You're used to going hard and working 10-hour days (that's not including the time you put in for studies) and suddenly you're not working. At all. Your knee-jerk reaction is to talk to everyone about the gospel. In the store, on the street, you even want to stop and pull over the car just to talk to someone on the sidewalk. Can't you just see a girl in a black hoodie and sweats pulling a minivan over and rolling down the window: "hey there, do you wanna hear a message about Jesus Christ?"
Apparently, that's not considered normal in the real world.
It gets weirder when you try to introduce yourself. Your brain keeps choking on itself and you can't think of yourself by your proper name. Is it your first name? Should you just scrap it and go by your last name? Your first name on the mission is "Sister/Elder" so maybe you should just stick to that....
And then, as people congratulate you and welcome you back, you finally realize what Frodo Baggins is talking about in Lord of the Rings, when the hobbits go back to the Shire after fighting the war of the Ring and the Shire is...exactly the same. As Frodo says:
How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep, that have taken hold.
While perhaps serving a mission isn't nearly as traumatic as traipsing into Mordor to destroy a weapon of ultimate evil, missions can be pretty dang painful and difficult. And nobody really knows what happened, what you've been doing and how you've changed the world. How you've changed. You realize that there are things you will never be able to explain or share with the people closest to you. The lives you've seen change, the miracles, the experiences, the answered prayers after months of begging for answers. The gospel means so much more to you now than just going to church for three hours a week, it's living and breathing itself.
People will ask you about the food, the language, the people, the baptisms. But these are all just a fraction of what you've experienced and what you felt.
Shoutout to Tolkien for creating a story that would help explain the plight of newly-returned missionaries. Always knew I could count on you, JRR. (Not coincidentally, JRR Tolkien wrote Frodo's character the way he did because he was reflecting his own feelings on returning home from World War I a shell-shocked veteran.)
The things you thought you'd be interested in when you got home are pointless to you now. You had a list of movies several pages long in little notebook, but you've watched maybe one or two of them. You just do the little things like exercise and shower and read scriptures every day and wonder:
Where do I go from here?
I know I'm not the only one going through these odd withdrawal feelings. In fact, I know people who've had them worse than I have. This is not a new phenomenon, but I've noticed that there isn't really anything to help newly-returned missionaries in their transition back from missionary life. We have the Missionary Training Center to help us prepare for life in the mission field, but there's nothing on the flip side. Just an airplane flight and that's it. The stake president shakes your hand and sends you on your way and just like that you're not a missionary anymore.
But the mission does a pretty good job preparing you for heartbreak, instability and sudden change. Living out of two suitcases and facing the possibility of moving every six weeks will do that. So you come home, unpack your bags, get rid of a bunch of stuff, and get ready for the next thing. Maybe it's a job, maybe school, maybe both. You have to figure out your own purpose now. It's not clearly spelled out in page 1 of Preach My Gospel.
But in the midst of my own personal search to find some meaning to this new, unfamiliar life, I realized that our purpose to "invite others to come unto Christ" isn't reserved for people with a nametag on their chest, and if a mission has taught me anything, it's that as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I have not only the privilege but the responsibility to do missionary work for the rest of my life!
And missionary work is so much easier for me to do now with a phone and access to as many social media websites as the internet can provide. God didn't intend for missions to end, He meant for them to be a big first step onto the rest of our lives onto earth. Everything is meant to prepare. My two months in the Missionary Training Center prepared me for the mission, the mission has prepared me for the rest of life, and this life is preparatory for eternity.
So while I'm certainly not the most experienced returned missionary, I think I'm finally getting a handle on things with the same purpose that kept me going on my mission.
Isn't it cool that we have a Heavenly Father who made this incredible plan and figured it all out?
But in the midst of my own personal search to find some meaning to this new, unfamiliar life, I realized that our purpose to "invite others to come unto Christ" isn't reserved for people with a nametag on their chest, and if a mission has taught me anything, it's that as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I have not only the privilege but the responsibility to do missionary work for the rest of my life!
And missionary work is so much easier for me to do now with a phone and access to as many social media websites as the internet can provide. God didn't intend for missions to end, He meant for them to be a big first step onto the rest of our lives onto earth. Everything is meant to prepare. My two months in the Missionary Training Center prepared me for the mission, the mission has prepared me for the rest of life, and this life is preparatory for eternity.So while I'm certainly not the most experienced returned missionary, I think I'm finally getting a handle on things with the same purpose that kept me going on my mission.
Isn't it cool that we have a Heavenly Father who made this incredible plan and figured it all out?
