REgrowth

I may have accidentally skipped most of my childhood. No, I wasn't part of a weird experiment involving cryogenic chambers, and no I didn't have a massive head trauma leading to an extended comatose state. I simply grew in comparison to the life events around me, and some of those life events were tough and stretching. I tell you ("you" now includes readers from Israel and South America-hello) because the next paragraph may make more sense within the context of my inexperience with certain mental development stages of childhood.

I am experiencing social puberty. Keep in mind, I was home schooled and therefor "missed out" on the great high school drama stage. Now that I'm back from my totally dependent infantile stage of living in another country (I grew a lot through that as well), I am experiencing the uncertainty and awkwardness of not knowing how to perceive others or how I am perceived. "Do they like me"" "What does that look mean?" "Did I say too much?" I guess part of the reentry process is regrowing socially and mentally. You have to relearn the rules and your specific position in the game.

It sounds extreme doesn't it? Well, it is. 

I knew, but I didn't know.

My goodness, this reentry part is hard. Believe it or not, the reentry process is just as hard, if not more so than the "going" part. Three months. It has been three months since the last time I saw a fish head on my plate or heard the shoo shoo bum bum of my commuting train. Yes, this may be me romanticizing a bit of my time in Japan. I know the hard times were present too. I'm not soon to forget with the heart racing memories of hospital visits and mistaken train schedules so easily at the surface. But being "back" without really being back is its own brand of difficult.

I told you (I mean the proverbial "you" who oddly enough include readers from Russia and Mongolia, hello to you) about my cold splash of water which roused me from my "everything is just as I left it" nap. Well, I have yet to fully awaken apparently. My weekdays, thankfully, have found their own normalacy. I get lost in the daily shuffle of papers and frantic rearview mirror checking commutes, but it's oddly enough the things I've looked forward to returning to the most that have eluded me in my return "home."

I knew... hmmm. How often I "knew" things without letting them sink down into knowing. It's as if my life is forcing me to be an experiential learner when all I want is to be prepared and let that be enough. But books and articles, while helpful, are not more helpful than a quick stretch before a grueling race. Everything gets tested and tried and tested again. It was naive of me to think I was ready for all the spasms and near stumbles of this race.

What I'm about to write isn't meant to offend anyone. From the very beginning this was meant to be an honest account of my experiences and feelings of an overseas experience. It's also not meant to be a wholistic view of what every oversea's worker or missionary goes through. This is simply my taste of it; bitter and sweet.

Perhaps you wondered at my previous statement, that the things I had looked forward to the most were the things that eluded me the most as well. In my reading and training for overseas ministry I knew relationships would change. Not to be too Pocahontas about it, but streams keep flowing, and to try and catch the water in your hands and return it to it's original place will only leave you with wet hands and a failed attempt. I knew, but I didn't know, and now I am in the midst of one of the hardest inner struggle of my life. To be back, yet not be back; to be with friends yet not know them; to be with my church again yet wonder at the word "my" has been one of the sorest heart issues I've been through yet.

I'm not who I used to be, they're not who I remember, it's not like it was, AND THAT'S FINE! It's wonderful in fact. I sit with my heart still raw and red from it's ripping itself between two countries and I marvel at everything and everyone around me. I also wonder where I belong. I'm not in Japan anymore, and I'm not fully "back" yet either. And I have to be ok with it. I have to be ok with the process, with the timing, with the way things are and will be. I have to be ok because to be otherwise would drive me mad, would tear me up more, and would yell to the world that God is a liar and careless. God is not a liar and He is not careless, and so I will not live as if He is. It will be ok. I'm not so self-centered as to believe my inner turmoil over a trip I chose to take is going to upset the world order, (Yes, I do see the irony of writing the above after a somewhat long diatribe on a medium established for the soul purpose of self expression) but I also know that it matters enough for me to work through it, and maybe, just maybe the expression of it will help someone else too. If that's you, than I hope the loneliness that comes with this experience fades a little, and if that's not you than my apologies for being so long-winded on something that may make little sense. It's hard to relate to something you have not experienced, and that is the most challenging piece to the reentry puzzle; how to relate to each other when unique experiences outweigh the shared ones. Soon it may be the other way around, but I have to wonder if knowing I belong means reinventing who I was in order to get there. Do I have to change one for the other?

Melodramatic? Yup, welcome to the reentry process.