everything I did through the "worthless" filter; checking social media umpteen times a day, watching tv series' online and buzzfeed videos did not make the cut. I implemented my cleaning routine (that I'd made up before Eliana was born), read (and finished) a book that my mum left with me when she came to visit us last year, watched and listened to sermons and focused on being more present.

I started off the week listening to a message from a womens' conference given by Brandi Harrison- I give a womens' teaching once a month at our church and was starting to prepare for my mothers' day message so I thought it would be a good idea.

The message spoke directly to my heart and fed my soul. It covered a variety of things pertaining to being a godly woman but what really spoke to me was when Matthew 11:29-30 was spoken about at the beginning:
"Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
Brandi spoke about how when training a new animal to plow, often a stronger and more experienced animal was yoked with it to help it learn. This is the image that Jesus is giving us- He wants us to walk alongside Him so that He can guide us, teach us and help us. (I fully reccommend listening to the whole message!). I found myself asking,
"Am I walking alongside Jesus? Am I really seeking Him and walking in daily fellowship with Him, allowing Him to guide me, comfort me and bear my burdens?" The answer was no. Routinely praying and reading my Bible in the morning and evening and doing whatever in between wasn't enough. His Word tells me I am to walk in the Spirit, to pray without ceasing, to rejoice in the Lord always. That's a 24/7 thing! God has been speaking to me for months about allowing Him to flow through me and simply be His instrument by drawing close to Him but it took this simple and well-known picture, tied with the challenge from the night before, to truly understand what that meant.

It means looking at my life and all the "worthless" things I invest my time and interest in. How can I hope to have my eyes fixed upon Jesus if I'm filling my mind with worldly things?
"It's only a tv show... it's only facebook... it's only a few YouTube videos to pass the time...it's only a song..."
Having this last week of intentionally examining how I spend my time and especially the things I'm looking at, I've experienced how much easier it is to really walk with Jesus. It's like that old allegory of the black dog and the white dog- which one will win in a fight? The one that I feed most. If I want to be a light in this world for Christ, a light in my home (we all know it can be much more difficult) for Christ, if I want rivers of living water to flow through me and touch those around me then I must be willing to give up the worthless things of this life, however much temporary pleasure they might bring me, and be 100% focused on Christ.

"Let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith." Hebrews 12:1-2

"... we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." 2 Corinthians 4:18

"Do you not know that friendship with the world is emnity with God? Therefore whoever wished to be a friend of thw world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you supposed it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, "He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us"?" James 4:4-5

Also, I found that getting on with the work that my hands found to do (and that needed to be done!), being more present especially with Eliana, and spending down time by doing something other than watching something, was simply just way more satisfying and fulfilling.

"...aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands..."
1 Thessalonians 4:11

So, I would encourage those of you who are reading this and perhaps feeling that quiet-but-persistant nudge of the Holy Spirit, don't ignore it. God made us to live in relationship with Him! We will find eternal life in nothing else.

"And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." John 17:3

You're not from here, are you?

It's a question that I get asked quite a lot here in Ecuador, by perfect strangers as you can imagine. People in the bus, taxi drivers, shopkeepers...

"No," I reply with a patient smile, "I'm from Scotland... the United Kingdom... Great Britain... Europe?"

The answer, or number of answers depends entirely on who I'm talking to and their geography general knowledge; there was one taxi driver who thought Scotland was a part of Russia.

There are rare occasions when engaged in conversations with aforementioned strangers that I am mistaken for somebody from Quito, and I take this as a compliment to my Spanish, knowing well that my "blonde" (by Ecuadorian standards) hair and eyes (for which I was once congratulated by a lady on the bus) should have given me away.

Every time I arrive back in Ecuador after having spent some time at "home", in Scotland, there is always a period of re-adjustment and of "letting go". I talk about "switching modes". Living in a different country to the one you grew up in, being married to someone from a different culture and who has a different mother-tongue to you, means that terms like "home" become a bit mixy. It means your "factory settings," as it were, become a bit more customised than they once were. When you no longer dream in just one language, when you don't even remember which language you had a conversation in, when you're imagining a conversation in your head and realise that isn't the language that person speaks... things become kind of mixy.

Many people in my situation, spread between two different places (or more), find themselves in the same situation. We are puzzle pieces, once belonging to a certain picture, who have adapted themselves to fit into a new one and now find that they no longer truly fit in either. We are the "armadillos", as Rudyard Kipling might put it, no longer hedgehogs or tortoises, but something different. (See The Beginning of the Armadillos, The Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling to understand!).

As I think of these things, and how my beautiful little daughter will probably feel the same, not belonging anywhere completely, I hold on to this truth:

"LORD, you have been our dwelling place in all generations." Psalm 90:1

No matter where I find myself on this earth, for He may yet take me to new places, I know that in Him I am home. In Him I find my peace, my resting place, my strong tower, my refuge and my rock. He is mine to cling to and I am His child.

None of us are really "from here" anyway. Like Abraham, we look forward in faith to a city whose foundations are designed and built by God Himself, remembering that we are part of a Kingdom that cannot and will not be shaken. For now, we are all in an in-between place, in between two realities, being transformed into the likeness of Christ and yet still in this body of sin, waiting for the coming of our redeemer when, in the twinkle of an eye, we will be changed. We are in this world, but not of it, and we feel the tension as both sides pull at us and vie for our full attention. "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:24-25)

And so we do give thanks, in all things, to the One in whom we do truly belong, and find our resting place, and for whom we wait with joy.