I recently released a book titled When It Takes More Faith to Come Back: Trusting God in Re-Entry, based on my own transition back from an extended season of living and working overseas. The book is a devotional aimed at helping those in re-entry navigate the mental, emotional, practical, and spiritual challenges that often come with that transition. But there is so much more related to re-entry, transition, spiritual formation, and leadership development. Those are the types of resources and insights we want to explore here at Virtue Connect.
The field of re-entry literature can apply to many types of re-entry. I wrote my book from the vantage point of someone involved in global theological development and missions. But re-entry can be experienced in so many other contexts. Consider some of these non-traditional re-entry examples:
- When my college-aged kids come back from living away all year and try to come back home for the summer – there’s a re-entry. Desires and expectations have evolved in different directions over the time apart, and it can get bumpy sometimes!
- A recently retired nurse was sharing with us the challenges of stepping into new roles and a new life at home and with her adult children and grandchildren after working had provided her with so much of her life’s structure and rhythm.
- My dad spent more than a full year going through treatment going through surgeries, and chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer. It was life in hospitals, getting treated, preparing to get treatment, or recovering from getting treatment. When he had a season of health and renewed strength, he had to re-enter life that wasn’t dominated all the time by day-to-day medical struggle.
Re-entry is also an important transition for released inmates as they re-integrate back into society after serving extended time in prison. I can’t help but think about Morgan Freeman’s character working at the grocery store towards the end of the classic movie The Shawshank Redemption after he is finally released from prison. His character had been immersed for decades in a context with its own rules, boundaries, structures, and codes. Then all of a sudden, he finds himself back in the flow of life. But he finds it uncomfortable, unsettling, and even terrifying. It’s not as simple as going back like nothing ever happened.
The type of work we do impacts the kind of re-entry we experience, along with several other variables. There will be common experiences we all may be able to relate to. But there will be distinct and even unique experiences for each one of us as well.
Sometimes metaphor and illustration do a better job than definitions and words. Peter Jordan, several years ago in his book on re-entry, uses the metaphor of a trip to (and back from!) space. Many years ago, I had the privilege of witnessing a space shuttle launch in person. The immense force and power required to achieve lift-off was overwhelming. There’s a lot of work that goes into a rocket or shuttle taking off and getting into orbit around the Earth. But the return trip can be even more dangerous. It’s full of high speeds, pressure, insane heat, and vulnerability. The “re-entry” illustrated in the movie Apollo 13 illustrates the danger, complexity, and intensity really well!
Bringing it down to earth, people have a home context and culture. Those who leave to immerse themselves in a new world and culture experience a transformation of sorts. We change. Some of us change significantly. The people and places we leave behind often change as well. When it is time to return “home,” the home of origin (or at least passport home), it is often a bit disorienting because everyone has changed, yet expectations are still often rooted in the past. That adds to the stress and pressure, and it can add a lot of conflict to the equation as well.
Movies and space shuttle metaphors capture the essence of the re-entry phenomenon. But alone, they don’t quite do it justice. Part of what makes re-entry so difficult is that we’re not talking about rockets and movies. We’re talking about our lives, our identities, our hearts, our souls. The “heat” of re-entry doesn’t just involve logistics and cultural adjustment. It involves identity disruption, grief, and a host of other things that impact our well-being and raise questions about our purpose, our place in the world, and where God is in it all. Re-entry, at its core, is about identity, belonging, and purpose. They fuel desires and expectations. Re-entry is trying to start over and find our way in all three of those areas back “home” after we’ve spent a big chunk of our lives learning to belong, seeing our identity change, and investing in purpose in another part of the world that also became a “home.”
It’s not fast work. Transformation takes time. And transformation is spiritual business.
Leave a Reply