“I really love the name of your boat,” he was saying “Querencia, right?”

“Yes,” she said. “You speak Spanish?”

“No, but I read a book about bullfighting once. Isn’t that the spot in the ring when the bull feels protected and secure?”

“Exactly,” she said. “Sometimes it’s a place in the sun. Other times it’s in the shade. It’s where the bull goes between charges. It’s like an invisible fortress, the only safe place.”

“Just like your boat.”

The Death and Life of Charlie St Cloud

 

And that’s another thing I turn to in the school holidays – losing myself in absorbing “light” fiction. Then sometimes I find a truth right there in the escapism. True rest is there to be found in the wildest storm, when attacks are coming from all sides. True rest requires protection and security, strength and safety. It’s where I need to go between battles.

 

My thirteen year old adopted daughter can whip up a storm in seconds. The anger is raging, the hurtful words are hitting the target over and over again. Feelings of helplessness, hurt and failure threaten to overwhelm me. Even when she has long forgotten what she was angry about and has fallen asleep, I lie awake into the night, trying to find some peace, some rest, some restoration.

 

Where is my Querencia?

 

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,

Though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.”

Psalm 46:1-3

 

God is my Querencia.

 

God is my invisible fortress.

In him, I can feel protected and secure.

God is my only safe place.

In him, I can find the rest to let love win again.