Missionary Re-Entry & Why We Need Grace

A little over one year ago – on June 13, 2015 – Blaise, Mr. One, and I landed in America after nearly two years in South Sudan (for Mr. One, it was his very first time in America). Sitting here today, it’s hard to believe that it’s been more than a year, as sometimes it feels like we just got back yesterday, and other times it feels like it’s been the eternal year. The process of missionary re-entry has been absolutely brutal, and today I’m sharing what it’s been like to have been back in our “passport country” for a year.

WHY MISSIONARY RE-ENTRY HAS BEEN SO DIFFICULT FOR US

THE LOST YEAR

I call it The Lost Year because that’s how we’ve felt all. year. long. (And still feel.) Those who have been close to us throughout the last year know that we’ve been all over the place with our plans, our ideas, our desires, and our emotions. It’s also been hard because there’s been a lot of inconsistency with things we’ve had no control over – like Blaise’s job – making us feel even more lost and confused about this season of life.

Coming back to America was, in some ways, like coming home; however, in many more ways, it was not at all a homecoming.

We left massive chunks of ourselves on African soil – those parts that were stripped away from us – our assumptions, our pride, our culture, our worldviews, our normal, our friends.

Coming back to America felt like starting over in life at 30 years old.

We’ve really wrestled with who we are and what our purpose is here, in this land. We brought with us a lot of baggage – emotional wounds that were raw, traumas that we’d yet to process, and deeply personal experiences that we can never really explain.

In short, we came as very broken messes, and we’ve spent the last year trying to put the pieces back together, but with no framework with what our whole should look like now.

MISSIONARY RE-ENTRY & AMERICAN CULTURE

Over the last year, we’ve struggled a lot with what’s known as re-entry, or reverse culture shock, as we’ve tried to understand American culture. And somehow we’ve tried to make sense of it through our very different worldview, one that was drastically and sometimes violently shaped by our experiences and circumstances in our host culture. At times, it felt like a violent stripping of ourselves in order for God to rebuilt us to make us more effective in advancing His Kingdom in South Sudan.

We’ve struggled a lot with American church culture, as well, not quite understanding why the place we expected to feel most comforting and most like home has actually felt the most difficult and foreign to us. It’s a struggle that few seem to understand, even as much as they want to, and we are grossly at a loss for the words we need to accurately explain some very intangible thoughts and emotions.

ONE YEAR AFTER RE-ENTRY & WE’RE STILL NOT OKAY

We’ve had a number of people either ask how we’re doing now or simply assume that because we’ve been home for a year, we’re all healed up, got it all “figured out,” and reading to “move on” with our lives. It’s as if the one-year anniversary of our homecoming somehow meant an automatic end to us feeling lost, confused, and struggling. 

This is not true.

We still feel lost, though it’s no longer about superficial things like the new Kroger floor plan or driving on the right-hand side of the road.

We still feel confused, though it’s no longer about how to use the new credit cards machines that were installed in stores while we were gone.

We still feel foreign, though it’s no longer about how we’re dressed, how we shake hands, or how we greet people.

We still struggle, though not as often or as intensely as we did a year ago.

LEAVING THE MISSION FIELD IN ORDER TO HEAL

It has been a difficult year, and yet in the midst of the struggling, we know with certainty that God brought us back here to heal in ways we just couldn’t while we were still on the mission field.

We have needed rest – deep, spiritual and emotional rest. We have needed time and space to process our experiences and traumas, to turn over each and every emotional “rock,” examine it, give it to God, and allow Him to build it back into us as a part of our new whole. We know the struggling is so worth it, because it continues to force us to press into Him for strength, for grace, and for identity.

And as difficult as this past year has been, we know a time is coming when this season, with all of its ups and downs, will be over, and we’ll be ready to pour our whole selves into whatever it is that God has for us next.

And we know it’s coming because we look at how much God has healed us and refreshed us in the last year; as we have sought Him, He has been faithful to not leave us where we were.

PLEASE SHOW US GRACE

So friends and family, as you continue to journey with us, I ask that you also continue to show us grace. We know that we were gone for “only” two years, but we were stripped and shaken to the very cores of our beings in those two years, and a rebuilding process of that magnitude takes time.

When you feel frustrated that we’re still struggling with things you think should be easy for us by now, please show us grace; we’re frustrated, too.

When you wish we could articulate what it is that is so difficult to us, please show us grace; we wish for the words, too.

When you think that we should have it all figured out by now, please show us grace; we want nothing more than clarity and a sense of direction, too.

Even when you think we’re wrong in the way we think or the decisions we make, please show us grace; we’re trying desperately to follow Him faithfully, even when it doesn’t seem to make much sense.

Finally, a big thank you to each and every person who has prayed for us, walked alongside us, and entered our pain over the last year of this bizarre thing called missionary re-entry.

You have blessed us beyond words.

P.s. I’m going to try not to wait a year before I blog again!