The Surprising Difficulty of Reentry
“You will return home broken.” I sat there on the plane, uncomfortable and unable to sleep, reading an article about the many difficulties global workers face upon the return to their country. That sentence was the last and most emphasized point the author made. It sat with me for the entire 20 hour journey to the U.S. as I wondered what exactly she meant.
When my feet touched U.S. soil, I guess I expected to feel something abnormal, but I didn’t. It looked the same way I left it. Not much had changed. I attended a week-long debrief. It was a time of rejuvenation and processing my term in the Middle East. The facilitators there gave similar warnings: “Prepare to go home broken.”
Not long after, feeling like everything was “normal,” I stepped into a grocery store, determined to gain back the weight that everyone seemed to have been pointing out that I’d lost. Within 5 minutes, I realized everything was not “normal.” With the number of choices before me, the immensity of the size of the store, and the quick busyness of the movement, I found myself having difficulty breathing. I started to cry in the middle of the aisle, and I couldn’t control myself. With the little direction I had left, I dropped the things in my hand, ran out to the car, and wept. What was happening to me?
The relationships I had before I left the U.S. were different. They weren’t bad. Just different from before. There was now this large part of me my friends could not understand. I had changed. My desires, my passions, my worldview were different, and some people just didn’t have a category to put me in. I was no longer the person I was a few years ago. I forgot basic courtesies and norms. I didn’t understand conversations. I couldn’t stop thinking about the Middle East, a place that is home to the crushed, the changed, and the scarred. I looked around at the world I thought I knew with unfamiliar eyes. I was confused about the way things were done in the States. I was disoriented. I was weary. I was broken. And now, as a broken person, I can cling to the perfect wholeness of our Savior, who heals the broken and binds their wounds. And maybe, just maybe, I can learn a little something about what it means to love the crushed, the changed, and the scarred.