By Christina Holder

When I left the United States for Liberia last year, I knew that God was giving me the getaway of my lifetime. But I was unprepared for exactly what that meant.

Liberia is one of West Africa's most explosive countries. Only a little more than five years out of a 14-year civil war, about 10,000 United Nations peace keepers are stabilizing this country operating on minimal electricity, running water, and other critical infrastructure.

Some friends and family members had serious doubts about my going. While my friends were getting married and starting families, I was running off to a country barely out of a vicious civil war.

It didn't appear sensible.

But no one could change my mind about Liberia. In my own brokenness, I was eager to reach out to some of the most broken people in the world. I wanted to give them a voice. I wanted to hear their stories. I wanted to minister to their souls and somehow help them begin a journey of healing.

I didn't know exactly how to do all of this, but believed that God was my travel agent on this trip, and the best one to be in charge of my journey.

So I trusted Him. I got on the plane, and away I went.

But I wasn't expecting all the hardship He had in store for me in Liberia.

I experienced terror for the first time during an armed robbery early one morning. A gang of ex-rebels busted down my door and gathered around my bed brandishing machetes and a gun.

My heart grieved for many Liberians as I listened to their stories of war. They saw some of the most unthinkable atrocities. Older brothers beheaded. Girls raped. Pregnant women murdered after sinister bets to determine whether the unborn baby was a boy or a girl. Today, post-traumatic stress disorder is widespread in Liberia, although it goes mostly undiagnosed.

Almost everywhere I looked, there was trash and poverty and someone who desperately needed help.

I wasn't expecting Africa to be a vacation. But I was unprepared for it to fall so far from the memories of rest and tranquility that I had relished on past getaways.

There was the time my friend Amy took me to a monastery, where we prayed quietly in a quaint chapel. There was another time when I spent a whole weekend by myself, huddled in a guest house built on a rock.

After each of those getaways, I emerged rested and energized and at peace with whatever God had in store for me next. Until Liberia, I had thought that was what getaways were supposed to do.

But in Liberia, I began to face many difficult issues. Beyond the visible ones before me I realized that I couldn't get away from many of the things I had tried to leave behind in the United States.

Loneliness.

A broken heart.

Fear that I wouldn't get married or become a mother.

A struggle to understand war and pain and authentic suffering.

As I confronted these challenges, I realized that sometimes God uses getaways to make us face the hard issues that we or life or both keep us from confronting.

Every time Jesus went on a getaway, He confronted heavy issues.

As a small boy, He slipped into the temple while His parents left town. There, He spent several days listening to the temple teachers and asking them questions. A peaceable enough time away from His parents, perhaps, but only on the surface. Jesus likely faced grueling barrages of questions and criticism from doubters (Luke 2:42-49). It likely was a tiresome—not a relaxing time—away from home.

When He went to eat supper with outcasts or forgave the sins of those considered the worst of all sinners, He never could eat or talk in peace. Criticism followed Him wherever He went.

In a quiet moment in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was in "agony" and prayed so "fervently" that He began to sweat blood as He asked His Father to thwart a brutal crucifixion (Luke 22:44).

The Bible speaks of how often Jesus would slip away to the wilderness to pray (Luke 5:16). But even there, in the peaceful darkness, amid the crackle of a brilliant fire, blanketed by a thick blanket of glimmering stars—even there—in a place that might make one remember young, free, halcyon days, I doubt Jesus was just taking it all in. Instead, He likely was pouring out His heart to the Father on behalf of so many suffering people around Him.

Sometimes the point of a getaway isn't to help us to relax or to experience peace or to rest. Travel ads slicked with shiny, pristine beaches and turquoise water have somehow convinced us that we need vacations and have a right to do nothing but rest and to drink pina coladas during them.

Sometimes God's getaways are filled with hardship. Those times away are rich but full of brokenness. They force us to face what we fear most—what we aren't willing to face during normal working hours.

God's getaways have a deep purpose.

Throughout Scripture, Jesus leaves the crowds and gets away. But He only does it so that He can pray and to prepare to continue showing compassion to so many people.

Jesus' getaways are key to His compassion because during those getaways, He is communicating with His Father.

Prior to beginning his public ministry, Jesus fasts and prays in the wilderness (Luke 4:1-13). He puts the Devil in his place and them promptly goes to Galilee "in the power of the Spirit" (Luke 4:14). He immediately begins to heal and to rebuke demons and to reduce fevers. He doesn't hold back His compassion. When the sun begins to set, Jesus doesn't stop healing. Many more expelled demons and healed diseases later, it's morning. Jesus finally leaves for a secluded place (Luke 4:42) where He convenes once again with the Father. He pours out His heart. He likely is tired. The crowds find Him and ask Him to stay. But Jesus can't. There are too many people to be healed. He has to leave.

And He does (Luke 4:44).

Jesus' getaways weren't easy or restful. But they did help Him to know more fully the heart of God. They did recharge Him in a way that allowed Him to continue showing compassion to people hour after hour, day by day, year by year in His short 33-year span.

It was Jesus who told potential followers that a getaway with Him would cost them dearly:

"If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and yes, even His own life, he cannot be My disciple." (Luke 14:26)

But what else can we expect from a Savior whose mission was to preach the Gospel to the poor ... to proclaim release to the captives ... to set free those who are oppressed" (Isaiah 61:1).

As His followers, we are called to the same mission—and to the same getaways.

Now when I'm in Liberia, and I face hardship, I remember that Jesus' getaways never were easy. I'm now more willing to accept the hard issues I tried to gloss over before.

Like thinking about how easy it would be to pack up and to leave, to pack up all the pain and suffering of Liberia with the quick zip of my suitcase.

Like admitting that being nearly 30 and unmarried still really bothers me.

Like accepting that maybe part of me will always love my ex-boyfriend.

And then I take all of those fears, all of those concerns, all of the requests my heart can hold, and I give them to the Father.

Because although my Liberian getaway is difficult at times and although my heart often is grieved, I know this is the best way for God to get to His broken people.

To preach the Gospel to the poor.

To proclaim release to the captives.

To set free those who are oppressed.

Including me.

To discuss this article, visit our blog, Fresh Brew.

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Christina Holder is a freelance writer based in Liberia, West Africa, where she is recording post-war stories five years after Liberia's brutal 14-year civil war. She is a former reporter for the Naples (Fla.) Daily News and a former reporter/researcher for syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak in Washington, D.C. She writes for the blog Beautifully Broken, which encourages women with God's promise to take their brokenness and to make it beautiful.

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Copyright © 2009 Christina Holder. All rights reserved. This article was published on Ungrind.org on June 14, 2009.