The re-entry process has been more challenging for some of us racers than for others. I don’t know if there’s a storm coming, but the process was surprisingly easy for me. I contribute most of that to my four summers of YouthWorks training in re-entry. But thinking about five years ago when I experienced my first true re-entry, I can’t think of any time in my life that has been darker.
In the summer of 2003, I was fortunate to land a leadership position in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. I remember getting the call and being speechless at the fortuitous placement. I considered this leading (and escape from a hard living situation) to be God’s true blessing!
In reality, the summer was one of the hardest experiences of my life. Not to say it wasn’t good – for it was amazing, but it was hard. I lived and worked alongside a pastor with severe mental and emotional baggage and encountered week after week of difficult youth pastors and teenagers who were looking to me for guidance on their ministry journey through New York City. It was hell to be quite honest as I would go from one disaster to another all the while trying to pastor and lead three staff and manage the relationships in the community.
I remember coming off that summer with a mixture of a job done (definitely not “well” done but completed and the victory that it itself was). I had higher highs and lower lows than anything I had ever experienced and it had truly changed me.
I went home to trade one set of drama for another (if any of you reading this have received a racer back home or will be shortly, know this is a fairly common realization). My family was in the midst of a nasty (to put it delicately) departure from a ministry we had been with nearly 10 years. All my friends and closest support network were affected by this transition and it left me feeling incredibly alone.
I returned home with nothing left. No emotions, no desire for relationships, no desire to talk, no motivation to do anything. I had four weeks to kill while I waited for an internship to which I had been accepted. Those four weeks were the most dismal, depressing, overwhelming four weeks of my entire life.
Part of being a part of something greatly significant and life changing is the knowledge that somehow the return to normalcy should be different. It should look different, it should feel different, it should just be different – and the hope is that “different” is somehow better.
“Different” is not always better – and not always in a negative way. We’ve been talking about re-entry a lot and the beginning of something new is not the completion of the season of re-entry. In fact, the beginning of something new can be the absolute climax of re-entry. It’s at this moment you ask if what you’re doing is settling, giving up, returning to normalcy – just as if nothing had ever happened. To come so far carries great fear that it will all be lost.
The adjustment phase is like a grieving process. There’s no timetable, no expectations, no “right” way to deal. It’s a process that must be walked, a journey that must be taken – this completing step is imperative for the success or failure of the pilgrimage. It’s similar to a butterfly emerging or a chick hatching from its shell. It cannot forego the experience of fighting through because ultimately the struggle is what guarantees life on the other side. It’s not uncompassionate to allow the process to happen – in fact, it’s the only healthy way! Re-entry takes support, takes time, takes starting something new and applying all that you’ve learned: that God is still, somehow, in control.
