Category: re-entry

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Day 2: Grieving {31 Days of Re-entry}

Sipping wine out of plastic cups, chatting and laughing about our attempts at painting, my mom and I got to be “creative” (aka paint the same picture as 30 other women in the room) at Studio Vino a few weeks ago.  The teacher kept reminding us to take a break from our painting, back up and look from a few steps back.  From far away, our paintings actually looked halfway decent! 


It has been almost exactly five years since I returned from China and I feel like I’m just now benefitting from the big picture view.  Most of my posts this month will include some journal entries from my time of re-entry and, like re-watching a movie with the commentary turned on, I will comment on my thoughts as I share them with you.  In eastern (as opposed to western) fashion, these posts may not be as linear as I would like, but more cyclical, repeating similar themes and thoughts.  (Or maybe that’s just the female brain?)

Journal
One month before leaving China…

June 18, 2010 
“Father God, I give you my grieving over leaving China, my uncertainty about living in Chicago, my fears about transition, identity and purpose, and my hopes and anxieties about marriage.  Please prepare my heart for the next step. 

Yesterday Adam texted me Joshua 1:9 ‘Be strong and courageous!  Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.’ Joshua was a man in transition (to say the least).  

And I just ‘stumbled’ on this in Isaiah 46: 3-4:  ‘Listen to me, O house of Jacob and all the remnant of the house of Israel.  You who have been borne by me from birth, and have been carried from the womb; even to your old age, I shall be the same, and even to your graying years I shall bear you!  I have done it and I shall carry you; and I shall bear you, and I shall deliver you.'”


After being back in the states several months…

Nov. 11, 2010
Lord God, I have so many emotions and thoughts swirling within me and I don’t know how to make sense of them  But I know I miss you.  You comfort me from the inside.  You don’t change my circumstances, but you change my perspective.  Last night it’s as if you were saying, ‘I never promised that you or your life would never change, but I did promise that I would never change.’  Lord, I just feel this massive sense of loss when I think about how much time I put into learning Chinese and studying culture.  Am I really supposed to just let all that go?”

Dec. 8, 2010
“…Do you want me to do some counseling regarding my reverse culture shock?  Most days I’m fine, but when it hits me, I feel almost like despairing of life.  Is this a sign that I’m out of step with your will, Lord?  Please give me wisdom.”

 Dec. 12, 2010
“Under the circumstances, this can’t be anything but an uncomfortable time.  Not only is everything in my life changing, but the ground I am standing on now feels more like a floating island (where it is constantly raining). 

So Psalm 139 was comforting this morning: ‘Where can I go from Thy Spirit? Or where can I flee from Thy presence?  If I ascend to heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in Sheol, Thou art there.  If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there Thy hand will lead me, and Thy right hand will lay hold of me.” (v. 7-10).  Lately, I wonder if the darkness will overwhelm me, but you say ‘even the darkness is not dark to Thee, and the night is as bright as the day’ (v. 12). Thank you, Lord.” 


Reflection
This all sounds so dramatic, but leaving China was very similar to grieving the loss of a loved one.  First, you feel that you are drowning and can’t catch your breath, but slowly the grief begins to come in waves, then ripples, then surprises you as it laps at your feet even years later.  Leaving a place you love and truly felt called to is grief.  But the Lord has been with me each step of this confusing journey.  And it has been such a comfort to know that He is the SAME.  In retrospect, I wish that I had actually found some counseling.  In future posts, I hope to add some resources for those experiencing this that I myself would have appreciated having at the time.

In spite of not getting help (and consequently having weekly meltdowns with my fiancé in the months after the return), one thing I think I did right was turn to Scripture.  I find I used many surging wave/lost at sea/drowning metaphors in my journals at the time and Christ was certainly my rock/anchor/true north in a time of life churning all around me.


Have you felt like leaving a culture was like grieving?  How have you coped?

Resources:
Check out my friend, Kim’s post on Re-Entry on Velvet Ashes. Her description of the grieving process really resonated with me. 

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This post is day 2 of the series “Re-entry: Reflections on Reverse Culture Shock,” a challenge I have taken to write for 31 days. Check out my other posts in the series:

Day 1: Introduction
Day 2: Grieving
Day 3: No One Is Special
Day 4: Wasted Gifts
Day 5: I Never Expected…
Day 6: Identity: Through the Looking Glass
Day 7: Did I mishear God?
Day 8: When You Feel Like Shutting Down
Day 9: Caring for your Dorothy
Day 10: You’re Not the Only One Who’s Changed
Day 11: 12 Race Day Lessons for Serving Overseas
Day 12: Confessions of an Experience Junkie
Day 13: Longing for Home
Day 14: Readjusting: Same Tools, Different Work Space
Day 15: Book Review: The Art of Coming Home
Day 16: The Story of My “Call”
Day 17: Is Missions a “Higher Calling”?
Day 18: And Then I Fell in Love
Day 19: Is God Calling You Overseas?
Day 20: Life Is Not Seasonal
Day 21: What I Took and What I Left Behind
Day 22: Groundless, Weightless, Homeless
Day 23: When the Nations Come to You
Day 24: The Call to Displacement
Day 25: Scripture Anchors for Re-Entry
Day 26: In the Place of Your Exile
Day 27: Resources for Re-entry
Day 28: A Time for Everything: A Prayer of Leaving
Day 29: Journal: 8 Months After Re-Entry
Day 30: 12 Survival Tips for Re-Entry
Day 31: A Blessing
(Day 32: Writing is Narcissistic (And Four Other Reasons Not to Write)–a reflection on this Write 31 Days experience)

Picture from www.canva.com

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Day 1: Introduction {31 Days of Re-entry}

Re-entry for me was when life became like a rope that was forever being pulled from my hand–always moving and impossible to grasp.  In the past five years since leaving China and returning to the states, I got engaged and married, had two babies, lost a father-in-law, changed jobs twice and moved across the country. It’s been eleven months since our cross-country move and the rope is still in motion, though I’m beginning to hold it long enough to feel the texture of the coils in my hands.  And it doesn’t burn as much as it once did.

This series will be on the topic of re-entry, or reverse culture shock, but I hope you will find some solace, strength and hope for whatever transition you are experiencing.  Re-entry specifically describes the experience of living abroad or in another culture for any amount of time and then assimilating back into your “passport culture.” 

Re-entry is about being changed by your experience abroad, yet being expected to live the life you once lived in a culture in which you no longer fit. 

Disorienting and confusing, it is no wonder re-entry is analogous to a spaceship returning to earth from space. 

I first experienced reverse culture shock in high school after returning from an amazing summer camp experience in the hills of North Carolina.  I had no idea what was wrong with me.  My other experiences of it spanned 10 years and were after spending 6 months in Uganda, 5 weeks in Tajikistan and 5 years in China.  This series will mainly be about my return from China, including past journal entries about the themes, lessons and resources that have impacted me as I have attempted to process this experience.

I wrote this series in response to a challenge to write during the entire month of October, called Write 31 Days.  The table of contents is below.  Please visit multiple posts and leave comments–I’d love to hear about your experience and get to know you.  So glad you stopped by! 

Day 1: Introduction

Day 2: Grieving

Day 3: No One Is Special

Day 4: Wasted Gifts

Day 5: I Never Expected…

Day 6: Identity: Through the Looking Glass

Day 7: Did I mishear God?

Day 8: When You Feel Like Shutting Down

Day 9: Caring for your Dorothy

Day 10: You’re Not the Only One Who’s Changed

Day 11: 12 Race Day Lessons for Serving Overseas

Day 12: Confessions of an Experience Junkie

Day 13: Longing for Home

Day 14: Readjusting: Same Tools, Different Work Space

Day 15: Book Review: The Art of Coming Home

Day 16: The Story of My “Call”

Day 17: Is Missions a “Higher Calling”?

Day 18: And Then I Fell in Love

Day 19: Is God Calling You Overseas?

Day 20: Life Is Not Seasonal

Day 21: What I Took and What I Left Behind

Day 22: Groundless, Weightless, Homeless

Day 23: When the Nations Come to You

Day 24: The Call to Displacement

Day 25: Scripture Anchors for Re-Entry

Day 26: In the Place of Your Exile

Day 27: Resources for Re-entry

Day 28: A Time for Everything: A Prayer of Leaving

Day 29: Journal: 8 Months After Re-Entry

Day 30: 12 Survival Tips for Re-Entry

Day 31: A Blessing

(Day 32: Writing is Narcissistic (And Four Other Reasons Not to Write)–a reflection on this Write 31 Days experience)

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Linking up with Velvet Ashes

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My Story: When Marriage is Viewed as Selling Out

I had always heard those stories of people being “called” to missions, then meeting someone, falling in love and never actually going.  Or, even worse, going and then returning home…for a man (dun, dun, dun).  After being “called” to missions myself during a conference at 16, I knew I never wanted to be that girl.  I hardly dated in college, wanting to keep myself freed up to be able to go on the mission field.  I even broke up with one guy a few years later, telling him, “I don’t want the ‘white picket fence’ kind of life because God has called me to missions.”  After going overseas, I was a bit dismayed when I was placed in a city with one female teammate and only two other foreigners in the entire city, both in their upper 50’s. How was I going to meet the godly, single man who was also called to my specific people group in my tiny corner of China? (seriously)

So I tried online dating.  “At the very least, you’ll be encouraged by how many matches you get!” another single friend encouraged me.  I signed up for EHarmony, filled out my profile and waited for my numerous matches to encourage me that if I tried hard enough, I really could find Mr. Right.  But nope.  Just one match.  (It just may have been the fact that I checked the little box, “Am not willing to leave my current location (China) for someone…”).


After that, I came up with a Grand Plan.  I decided the best thing for me to do would be to marry a Chinese American.  Perfect.  That way we would already have both cultures in common.  So I picked the ONE single Chinese American in our organization and dropped a few hints….nothing.

I finally gave up the search, which is of course when I met someone who was out of the question: a guy from Chicago (the city I had dramatically exited with tears, commissioning and prayer meetings five years previously)—an actor with no “calling” to live overseas.  Wrong.  Wrong. Wrong.  This was not The Plan.  I was too embarrassed to tell anyone that I was “leaving for a guy,” so I said I was taking a “home leave.”  When we soon got engaged (3 days after I flew back from China), I was actually nervous to tell people.  I knew what they’d be thinking…I thought you were “called.”  You sure are quick to abandon your “call” as soon as you meet a guy.  Don’t you need God more than you need a husband? Did you mishear God’s will for your life? Why are you selling out? 

No one actually said any of these things, but I knew what they’d be thinking because I had thought the same things about others in the past.  I felt ashamed of “forsaking my call” for something as “weak” as marriage. 

I think part of the problem was that throughout all my years of singleness I had fortified myself with verses affirming my marital status.  1 Corinthians 7:32-35 seemed to portray married people as distracted and bogged down by the world and single people as holy and completely sold out to the Lord.  Isaiah 54: 5 called the Lord my “husband and maker,” which I took literally and thus felt completely guilty about when the Lord wasn’t enough of a “husband” and I had to replace him with an earthly husband.  When I feared I would never have children, I found comfort in Psalm 17: 13-15 that seemed to say that people with children would have their “portion in this life,” while  those who didn’t have children would be satisfied in the Lord.  With these verses, I was impenetrable.  I wasn’t even open to the prospect of God bringing a man into my life.  So when I met the Actor, I was completely blind-sided.  I really think it was the only way that I would have let down my guard.

Fast forward ten years, after lots of grieving over the loss of China (weekly tears for the first year), running parallel to the joy of an incredible husband and two devious, yet delightful children, I’ve come to these conclusions:

3.    God can and does use any state of being—single or married—to refine us and make us holy.
4.    Being a missionary isn’t the ultimate expression of your love for Christ.

I’ll unpack these a bit more in some other posts, but for now I will comment on #3.  1 Corinthians was a huge stumbling block for me as I found myself falling in love, but as a married woman, now I think:  Am I more distracted than I was when I was single? Yes.  Do I need to worry about meeting my family’s needs?  Yes.  Am I more worldly?  Possibly. But the ultimate question is this:  Do I love God less? No.  And more importantly, does He love me less?  Absolutely not. 

So far, marriage and missions have been mutually exclusive for me.  Grief, loss of identity and loss of purpose are just a few of the emotional pits I have found myself scrambling out of in the past five years of re-entry, but I have slowly found more peace about “leaving my calling.”  One help was reading in Matthew 22, which includes the parable of the marriage feast and Jesus answering the Sadducees’ incessant questions on marriage in heaven. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that He seemingly skirts their questions about marriage and instead reminds them to love the Lord with all their heart, soul and mind.  It turns out that marriage wasn’t the issue at all–the issue was always about God having ALL their hearts.  Marriage can certainly muddy the waters of devotion, but nothing can change His love for me.  In fact, it gives me a pretty good forum to work out that second command to love my neighbor as myself.

 

Have you ever felt that singleness is viewed as more holy than marriage?  Have you felt guilty about leaving the field to get married? How did you reconcile your “call to missions” with your “call to marriage”?

Linking up with Velvet Ashes.


Photo by:  “Sandra and the ring” by Lbartley – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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Missionary Gone Rogue

I am a missionary gone rogue.  Funded by supporters and my organization to live in China, I received a masters in Intercultural Studies and spent two years in full-time language school studying Chinese.  I had relationships, was living in a Chinese community complete with neighbor visitors, vegetable gardens, and a live-in pet bunny.  I was called.  I was thriving.  I was fluent.  And then I came home. 

I remember discussing missions with friends in high school.  “I’ll go if God really wants me to go, but I want to stay,” they’d say.  I’d surprise them with, “I’ll stay if He really wants me to stay, but I want to go!”  I finally had my chance to go to China and lived there, loving it, from 2005 to 2010.  So when God had other plans and led me back to the states, it was with great difficulty that I surrendered to His mysterious plan.

His plan included rerouting my path from China, missions, language study and a PhD study to changing diapers, making goofy faces at my 6-month-old and quiet evenings with my husband.  My plan was to marry a missionary in northwest rural China, while God’s plan for me included marrying an actor living in the northside of Chicago.  This blog will hopefully serve as an outlet as I reconcile my desire to live a ruggedly adventurous life serving God where most people will never go with the journey that He has me on, serving God on the normal, domestic path that many mamas have tread before me.  
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