Partway through my mission I had a realization; I wasn't there to be someone else. I was there to love the people and help them in anyway I could. So I quit worrying about the rules that I had been so worried about all the time and went day to day trying to help others. (I'll write about that journey in greater detail some other time.) So when I reached the point when I knew the end was near, I was excited. I had a tough mission, personally. I was ready to come home and kick the anxiety and depression and breathe in some American air. I was trunky. I have no shame in saying that. The last half of my last transfer, I don't think a morning study session went by without me staring out the window thinking of the sand dunes and sev runs and triple kills with my boys back home. It was summer and the only sled I had back home had a 2 inch hole in the case, so I was thinking summer. Though sledding was on my mind a lot throughout my mission, in fact, I remember exactly when and where I came up with my company name "Pin'd" on the mission, and of course it was in church just doodling in my planner during some conference or meeting that was being televised to us. It kinda kept me going, looking forward to something back home. It all did; my stories I repeated to my companions, my ever-increasing love and gratitude for my country, my guitar especially and the pictures of my cabin. These were my get-aways on the mission, my escape. We had to deal with some crazy things over there, and I guess I was just weak or so emotionally invested in these people that I overloaded myself, which lead to a lot of darkness and depression but the meaning and value in those times are incomparable to anything. (Once again, I'll write about that in a different post.)
So there I was, training my son (mission slang for first-transfer missionary) in my last transfer and I am glad he was chill because halfway through, it was apparent that I was excited to go home (it was more hot and cold really but still excited). And the whole time I just knew inside that I had stayed true to myself, I didn't become some robot out there knocking on doors, I was me, just me, just trying to help and of course trying to solve philosophical problems at the same time. Nothing about me was artificial at that point, I had weaknesses and I had worked to be better and didn't try to cover them up or deny them to myself. Because I knew I wasn't anything but myself, I was certain that the transition to home-life would take about as long as the plane ride. Wrongo.
I got on the plane with 3 other elders and away we went. I got my first taste of commonly-spoken English as the flight attendants spoke and gave instructions as we were headed to London. That was trippy. Still stoked to get home. From Heathrow, London we split ways and I was on my own, and I was headed for Chicago. Then the American English enveloped me. I was pretty weirded-out by that but man, America. Freakin' America. I got to the O'Hare airport and headed straight for the food. Barq's root beer and an American pizza. As I sat there taking a picture of my glorious 'merican food, a family came and sat by me and the dad asked, "You coming or going." I said I was going home. I had my carry-on suitcase, my backpack and my guitar that I bought in my first area. The dad noticed the guitar and smugly said, "I thought elders weren't allowed to have musical instruments?" I really didn't know what to say to that. On our mission, we taught English. In fact, we were required by the mission president to teach formal classes weekly. So we spent a lot of time handing out flyers and we were encouraged by our president to "just do what works." So we'd try and if it worked, great, if not, move on, change it up. And guitaring, as we called it, worked to get peoples attention to take our flyers and see that we were native English speakers, so I sang my little heart out almost everyday out there. I wasn't very good but it got the job done. And an explanation like that would have sufficed but I just let it slip and I think that's when it started to sink in.
I got on the plane headed for the Rockies/God's country/Utah. I thought I was going to be so excited but halfway there I went numb. I even listened to the coming home music my mom sent me for the trip: "Country Roads (take me home), etc." Didn't work. I was frantically trying to get stoked, I mean, I could see the shadows of the mountains I had missed so dearly for 2 years, I saw the valley lights, and I was going to see my family. But it was gone. I didn't want to get off that plane. I didn't want to see my family. I just wanted to be alone. But I moved forward off the plane, towards the pick-up area. To help understand the layout of that part at that time, there was a big plexiglass wall and behind that, an open area where an escalator takes you up or down. I was coming down into that area and at the bottom, I caught a glimpse of my family and panicked, I wasn't ready to see my family, I wanted to be alone. So I hid. I jumped behind a giant pillar and stood there probably for a good 4-5 minutes until my nephews ran way out along the wall to where they could see me standing behind the pillar and yelled out, "There he is!!". I was pretty pissed. I turned and looked over as he pointed at me, bit my lip and turned to walk out the walk-way. All but one brother and one sister were there to see me arrive. I had a few friends and close relatives there as well. And my mom was definitely mad at me for hiding. But she gave me a hug anyway and I went through the motions and heard someone snicker at my "interesting choice" of a tie, took a few pictures and drove home.
Even though I was not as excited as I had anticipated I still looked forward to the relief of coming home and running around my house and pulling out my whip and cracking it in the front yard as my last battle cry. It didn't go as planned. In the weeks after, I struggled. Luckily I had a few good friends there to support me and the next 10 months, well, let's just say I'm glad I bought that '07 M1000 snowmobile.
It took me quite a while to understand what really happened when I came home. I was sure that I was ready, I mean, I was me. And the me I know loves going fast, listening to metal, playing halo with boys on the weekend and laughing a lot. But when I got home, I had never been so uncertain of who I was in my life. And I didn't realize that until a couple years later. You see, I overlooked something, I thought that the only ones who went through that "awkward" post-mission phase were the ones who went through the motions, more or less. I wasn't awkward, I was just lost. I was lost exactly because I came home as me who had put himself through the wringer of self-purification and who was tried daily for the hardest and most painful 2 years of his life. I had not let anything become artificial, and that's why it was so hard. I really had changed inside. I was, by no means, some glorious specimen of perfect love and virtue but I had changed from the inside-out to someone who wanted to seek truth and help others. And all this time I thought that I was just avoiding the outside-in change that wore off after a few weeks of being home. I came home, and I lost my purpose.
I don't want to compare what we do in the mission to what our armed forces do but I watched American Sniper when it came out and after the last deployment it showed him sitting in a bar, in America and then casually telling his wife that he was stateside and had been for some time. That hit me hard, I get chills just thinking about that scene. Even though I wasn't defending freedom with a gun and putting my life on the line like our brave men and women do daily in name of freedom, I had a purpose and I immersed myself in that, even though it sucked. Even though it wasn't a happy thing, I gained a desire to seek truth and help others challenge their way of thinking. That bar scene sent me back behind that pillar. I will never say that I know exactly how someone feels, but I think there was something close. I saw someone who didn't know where he was or who he was because he had given his everything out on that field, even though all they could talk about out there was going home. Even though he went through the most traumatic experiences of his life, his purpose was still out on that field and when he came home for the last time, it finally hit him that he didn't know how to be anything else but a sniper watching over his brothers. Worst of all, he didn't know where to start. And that was me. How could I ever find purpose as great as I did out in the mission field? What do I do now? Get a job? Go to school? I spent 2 years of my life away from my family (only to communicate through email once a week and skype twice a year) to be totally dedicated to something so much greater than myself. Standing behind that pillar, I wanted to just hide, or better yet, disappear. It wasn't that I didn't love my family. I just think that right then and there, something inside of me knew that I would have to find myself and to start from ground-zero, I would have to be alone to do that.
It took me a long time to get to the point where I thought I had my feet on the ground. I have since ceased thinking that at any point and have accepted that the only constant is change and that the purpose I felt on my mission would stay there with my mission. Life goes on to different things that build upon our past even though we may want to forget parts and pieces or maybe just the whole thing in general, it's all built on our past and the past is there to stay. A strong future requires a solid foundation. A solid foundation is tried, tested, pushed to the limits, and has a lot of short-lived but deeply meaningful times. Those times may be the times we wish to have back again because of the joy or purpose we found in them or maybe we just want a part of those experiences. The mission was the most meaningful for me, and high school sports was joyful as well as meaningful.
If you've built a house or even seen a house being built, you'd know that what the house sits on doesn't make for a very effective roof; concrete with steel bars running through it in 2 foot-wide runs. The same goes for our lives. We have meaningful times of the past, for parents it's when their kids were just little and their whole world revolved around making memories on budget camping trips or getting ice cream for a Friday night treat. But those times pass and those children become teenagers and somehow manage to become adults and start their own families. Those moments can't last forever, those "simple times" or "good old days" can't last forever, but they become the catalyst for our futures. Those once little kids grow up on a solid foundation of making memories to make more memories with their own children. And as for me, I think I have finally started to see it all with greater perspective. I wouldn't go back to my mission. I kinda hated it at the time between depression, anxiety and health issues as well as the crazies we had to deal with, (It drained my every emotion) I wouldn't go back and start all over unless I could take with me what I know now. But I long for that purpose that I found in retrospect. I see now that this purpose is my catalyst to being a truth-seeker for life, and follower of Christ (even though I fail to tread his path miserably at times). This purpose and loss of purpose gave me the foundation to walking through life with opened eyes. It has forged me into the person I am today. Even with all my weaknesses and vices, I see life ahead. I desire to, on the conditions that I somehow convince a girl to marry me, teach my family what I've learned in hopes that it maybe opens their eyes a little earlier than mine were opened. The mission isn't the goal in life. The mission was to help others and as a by-product I became who I am today. I would not have gained that without first finding my purpose out there. My purpose was to get me to where I ended up and now to use that to fuel the constructing of my future.
So here I am 3 years later. And as hard as it was to lose my purpose, my everything, it has given me the eyes to see the hope ahead and the understanding to know that my loss of purpose will grant me greater knowledge and perspective for the memories that lie ahead.
