The Apartment

Finally! After 2 months of living in the motel, one day at lunch time we went to see an apartment with a Realtor and even though it was not perfect, it was good enough to start our first home. It was a building on a hill and there were 4 small stores on the first floor in the front and 4 one bedroom apartments on the second floor in the back. The only way to get to the apartments upstairs was an uneven stone and concrete stairway or the very steep driveway that had a flat area on the top where you could park the car temporarily.
It looked something like this…

The flat area on the top was the only way I could get to the apartment but it was enough for me to be able to exit the car and get in. Then there were two very high steps at the door, the Realtor and Vic carried me in this first time, but if we liked the apartment we could install a ramp on the entrance so that obstacle could easily be fixed.

Once we entered, we saw a very large room that had a fridge, a stove and a sink. That was the living room, dining room and kitchen area, 3 in one.  Large enough for those three rooms to fit in there. Then there was a little hall that led to the bathroom and I could get through the door, yippie!!! But I could not face the sink it was on the left side next to the door so I had to approach it sideways! Then the next room was the bedroom. It was big and it had a small walk in closet. That was it. We liked it. It was comfortable and had a good price so we decided to rent it. Thinking “for a year it’s not bad”, it was a good start at that moment, we would leave the motel and then later on when the lease ended we would look for something better. We never expected that we would stay there for the next 5 years!

The day finally came we went to the apartment in the morning with our luggage. The Realtor helped Vic to get me in gave us the keys and left. Vic left for the office since he didn’t have any more vacation days and I was staying in the empty apartment to wait for the only piece of furniture that we had at that moment. It was a new bed that was going to be delivered from the store. After the delivery, there was nothing for me to do, no TV, no phone, could not go out… The only thing we had there was a radio/CD player and things to read. But in so many hours you get bored and don’t know what else to do. One thing was for sure, reality started to sink in that day.

That was the moment to take a look into my life and how much it had changed in such a short time. I had spent the last ten years of my life surrounded by people that would have valued tremendously to spend just ten minutes talking with me. People that respected me sought my counsel and wanted to be around me. Lots of people, hundreds of them. As one of the pastors of a 7,000 member congregation I was popular, everybody knew me since I used to preach regularly to about 900 people at one time. I taught classes to groups from 20 to 100 students per group. And as a counselor I would see around 15 individuals a week privately in my office. At many moments during the course of my life, I had experienced how it feels to be surrounded by people and feel lonely on the inside. Until the day when I opened my heart to the Lord, in 1979. Then I knew that I would never feel lonely again, independently of having people around me or not. Now I was alone in an empty apartment, but for sure I was not lonely.

It was the Lord and me, we needed to talk. I had been praying, Vic and I did pray together too. But with all the moving and the excitement, visiting different places and things like that, God and I did not have this special time of reflection to put things into perspective. This was my big opportunity to do that. The first thing I realized was that somehow, this Country felt like home. It was a strange thing to feel since I just had left the place where I was born and raised. But this was a different sense of belonging; I guess it could be what you call a “calling”. All I know is that when I opened my heart to Jesus I was in Canada, and being in NY almost two decades later, North America felt like home. I believe that God has a purpose in bringing me to the US and this is beyond being married with Vic.

The second thing I realized was that all the people that surrounded me were gone along with my popularity. Here, I was not popular, nobody knew me and there was no one to talk to except for my husband. I didn’t even use the same last name I had in Peru! So it really was like starting a new life, a new identity… These realizations were interesting, created maybe a little bit of uncertainty, but they were a good thing to know so I would be able to grasp my new reality, accept it and start living this new life knowing that as a blank page in the story of my life, it started to be written as I went forward with my Lord guiding me and my husband besides me.

When there is a change in your life, like the one I had, stop, assess the situation, accept your reality and keep on going.  I wish for you that you will open your heart to the Lord too so you don’t have to do this alone.

Thank you for reading my blog, see you next week.