descension from consecration

It's been a few months. Actually seven. Coming back from my mission was a hard process for me. I felt like I was stuck in limbo, trapped between different parts of my life. It was like I didn't really belong in either half of myself anymore. It's been a long adjustment, but I'm finally feeling like I understand who I am again. 

This semester I'm taking an advanced writing class, and we've been learning new writing techniques and practicing them. I've been trying and trying to write about how it felt when I came home, about how the transition pulled on my heart, about what it was really like, and then a few weeks ago I sat down and it finally came out right on the paper. So here is what I wrote. I share it because I think everyone who comes home from a mission needs to know that it's okay if it hurts a little bit. It means that you put your whole heart into it, and that was the point, right? Keep in mind, I intended for this to  be a little on the artsy side. Okay enough talking about it, here it is:

            The blazing sunbeams glitter on the side of the airplane as I come down the jet bridge. Almost instantly, I wish I could dash back on board and beg the pilot to take me back to where I came from. Instead, I let my feet guide me into gate A3, past the dusty check-in desk and the tired flight attendant, across the speckled linoleum, coming to pause in front of the smudged glass window. I gaze out at the landscape as the television blares a peppy commercial for Allstate Insurance, “Are you in Good Hands?” It’s surreal to see the same trees in the same places, almost like I expected them to walk off to a new location in my absence. I step over a crumpled wrapper for a KIND bar, left behind by a hurried traveler, and I start to drag my bulging suitcase up the ramp. As I approach the moving sidewalk, reality hits me like a cold wave crashing in off the ocean.

It’s actually over. I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry, so I place both feet onto the moving sidewalk and let it pull me down the hall. Don’t cry. My soul is tired, so weighed down by the concerns of the world, and my weary heart breaks a little more with every step I take. Virginia feels far far away, almost like another planet and the further I go the more final it becomes that I’m really not going back.

            I’m a different person now, but the things I’m doing feel familiar, which makes everything seem new and old at the same time. It wasn’t that long ago that I moved through this same terminal, only that time I was headed in the opposite direction. The tears start to come in slow trickles down my cheeks, and I can’t tell if they’re mourning the world I left behind or celebrating the reunion just around the corner. I’ve never wanted and dreaded something so much in the same moment. The moving sidewalk ends abruptly, and I keep walking,

            My nametag feels heavy, like a magnetic pull tying my heart to my people. No one told me this would be so hard, so painful. I walk toward the end of the terminal, limping a little. My knee and ankle braces give me the appearance of a battered war-worn soldier returning from the front lines of the battlefield. Shouldn’t I be ecstatic? I survived!

            But it feels like the kind of survival that comes without an exclamation point. This kind of survival doesn’t come with a victory lap, and I’m not weighed down because I’ve hung gold medals around my neck. It feels like the kind of survival that comes with a period at the end, like a definitive conclusion. This kind of survival comes with shuffling feet, and I’m weighed down because I’ve carried the burdens of so many people for so long. I take another step.

            The dull blue words on the sign above point me toward baggage claim and the tumultuous butterflies in my stomach begin to feel more like hippopotami, stomping so hard that my stomach starts sinking. Don’t cry. These are supposed to have been my “Best Two Years,” but the emotional rollercoaster I’ve been riding for the last week has made me nauseous and tired. I haven’t eaten a real meal since I noticed that my countdown calendar only had ten boxes left. The ocean I cried into my pillow really should have left me tearless by now, but the slow, tearful trickles falling from my eyes grow thicker and I hastily brush them away.

            Don’t cry. I shake my head and catch a glimpse of my reflection in the Accenture billboard on my left. My hands flutter to straighten my skirt, my hair, my buttons, my nametag, anxiously trying to create an illusion of perfection. I read the sign, “High Performance. Delivered.” I wonder if pairing my new floral-print blouse with my old navy skirt was really the right choice after all; the pastel flowers seem a little too pink and the burn mark on the front of the skirt, leftover from the one time I tried to iron out the wrinkles, screams out like a glaring reminder of my flaws. What if they don’t remember me? I dig through my purse in search of my favorite chapstick. The feeling of Burts’ Bees Mango is soothing to my lips, a comforting sensation that reminds me that some things stay the same. I hear the words President told me play on repeat in my mind: “You have become something during your time here. Don’t let your return scare you into letting those changes go.”

I walk away from the billboard, following those dull blue arrows that hang above my head. I think about the last time I stood in this place. The emotional memory comes rolling in to focus: I can clearly see a young girl standing in this same spot in the same navy skirt, minus the scars from the iron. That girl was so young and afraid and eager and totally clueless. I reflect on that moment, how I had choked back sobs as I walked toward the gate. The woman behind me touched my arm to ask if I was okay, and I couldn’t catch enough breath to tell her I was fine, so I nodded my head and looked away. I pull myself back to real time. In the strangest way, it hurts more now than it did back then. I take another step. My shoes squeak a little, the holes I wore into them are too big to ignore, but I wear them proudly like a trophy of my sacrifices.

            I stop when my feet place themselves in front of the escalator. Then I see them at the bottom. They can’t see me yet, but I can make out their faces. My heart remembers what it was like a short eighteen months ago when hands wrapped around necks and tears stained shirts and last words burned in my mind as memories. I don’t know what happened to that girl that said goodbye, but somewhere along the journey she disappeared. My pulse quickens and I wonder if they’ll still want me since things are so different now.

            My thoughts drift to the girl I was this morning. A depleted servant, standing in the hotel with shaking hands as I tried to pull thick mascara through tear-stained lashes. What does it mean to be a missionary? I find the answer in the moments I’ve lived through during the past year and a half. It means love. Not the type of love you find in Hollywood plotlines or in high school locker room gossip circles, but real and pure Christlike love that comes when you lose yourself in the service of the Lord. It means joy. It means exhaustion. It means truth.

            Somehow, I find myself on the escalator. The world is in fast-paced motion as I descend toward the ground floor and they pick up their posters and start to cheer. I can’t stop the floods pouring from my eyes and I don’t try anymore. My legs run through the doors and my arms embrace them. Suddenly this moment is the only real and tangible thing I know. And that girl on the escalator is gone too, leaving just me to start over again. I feel a whole new heart growing in my chest and I choose not to let the past dictate reality.

            This is how it feels in the end.