How a trip to the museum helped me process

In my mind, I had allowed room for myself to feel a tinge of sadness when it was time to leave the island. I knew saying goodbye would be difficult, but I was excited about going home. I was looking forward to hugging my parents, snuggling a precious baby born in my absence, and sitting down with a cup of coffee to hear my brother’s wedding plans. I felt ready to go home.

So it came as a bit of a surprise when it took all the resolve I had not to melt into a puddle of tears the night we left our little apartment on the little island in southern Chile. Somehow, among all the splattered paint, long nights, and cold mornings, that little apartment became home. It became ours. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted one more day, one more evening sitting around the table with Ricardo and Eliana. I rotated through many emotions on the long bus ride to Santiago that night.

We had decided that we wanted a chance to see the nation’s capital and experience a little of the culture north of the Lakes Region. After we arrived in Santiago on Saturday morning we hiked up Cerro San Cristobel. The smog that normally blankets the city had lifted some and we were able to catch a glimpse of the towering mountain range that borders the city. The next day we decided to visit a few of the free-on-Sunday museums in the city.

 The fine arts museum was beautiful and we had been wandering around for more than an hour before we stumbled into one of the featured galleries. I had started to skim over the description looking for words and phrases that I understood when I came to the familiar words, “Estados Unidos.” The museum was featuring a collection of art purchased from the United States over 100 years ago paired next to pieces by Chilean artists of the same time period. I looked over to the opposite wall to see an English translation of the description.

It became a game for me, studying the paintings, mostly landscapes, and then guessing if they were from Chile or the U.S. I could guess most of them, but there were a few a missed, a few scenes that I thought were of Chile that were actually from the United States. The two paintings of the hillsides that looked so similar reminded me of picking mora (blackberries) on Tenglo. I could have almost imagined that I was at home had it not been for the view of the sea peeking through the trees. I stood for quite some time in that room, soaking in the contrasting cultures that had been carefully arranged and presented to show their similarities.

The gallery brought me a sense of peace. It helped me reconcile a few of the emotions that I was experiencing. Most importantly, it reminded me that the God who brought about the changes in my heart in Chile is the same God who will continue to work in my life in the United States.