Good Ol’ Re-entry. Gotta love it.
Three years ago, I interned at a jail in Boston and for the first seven months, I worked on the Re-entry unit, a unit dedicated to helping inmates prepare for re-entry during the last three months of their sentence. During those three months, they were alerted to things they could expect, things they should look out for, necessary precautions they should take, and proactive steps they could make to re-enter society successfully.
Three months before we re-entered the States, the same was done for us. However, I didn’t really think I would have a problem re-entering 1st world America, especially coming off the back of Kenya where our team stayed right, smack, dab in the middle of the slums under the worse living conditions we’d experienced all year. But I’ve been home for three days now and I can say, maybeeeeeeee, I should have prepared and “processed” more.
- I mean, there are the little, funny, quirky things like:
- Feeling the need to be back in the house before it gets dark, or
- Making sure I have a decoy wallet in my purse in case I get robbed, or
- Looking at my friend like she’s crazy when she pulls out her phone in public, or
- Looking for fruit stands on the side of the street, or
- Wondering if the tap water is ”REALLY” to drink or will I get Typhoid
But today it got real. This morning, it went a lot deeper. Below is an excerpt from my journal this morning:
8/3/2013
Lord, I’m struggling. Today, I am struggling. I’m sad and I’m upset and I’m not really in the mood to share stories. I saw really, really awful things this year. I didn’t work with “Prostitutes” this year. I lived with women who were bought, sold, and forced into sex slavery. Women who were betrayed by the very people who were supposed to love them and protect them. I met girls on the street who looked like they had barely hit puberty. Twelve and thirteen year olds who climbed into cars with fully grown men who took them to God knows where for the night while their pimp stood by yelling at someone on the phone in Tagalog. I don’t think my heart broke then. I don’t think I allowed it to. Call it self-preservation or what you will, but in spite of how much I loved those girls that I got the distinct honor and privilege of living with, I think in some ways, I shut off my emotions that months. But today, on August 3rd, sitting in an apartment in the heart of Boston, a city that I love, a city that I’ve been trying to get back to for two years now, I am broken. My heart in broken. And I don’t ever want to forget. I don’t ever want to forget the injustice, the poverty, and the utter depravity that I witnessed this year.
Needless to say, the processing has begun. And it is good. And it is needed. And despite all the things I have witnessed this year, I can say that I have seen “the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living (Psalm 27:13).
But one of the things the Lord spoke to me this morning that I wanted to encourage the rest of you guys with as well, “If your heart feels disconnected from your family and your friends, let them in.” Let them in. Let them in to where you are. Let them know how you’re feeling, what you need, what you’re struggling with. Vulnerability and transparency breeds intimacy. Re-connect.
