Tag: re-entry

My Acorn

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Repatriation sounds like a dirty word. And it is. A lot of emotional and mental mess comes with moving from a foreign place you called home back to the place you originally called home. A lot of that mess comes from expecting to be able to fall right back in with how things were before you left—the same friendships, the same habits, the same communities, the same you. But those things aren’t the same as when you left, and the most different of them all is you.

In the year and a half I was away, my siblings grew up. My church family is made up almost entirely of a new group of people. People got married, had kids, moved away. And in my own year and a half, I learned a new language, made new friends, changed my habits, and learned more or less how to be at home in a completely different culture.

Bringing all of those experiences back with me wasn’t as simple as just packing up my suitcases for the plane ride, which I’ll assure was no easy task in and of itself. And sharing those experiences wasn’t as easy as unpacking my suitcase and showing off my Bulgarian pottery or books or tablecloths.

Even though I’ve been back over four months, I still have no context for many of my overseas experiences and stories. Many people don’t have a clue what I’m talking about when I explain my favorite Bulgarian foods. Most people don’t understand when I explain my yearning for at least one chance to walk to the grocery store, or chat up the lady at the fruit stand before I buy half a kilo of cherries she picked that morning.

In my head I know that this is the same experience in reverse of when I would try to explain living by the river to my Bulgarian friends, or fireflies and starry skies to kids who had only ever lived in the confines of a Bulgarian city. But my heart doesn’t understand the similarities of the two experiences. It only feels yearning—for both places.

And that’s where the mess of repatriation comes in. Is it wrong to miss my new country when I have the blessing to be back in my native one? Is it wrong to take my native country for granted and forget the foreign country that showed me hospitality and kindness and grace? Sometimes I feel guilt that I can enjoy bluebell ice cream or a quick drive to the grocery store when I know my Bulgarian friends never will. And sometimes I’m confused when I have to make a schedule to meet a friend, or when I take for granted that I can hop in my car and drive anywhere I need to.

But those feelings are comparable to times in Bulgaria when I would feel guilty about the far places of the world I got to see that none of my American friends had experienced, or when I would feel confusion at the beautiful parks full of snow, or the fresh produce markets I took for granted because they filled my every day.

The guilt and confusion come in deciding, what should I like more? I love my native country. But I also love the country that became home to me in the past two years. They have both nurtured and grown me in ways the other couldn’t. Now that I’m back in my ‘home’ country, my native country, I realize that BOTH Bulgaria AND the United States are my homes now, in different ways. It’s not wrong to miss and love both of them. My experience as an expat grew me and shaped me, and the most gracious and grateful thing I can do with that experience is to acknowledge its place in my life.

I can love both Bulgaria’s yellow sunflower fields as far as the eye can see and the lazy mayfly haze that hovers above the tall grasses shimmering in the Oklahoma sunset. I can appreciate the chilling beauty of Bulgaria’s snowy mountain vistas just as much as Oklahoma’s mile-long sunset shadows across the flat fields and the golden sunlight that seeps in through your skin. I can remember the grey ghetto dirt just as fondly as the Oklahoma red that sifts through my socks. I can long for the taste of fresh strawberries and yoghurt just as much as I enjoy homemade ice cream sweetened by good company. And it’s alright for my heart to race through the peaks at memories of rushing mountain streams just as quickly as it races when the lazy Oklahoma rivers trip along their banks and stir my childhood awake in me.

Repatriation, I’m learning, is largely a personal thing. I am the one most changed by it. I carry the change with me, and if I let it, it will continue to grow in me and stretch my heart wide enough to carry two loves for two very different countries.

You all know by now that Tolkien’s deep, earthy Middle Earth stories are some of my favorites. And it should come as no surprise to you that the picture I think best encompasses my repatriation comes from them. In the film version of The Hobbit, the main character Bilbo was just an ordinary, armchair variety person until he was called off into the wide world for an adventure. Near the end of his adventure as he sits musing on it, he pulls an acorn from his pocket—one he picked up along the journey.

The leader of his traveling companions asks him, “You’ve carried it all this way?”

Bilbo answers, “I’m going to plant it in my garden, in Bag End.”

The leader of the amazing adventure, a king himself, surrounded by a royal hall filled with treasures, remarks, “It’s a poor prize to take back to the Shire.”

But Bilbo answers thoughtfully, “One day it’ll grow. And every time I look at it, I’ll remember. Remember everything that happened: the good, the bad … and how lucky I am that I made it home.”

My experience overseas feels in many ways like a small acorn I carry with me, unsure of what to do with it. As I’ve continued to examine and sort through my last two years of adventures overseas, I’ve noticed it growing. Planted in my native soil, my kernel of experience has already sprouted and become a sapling. As I remember my experiences, good and bad, I remember what they’ve taught me. And that tiny tree has already stretched my heart big enough to love my two countries as my two homes.

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Foolishness Roads

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I told a dear friend in an email recently that lately I’ve noticed I keep pulling into myself—becoming more private, seeking more alone-time, avoiding connection over phone or internet, and trying to keep to the smallest circles of people possible. I recently observed to my mom that I seem to have regressed three years backwards into the painful introversion and social awkwardness I had hoped I’d outgrown. Those self-assessments germinated and grew into what, unfortunately, may be my first contact with you, dear readers, in over three months. So with a squirming in my stomach that feels an awful lot like guilt at avoiding you, I’m writing my jumbled thoughts for the first time in a while.

Coming back to the States has been an adventure to say the least. There have been healing days and beautiful moments and times when I’ve almost noticed some of the personal growth I’ve experienced. There’ve also been heart-sore days and frustrating moments and times when I’ve wondered about the worth of my time in Bulgaria.

All of the mental and emotional see-sawing has led me to retreat as far back as possible into a safe space. I avoid Wal-mart like the plague. I’m hesitant to connect with people I know I can trust—people who are walking the same roads or have been down them before. I spend what time I can surrounded by family and relishing in daily tasks that give my life a rhythm, like baking, cleaning, reading, or manual labor on our small farm.

The one thing I’ve enjoyed that keeps me connected to my time in Bulgaria (even though it’s made me feel like a nervous wreck sometimes) has been speaking at churches. Speaking and sharing stories feels comfortable and useful and important on a deeply personal level I can’t quite describe. They’re things I can do that give me a sense of continuity and constancy in who I am and what the Lord has called me to do. And they feel like one of the few lifelines that help me connect the fractured pieces of life here, life there, and life here again.

So it was that I found myself last week spending time in Texas with family there, sharing at their churches and telling the stories that help me stitch back together my fractured sense of self. I began the trip withdrawn. I unknowingly carried a burden of isolation I had packed and slung across my shoulders myself. I guess I assumed that because my own tangled thought life was burdensome to me, I would be a broken, burdensome houseguest. Better just to do what I came to do, keep quiet, and smile when the occasion called for it. None of this thought process was intentional, of course. I would never consciously expect family to feel that burdened by me, let alone treat me like a stranger who just happened to be staying at their house before speaking at their churches. I only realized my mindset when things began happening to expose it.

They unquestioningly embraced me as family in everything: from feeding me, to letting me help with chores, to hammering out who takes the longest showers and what our morning shower schedule should be. I got to be a part of my cousins’ weekend activities and watch with pride as they performed, quizzed, and coached. But I wasn’t just someone along for the ride. I was the lap chosen to sit in. I was the coveted companion for dog-walking and roller-blading. I was the resident dessert cook, confidant, and errand runner.

And when talk in Sunday school turned toward persecution, and my mind and heart were stretched so far towards foreign friends and foreign countries that they began to break, my cousin unquestioningly held my shaking hand until it stilled. When I couldn’t navigate the Dallas streets I should have known from experience, my cousins gave me directions from the front seat without so much as a judgmental glance or a word of question. When we had time alone together, it was the most natural thing in the world for my Aunt to probe gently into my tangled mess of repatriation thoughts and feelings and half-conceived understandings.

They cared about me. Deeply. I was not a burden for them to bear, like I so often feel myself to be in these days of limbo. I was not even a wounded missionary they felt compassion for out of the goodness of their hearts. Because of their hospitality and loving-kindness, I didn’t feel myself to be a burden, but a blessing. They enjoyed my company just as I enjoyed theirs.

As I began to process these thoughts, my fractured sense of self seemed to be on the mend and I was joyful to be a blessing again to someone. I was beginning to understand that my idea of needing to be ‘whole’ to be able to truly bless and benefit other people was hogwash. It’s in my weakness that Christ is strong. And I was forced to think about grace more deeply than I had in a while because family gave me precious gifts of time and comfort and laughter that I didn’t deserve. And those weren’t the only undeserved gifts of grace that week.

These ideas of grace and wholeness and blessing hadn’t yet coalesced into words in my mind by the time I left Texas to return home. In the driveway my aunt quoted words I had said just minutes before to her class about missionaries traveling without a money bag or an extra cloak, and nothing much besides the dust on their clothes, expecting others to provide for them—expecting God to provide. She slipped money into my hand as I tried to deny her, and then to find the right words to express thanks. And when I failed to back my manual transmission car up the steep slope of the driveway without first rolling into my aunt’s car, they laughed unconcernedly and the whole family pushed my car back up into the street.

I fought back tears for the next hour and a half’s worth of driving. They weren’t tears of embarrassment or shame or self-pity. They sprang from confusion and grief at leaving, and the same unresolved paradox of blessing through brokenness. I couldn’t understand it. And I struggled to accept the grace I had been extended by my heavenly father and my earthly family. By the time I stopped for supper I felt numb. And when the cashier only charged me for half of my order with a knowing wink, I knew I had to pull over for some time to reflect and pray.

Sitting in a deserted parking lot, I asked God through brimming tears, “Why won’t people quit being so nice to me?!” I felt broken and unworthy of the grace. I felt confused about my brokenness and wondered for the umpteenth time whether my time in Bulgaria had been worth it. I wondered why reentry into the States was so hard. I wondered why I kept ending up in situations as bizarre as being parked in a strange parking lot crying over why my mac-n-cheese was too cheap, fighting the urge to vomit brought on my medicine and hormones and overflowing emotions.

And then it all just stopped. I was enveloped in the embrace of my heavenly Father’s presence that I so desperately craved. I felt His words as clearly as if he’d whispered them into my heart, “Child, I bless you out of my lavish, extravagant love because I can. I can show you grace whenever I want. And when you don’t understand, know that I feel your pain, and you cannot fathom the love with which I respond.”

I felt prompted to turn on a song from an album I had recently bought and not really listened to yet. And as I listed to the words, a smile, and then a giggle broke through my tears:

…The dawn, it shot out through the night

And day is coming soon

The kingdom of the morning star

Can pierce a cold and stony heart

Its grace went through me like a sword

And came out like a song

Now I’m just waiting for the day

In the shadows of the dawn

But I won’t wait, resting my bones

I’ll take these foolishness roads of grace

And run toward the dawn

And when I rise and dawn turns to day

I’ll shine as bright as the sun

And these roads that I’ve run, will be wise

(Shadows of the Dawn, by The Gray Havens—do yourself a favor and check out their music!)

These beautiful words were a reminder that sometimes grace takes us down winding roads to which we can’t see the end. And the journey may look like foolishness until we reach the goal. It certainly looked foolish to plenty of people for me to move overseas for 2 years. And it felt foolish enough moving back when the time came. But all that matters is that I follow in obedience because my Guide knows the way and He knows the wisdom in the path.

Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians chapters 1 and 3 promises that God’s wisdom looks like foolishness at times, but that what looks like wisdom may not be as it seems. And the gleaming promise of vindication from Psalm 37 says that if we commit our way to the Lord, he will make our righteousness shine like the dawn, and the justice of our cause like the noonday sun. We’ll see it all clearly in the end, and sometimes for now we have to keep trudging along even though we aren’t shining very brightly, and even though we can only see dimly.

The reason I’ve used to justify these extended ramblings is that maybe some of you readers are in a season of life that doesn’t make much sense either. Or maybe you know me or others like me returning from the field in a jumbled confusion. Show them what grace you can, and encourage them to accept grace themselves. Remind them that if this season of life looks foolish, it’s not necessarily wrong. And if you’re the one in my shoes, I encourage you to accept your portion of grace, even when it’s uncomfortable, and keep walking your foolishness roads. Know that one day, the roads that we’ve run will be wise.

Coming back: This does not compute

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I landed back on American soil exactly 16 days ago: a little over two weeks. I expected the disorientation normal for a return back ‘home’ after two years away, reverse culture shock, but I didn’t realize it would still be an ever-present part of my life two weeks after I was back. I expected to be well on my way to mentally processing through the change, journaling things I had learned little by little, writing blog posts about Frodo picking up the threads of his old life after he returned from his quest through Middle earth. But I haven’t done any of that.
I haven’t journaled or blogged one word. To be honest, the connectivity of our digital age has kind of overwhelmed me. There are so many people to talk to and catch up with, but I don’t even know what I would say. And if I use Tolkien’s analogy of the tapestry, picking up the threads of an old life to begin weaving them again, it would be more accurate to say I feel like someone picked up my life-tapestry, ran it through an airplane propeller, and handed it back to me to try to stop the threads from unravelling. Everything feels tangled, knotted, confused, and maybe a little broken.
Since I’ve been back, the range of my emotions and thoughts has been astounding. I race through the gamut quicker than I can even identify what I’m feeling or thinking. These emotions come from separation from a place and people I was constantly with for the last two years. They come from the fact that all the cultural habits I developed over the past two years have no context where I am now. They come from a changed schedule, home, way-of-life, and language. And they’re from being reunited with family and friends and places I’ve missed for 2 years.
In just a normal day here, I feel and think all sorts of things that my brain and my heart just can’t handle all at once. And living by myself for the past year with limited opportunity to speak English means I’ve gotten out of the habit of expressing thoughts or emotions like I used to, even IF I could remember the English words I need all the time, and even IF I knew well enough what I was thinking to express it. The overabundance of emotions just won’t compute, so they feel more like flashes in peripheral vision—too fleeting and too undefined to have meaning or form.

I am getting better at slowing things down and trying to experience emotions and think thought one at a time. But in a normal day, all of these emotions are frequent visitors:

grief
joy
pain
elation
confusion
frustration
guilt
belonging
strangeness
remembering
forgetting
apathy
empathy
overwhelmingness
inarticulateness
anxiety
distraction
comfort
meaninglessness
meaningfulness
separation
connectivity
longing
contentedness
sadness
happiness
differentness
sameness
changeful
unchanged
helpful
burdensome
accepted
loved
broken
unravelling
healing
And the list goes on.

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Originally posted by alwaysbecheeky

It’s a lot, and sometimes I do feel like I’m going to explode, but I’ve been surrounded by loving friends and family who have helped and encouraged me enormously. And there’s been lots of prayer. LOTS of prayer. 😉 It also helps that I’m in the South. People in the grocery store are kind enough to offer me help when I’m standing dumbstruck in the middle of the aisle for minutes at a time. The lady at the post office pretends there’s nothing wrong to save my pride when I get so confused at paying for a package that I almost cry. I take nighttime walks with my Dad, and he never gets impatient when I break off mid-sentence because I’m staring in wonder at the stars I’ve missed. My mom helps me pick deodorant and shampoo when I’m overwhelmed at all the options. And my whole family is helping me with encouragement, prayers, extra hugs, and noticing when I get that look in my eyes that tells them I’m not there at the moment.
So I guess my purpose for this post is to explain to you why I may not be as communicative as when I left, or why I act different, or trail off mid-sentence. And also, I want you to know what others are likely going through as they return home as well. If you know someone coming home from the mission field—if they’ve been there for one year or 50—this is a little glimpse of what’s more than likely going on inside their heads. So give them extra hugs. Sit with them in silence while they think extra hard to come up with words to say. Hold their hand or help them make choices when they get that faraway look in their eyes. Believe them when they say they don’t know why they’re crying. Distract them when they need to be distracted, and listen to them when things need to tumble out of their hearts all jumbled and in pieces. It’ll do their heart good, and they’ll never forget the gift you’re giving them.