Hope and Re-Entry

Saturday, November 19, 2011

I am enjoying my first autumn in what feels like a very long time. The leaves on the trees in our neighborhood have turned bright yellow, radiant orange, and deep red. They are finally falling to the ground and the crunching sound underfoot as I walk down the sidewalk takes me back to my childhood. With this change of seasons comes a change in weather and the temperatures have plummeted. It is downright ARCTIC these days, like 55F/12C! (Did I get a guffaw out of my friends and family in Manitoba?) I’ve taken to wearing my scarf and wool socks in the house where it stays chilly (I’m too cheap to crank the heat) but that also means I can make soups and stews and we won’t be sweating as we eat it like we did in Zambia. It is strange that I intuitively know what fall and winter feel like in Fresno, but having been gone for nearly two decades, it all feels like the first time. It most certainly is new for the boys who enjoyed sunny Southern California, winter with snow in Prague, and the completely different seasons of Zambia. They are surprised that there is no thunder and lightning with the rain, that it drizzles a long time instead of sudden downpours, and that it is cold during the rain and afterward. Some days it looks sunny but that doesn’t mean it is warm, our boys have discovered. With the time change and it getting dark by 5:00, Jason keeps commenting around 2:00 that it feels like 4:00 already. It was easy for them to tell time by the sun in a place where the sun consistently rose and set at the same time year round. Talking about the weather may seem mundane but it is an indicator that we are newcomers and while much is familiar, there are still many adjustments, both large and small that continue to be made.

Mennonite Central Committee holds “Re-Entry Retreats” for returning service workers a couple times a year and everyone is strongly encouraged to attend. Weeks ago I was really looking forward to the retreat as it was a weekend away for our family, a chance to be with other MCCers, and good closure for our Zambia experience. However, as the time drew closer, I found myself less and less eager to attend. Reflection is hard work and I wasn’t sure I was up to the task. It is not that it is difficult to talk about Zambia (maybe it is a little scary that I can do that without reflection, hmmmm), but it still seems hard to glean lessons from it, to know how it was used by God, or to know how we were impacted by that time.

The retreat happened to be held on the West Coast this time (it moves around to different locations) so we only had to drive a few hours to Santa Cruz, in the redwood forests above the Pacific Ocean. It was a lovely area and it felt good to be in such beautiful surroundings. I was quiet the first few sessions, partly to focus on listening to others but also trying to gauge the experiences of other workers. I wasn’t sure how people would react to my experience, assuming that everyone else loved their time overseas, thrived in their relationships, and participated in meaningful work. One of our first exercises was to write down a few words that described how you felt about leaving your place of service. My words were: EXHILARATED, RELIEVED, EAGER . . . and then ashamed, of course, that I was so excited to leave. When we shared these words with our small group, there was understanding and an absence of judgment, and instead of feeling jealous, I was glad to hear that others had really positive experiences.

One evening session we talked about re-entry stress and some of the common symptoms. There were a number that generated much dialogue and laughter and that resonated with me.

1. Uncertainty in interpersonal relationships – unsure of proper mannerisms, greetings, social etiquette, dress, etc. I still want to grab my forearm and do a little curtsy when greeting someone new but most of the time, I refrain. Sometimes I don’t know if I am supposed to hug or just give a little wave. A couple of times I have opted for the hug and realized mid-embrace, that it was a bit awkward and probably should have chosen a different form of greeting. Oh well. I have no idea how to dress for colder weather, especially regarding shoes. I wore my Mary Jane crocs year round for four years and I find it a bit hard to make that adjustment.
2. Inability to communicate new ideas, concepts freely. In the workshops that I would give in Zambia, I needed to simplify my words and sentence structure to ensure that I was understood. In the process, it seems like my ability to speak English atrophied. It is also a case of using a different set of vocabulary. I have not used the professional lingo of marriage and family therapy for so long that I am no longer fluent.
3. Feeling of superiority – standing aloof from others because of overseas experience. I’ll confess that this sometimes does rear its ugly head. But it is usually closely connected to not wanting special recognition for having lived and worked overseas and wanting to fly under the radar. I firmly believe that we can all serve and minister no matter where we reside and there are no extra jewels in my crown for having gone to Africa. But then the pendulum swings swiftly back to the other side and I want to scream that it was HARD at times to live in Zambia and others should acknowledge that. Back and forth I go. Yes, sometimes it is hard being me.
4. Defensiveness in responses. I find this to be especially true when faced with simplistic questions or statements that don’t acknowledge the complexity of living in a different country. I find myself wanting to defend persons or customs in Zambia that irked me to no end while living there, because I feel I have to represent a different side and show that it isn’t so straightforward. A simple statement here by someone who hasn’t lived through something similar seems to invalidate the four years we spent wrestling with the issue, processing it endlessly with those around us, and still not being able to articulate what we think or know about it.

There were other symptoms of re-entry, though, that don’t seem to have affected me. I don’t feel disoriented because I know how things work here most of the time or have people I can ask. This doesn’t mean that the system is great, in fact it is greatly flawed in many cases, but at least it is familiar. I don’t feel a loss of identity upon returning but rather a fuller sense of myself with many different parts of my self accessible. I was blessed to find meaningful work quickly. I have circles of support, especially MCC alumni who have traveled similar paths and are farther down the road and can be a mentor to me. They are interested in our experience and it is OK to let our international encounters weave in and out of conversations. I feel satisfied and content rather than dissatisfied and lonely. So while there are symptoms of re-entry stress that I have encountered, there are many others that have not seemingly affected me.

In one of our final sessions, we each had a container of playdough and we had to make something that symbolized a gift that we have to give others now that we have returned to our home cultures. In a prior session, we had been gifted with a mini-slinky toy that was used to talk about change, transformation, and resiliency. So when it came time to make my playdough creation, I incorporated the slinky into the piece. I quickly snagged a can of black playdough before anyone else could, only later to realize that most people wanted more cheerful colors, and that I probably didn’t have to rush selfishly to the table to grab it after all. I rather enjoyed pounding the playdoh into a flat piece, making the fun gal from Arkansas next to me raise her eyebrows. I then enveloped the slinky in the black playdoh and let just the top of it emerge. When it came time to share with the group, I talked about how my gift to others just might be something related to hope. My experience in Zambia often felt dark and void and what God kept reminding me was that God works transformation in and out of darkness. Change often emerges out of difficult times. It is not always evident that God truly is at work, that God is redeeming our struggles and trials, that good can truly come out of hard times but that is where hope comes in. We put our hope in God, the One who is present and able and who loves us and who wants good things for us. God orchestrates things in the dark places of which we know nothing, until the fruit of that transformation emerges, like the slinky out of my black playdoh ball. (When I sat down after sharing, my friend from Arkansas leaned over to me and whispered, “Who knew you were that deep?” Hilarious!) It’s not always easy to see how this could be a gift until you run into people who are going through hard times (and there are plenty of them out there). My sister-in-law recently made a big move and the transition has been rough. I took the risk of challenging her to take a few steps that I knew would be difficult. At the core of this direct conversation was the hope that it is possible for God to be present and at work even when things are really, really hard. And there is hope of good things emerging even when it just feels like utter darkness. Later she told me that she was able to receive it from me because I had earned a bit of credibility having lived in three very different countries and have gone through transitions like this before. Perhaps this gift is not the one I would have chosen but you get what you get and are responsible to share it with others, I guess.

While the adults were busy reflecting, the boys had their own program. They were bummed at first that there weren’t a lot of other kids their age to play with but they made the best of it. The person working with them was fabulous and the boys easily connected to her. She had brought her son along who was younger than Jason and not someone the boys readily bonded with but he was curious about their experience and so was an eager listener to their stories. One theme they talked about was the saying by Hildegard of Bingen: “I too am carried like a feather on the breath of God.” Jason spent some time talking about the trauma of our car and belongings being stolen. Brendan recognized the gift of seeing Peter every day for meals and in the evenings while living in Zambia. It has been an adjustment for all of us to have Peter away at work and not sharing every meal with us. Other adults took an interest in the boys during meal times and asked them questions. At one point the boys were each telling stories about how good the other one was at soccer. Brendan was saying how incredible it was that Jason scored in the first seven seconds of one game and what great skills he has for his age. Jason chimed in with how Brendan scored on a corner kick which is really hard to do. I was looking back and forth at the two of them in jaw-dropping disbelief. Maybe there is hope for their brotherly relationship as well!

In the days following the Re-entry Retreat, I have continued to reflect on this process (once you get started, it can be hard to stop). It used to be that missionaries returning from living overseas were clueless about American culture and were seen as misfits. With globalization, that isolation from the rest of the world wouldn’t seem to be as big of an issue. Our boys just had to go to our Congolese neighbors to watch DSTV to get an education of Western pop culture. We returned to North America on our home leave and traveled to South Africa twice in our last year and so the shock wasn’t too major for them. However, I am finding more and more gaps for myself. I saw a picture of a beautiful black woman and I didn’t know it was Michelle Obama. I am not ignorant of the Obamas, but my education came from the BBC World Service (radio) and an audio book of Obama’s book “The Audacity of Hope.” It’s just that I don’t have visual images of many things, like Michelle Obama, or the Haiti earthquake or the oil spill in the Gulf. Sometimes I feel clueless, out of the loop, but I figure I can just ask questions even at the risk of sounding stupid, like when I didn’t know what “Black Friday” was (the day after Thanksgiving shopping extravaganza). I knew about that day of consumer frenzy but not the terminology. People refer to authors and books that leave me clueless and feeling uneducated. There have been changes to my profession of which I should have stayed abreast but haven’t and so feel like there is a lot of catch-up to do should I decide to return to marriage and family therapy.

There are times when I feel like I have amnesia, like I lost four years somewhere. It can feel like a big black void when I am here and the experiences and lessons learned there don’t easily translate into my life here. And yet those four years were not empty, but filled with crazy and mundane and rich and trying experiences that are valuable. I still don’t know how to bring it all together or how to talk articulately about it. I can’t present it in a coherent whole of “this is what I know now from living in Africa for four years,” a nice, neat little package wrapped up with a bow. There are often more questions and issues left unresolved than learnings, but I guess I will have to live with that. My experiences are many and varied and I don’t have to synthesize them into something containable and known. My hope is that they will give depth and compassion to whatever I encounter, and that God will continue to use them to mold and shape me into something that resembles of follower of Jesus.

There are still gaps. I still don’t really “get” Facebook, but I confess I remain even more clueless about Twitter. I went to Wikipedia to see if I could be enlightened and my suspicions were confirmed when one study about Twitter said that 40% of “tweets” are “pointless babble.” Those that argue for the significance of Twitter said that “pointless babble” was actually better characterized as “social grooming” and/or “peripheral awareness” which can be understood as persons "want[ing] to know what the people around them are thinking and doing and feeling, even when co-presence isn’t viable." Still don’t get it. Why exactly is that important? Sometimes I feel like I have been in Africa for four years. Geez, I have!