When my family returned from overseas in 2018, we were spent, reeling, and unsure about next steps. Both my husband and I expected, or at least hoped, that the return was temporary. We thought all we needed was to get healthy again, and then we would head back. After all, we were missionaries.

I had planned to work in the mission field from the time I was in sixth grade. It was the guiding direction through the preparation of my college years. After getting married, I had invested three years into putting my husband through graduate degrees in Biblical Studies and Intercultural Studies while helping support him in his work as a missions coordinator. After his graduation, we spent two years applying to an organization, building a sending team, completing trainings, and selling our stuff.

Then we were there, living the dream: nearly seven years in two Middle Eastern cities. We learned two languages. We helped build churches and discipled new believers. Nate served as a liaison between minority groups and the teams translating Scripture into their languages. I educated our own missionary kids and sometimes the kids around us also. We witnessed beautiful, holy things as well as disorienting, horrid things. We met a lot of precious people. Some became friends; others seemed to hate us. We lived normal, everyday lives in two interesting cultures, and we weathered abnormal, national crises that made international headlines.

Our move back to the States was not a hasty decision but was born out of much prayer as my husband saw the compounding stress stealing my ability to function. Moving back meant relinquishing a career he loved and was thriving in and accepting in its place a vague unknown and a hundred layers of loss. He courageously decided that loving his wife and laying down his life for her was as key a part of his calling as loving unreached people groups.

So, we deconstructed the life that had taken 17 years to build and stepped backward, trusting that God was leading although the direction felt counterintuitive. We knew about reverse-culture shock, but we didn’t anticipate the massive assault to our own identities that the transition would unleash. I do not know that the lesson is getting easier, but I do know that the lifeline in this season of repatriation has been in remembering who God is, who we are, and who we are called to love.

Remembering Who God Is

When we first arrived back and the dust settled after follow-up trips to our sending partners, a debriefing, and the acquisition of a job that could support our family, God provided a house and the funds for a down payment. It was one of the cheapest on the market in our hometown at the time, which meant it needed a lot of work. The hidden edges of the dingy brown carpet revealed it originally boasted a shade of mint green. There were outdated appliances along with plumbing, electrical, and roofing issues. Plus, all the walls and ceilings were swathed in different hues of wood: chocolate, gray, mustard, cherry, orange. Fresh-start white felt like the antidote, so I sanded and painted, coat after coat, surface after surface. And as I painted, I cried and prayed prayers of lament: “Where were you when that happened? Why did the wicked prosper, and we were struck down? We let go of so much. We obeyed when we thought you were directing. We tried to fight the battles with your weapons and your heart. Why did you let it end like that, God? Where is the story going here?”

I was surprised at how long the questions echoed. Often in congregational worship as I was singing something true about God, I would be overwhelmed by a memory that felt dissonant and stand in tears through the rest of the songs. Sometimes as the music played, I would recall a story from the Scriptures that paralleled our experiences and grasp something I had previously missed. Sometimes a passage of Scripture sprang to mind and as I looked it up, I heard the Lord’s words to me in the verses.

Once when I was reading our children a missionary biography, an incident in the story sparked a memory that put me in bed nauseated and trembling for hours. I called our co-workers who had been there that horrible day, and they prayed with me. It was one of the few times I got an answer to my question: “Where were you, Jesus?” I was reminded that my friend Kody had stepped in to protect my kids when I felt the danger in my gut but was paralyzed with fear and cultural ignorance. And I watched the story play again, this time with eyes to see. Yes, there he was, Jesus, in his servant Kody, a shepherd who sat with me at the table of my enemies, who stared down the evil one, and who gathered the lambs in his arms.

The more we have remembered, the more convinced we have become of the presence and goodness of the Lord. He was there in lovingkindness when we sinfully lashed out at each other in anger and fear, when we stood strong in the face of circumstances that hit us with the force of gale winds, when we stumbled with weariness, when we made mistakes we didn’t even realize we were making, when we bore the wrath of evil forces who did not like an outpost of shalom being raised in the areas they oppressed. Christ was there, the lion who held back the evil and the lamb who suffered with us through its midst.

Remembering Who We Are

When we re-entered the mission field of our homeland, our understanding of God was not the only thing that was shaken and refined. We also had to re-understand ourselves. In our communication with supporters, we had often spoken about their role in building the kingdom of God in their hometowns even as they sent us out. God’s kingdom can be built anywhere. It is needed everywhere. It all counts. We thought we believed that with our whole hearts but found it hadn’t sunk in as deeply as we thought.

In the States, there were cultural markers all around us that pointed to our inferiority. We had a smaller house than our peers, though we had more children than many of them. We drove an older car and only had one. Less and older were also themes in our technology, our clothing, and our furniture. In nearly every conversation you have in American circles, you talk about what you do, meaning the career you get paid for. My husband had re-entered the secular workforce at the bottom rungs of the corporate ladder. I had scaled back to just a homemaker and homeschool mother to our four kids. And as the conversations stacked up where we had nothing to contribute and no way to relate, we began to feel less valuable.

All our years of knowing and teaching the Bible, learning other cultures, and perfecting other languages? They no longer mattered. No one spoke those new languages here. In our small midwestern town, other cultures were not seen as a blessing, they were suspect. No one expected laypeople to know and teach the Bible, except perhaps on the side as a Sunday school teacher or guest speaker. The last nine years of our lives were a weird blip that didn’t fit.

We wanted to believe that the perseverance, character, and hope that we had grown in overseas mattered in these new-old arenas. Surely, they made us better at our lives here, too? But the skills and the experiences behind them often felt invisible.

It has been a struggle to remember that our job, as citizens of a heavenly kingdom, is building that kingdom alongside his people in all the places we are sent. It’s so easy to get caught in the cultural rat race around us, hunting for acceptance and identity in a new job, a raise, a performance review, a vacation, or updated stuff. Several times we have tried to recover what has been lost by attempts to return overseas or to find a position of ministry in a church instead of continuing as salt and light in the workplace and the home. So far, we keep hitting concrete walls and the direction to hold steady.

Is it enough to believe we are forgiven, holy, beloved, and gifted simply because we are children of God? Is it enough to listen for the quiet voice of our Lord and be directed by it in unglamorous circumstances, while at the same time having the humility to not flippantly throw out the voices of those around us who are also created and renewed in his image? Is it enough to make it our ambition to live a quiet life, working with our hands and growing in godliness? When our sight is clear, we are convinced it is enough, but winning that battle over our minds is still a big portion of our work in these days.

Remembering the Alien, Orphan, and Widow

The last theme that we have been helped by is remembering the alien, orphan, and widow. In many ways, it was a longing to bring peace and hope to the poor and marginalized that launched us into overseas missions in the first place. Sometimes that passion grows dim in the nitty-gritty of daily life and the whirlwind of lies that call us off the path. But when we remember who God is and who we are, it reorients us back to the place where we can see the neighbors in need around us right now.

One of the biggest gifts of those years overseas was the experience of being a foreigner. We actually know what it is like to be told we cannot rent a for-rent apartment, to be denied service at a store, to be stopped for questioning, to be cheated in a transaction, to be pulled over without cause in a vehicle, to be openly mocked, and to be met more times than we can count with hostile stares. This knowing births compassion and invites us to quietly step into suffering with immigrants who currently experience such things, to offer a meal, a bag of household goods or clothing, a word of encouragement or advocacy, or a companionable silence.

Likewise, the personal losses of friendships, homes, possessions, and careers that we have experienced in our transitions can make us attune to others experiencing loss around us. The act of remembering lights a quiet fire that compels us to comfort others with the comfort we have received ourselves (2 Cor 1:4). Our home stands across the street from two lovely women who have been widowed and two little girls who lost a father in the last 10 years. Walking with them is a gift. So is sitting with friends who lost a job, a dream, or a marriage, for in the broken places we experience the presence of Christ.

It would not be true to close with a tidy resolution. We still do not see where the story is going. The past year—seven full years into our time back in the USA—has been one of our most difficult thus far. Yet it is profoundly true that in the midst of the pain, the act of remembering heals. Sometimes it heals like a surgeon’s scalpel cutting out infection and other times like a cool rag on a feverish brow. In remembering, we are being made whole and reminded of our true identity: children of “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,” (Exod 34:6) who are called to love the weak and overlooked with that same extravagant love.