Crash Landing

 We crash landed.

At least that’s how it seemed to me. I don’t think everyone in our family shares the same sentiments. But everyone handles life the way they were wired.

I’ve been reading this book Navigating the Re-entry Journey: Trauma-Informed Care for Global Workers in Transition by Shonna Ingram.

It’s about global workers returning back to their passport country from their host country.

Which - confession - I don’t often feel like we should be (or should have been) called missionaries or global workers because we were in and out of the country so much. We were there for such a short time it seems, on and off for 6 years. But we have all the same symptoms as described in this book, so I’m going with it.

Anyways. Returning or going to your passport or host country is called “re-entry or landing”. You know - like a space shuttle or airplane because, well, that’s what happens. You can “land well” or not.

The book is based on a trauma informed approach that describes how global workers feel, think, and act upon retuning to their passport country. It teaches what is helpful for them. Each individual works through their experience on their own timeline through each stage of return. It was helpful in the way that said - “Marianne, this is totally normal.”

Although the book doesn’t describe it as crash landing, but I think that’s what happened with us. I googled it and after a plane crash, piece by piece, the wreckage is mapped, categorized, bagged, tagged, laid out, tested, and studied meticulously. The black box, which Google told me is actually orange for easier finding, is there with its recorded cockpit audio and flight data.

I read half the book and putting it down because it became annoying and frustrating. This is not a one stop shop. The book covers all 4 re-entry stages. I quit while reading the stage where new things come out of the old. I’m not there yet and that was depressing. Mostly because it’s hard to mix life in Africa with life in America now. There was a lot of change over the past 6 years (for everyone - friends and family here and us there and now here) and now I don’t know where it all fits together. I’m not sure who or what I am anymore.

I think we are going to have to map, categorize, bag, tag, lay out, test, and study meticulously the last 6 years. Hopefully our brains and hearts were good at recording audio and feelings. Not only that, we sort of got a late start on exploring the wreckage because it needed to be put aside for the first 9 months, so we could concentrate on Brent’s physical healing from surgery.

When we moved to Foley, it almost felt like we had just returned from Uganda all over again. In one sort of sense, we had. I’m sure it made zero sense to anyone that we moved here. It wasn’t even necessarily something that made sense to us and it wasn’t a calling. Change and a fresh start were needed. I’ve realized that we might have felt and stayed stuck in all the hard that has gone on the past 6 years with surgeries and things if we had stayed in north Alabama. Here gives a freeing place to sort through the wreckage. I messaged a place about a debrief. We are probably behind schedule when it comes to debriefing your return back to your passport country, but that sort of goes with my life anyways. HA! Well I’ll let you know how it turns out. Thanks for listening.

Disclaimer: Shonna's book is really good and helpful. So if you're returning or about to return to your passport country after living abroad - it's a good read. It's also a good read for sending churches and organizations.