The Valley of Re-Entry

Hi! It’s me 🙂

What does one write when everything seems like a blur, not a single thing makes sense, and there is seemingly no way to go… much less a right way to go.. oh and it’s felt that way for months? The valley, the wilderness, growing up, refinement, whatever you wanna call it, there isn’t much good to say about it when you’re in the thick of it. Yet, it’s overwhelmingly beautiful. What good would life be without the times where you can’t tell up from down or left from right? Boring, at best.

I have been home for close to 6 months (okay like 5 but the way time moves these days that is basically the same as 8). That in itself is enough to send me in a spiral, but we won’t go there. My friend Cam recently called this time of readjusting to life at home, “the valley of re-entry” and if that isn’t the most accurate description, I don’t know what is. Being back home after the last year I had has been truly the weirdest phenomenon. There are good days and bad days, but I think all racers can agree that the only word to truly describe coming home is WEIRD. It’s so beyond explanation, but here I am attempting to explain. Month one at home truly was a blur. I could tell you lots of things that I did or said or places I went to, but I was far from present in any single moment. When I think back to it it’s just kinda funny, like an out of body experience. The months following have been gradually more “normal” but equally a fight to resist the normal that I have no desire to be a part of. In essence, these months have been a wrestling match that never ends. Me and God have been going rounds upon rounds. He allowed me a taste of that in Albania and it was such a sweet time. I had a word or words for each country and for Albania they were ‘wrestle’ and ‘rest.’ Now we’ve moved on to just wrestling, no need for the rest I suppose nor the sweetness. Just kidding, rest is just a lot more complex and must be fought harder for in our western culture and the Lord has still been sweet through it all. And while it is exhausting and hard and makes me wanna quit or give up, wrestling matches with God are one of the most intimate things. I’m very single so I could be off base, but I imagine this is sort of what the honeymoon phase of marriage is like. Or rather the post- honeymoon phase. You’ve done all the lovey dovey things and it was sweet and great and beautiful and fun… but now reality is here and you realize you are actually in a lifelong covenant with the person you love but regardless of the love there are things that you don’t always love or understand about your partner and vice-versa and now you have to figure out how the heck you’re going to live together forever without it all ending in flames. You have to build a new life together, the two have become one and we all know that doesn’t happen without some welding (and I’d imagine being welded to someone else would hurt). That’s where me and the Lord are. I’m becoming his, He is becoming mine. The independence in me fights that tooth and nail, it could be so much easier I’m sure if I would just listen. The refining fire really just never gets easier or more fun but nothing in the world is more worth it.  

On top of coming off the craziest and most life changing year of my life, I’m having to reckon with the few years prior. I left behind a lot of things that were still here waiting for me when I got back. The last 3ish years of my life have been quite the rollercoaster, mainly because of my own decisions, but still. I went from being just the goody-goody small-town girl to the crazy wild child to the “Jesus just wrecked my life and I’m selling out for Him” girl to the opportunity to be the most me I had felt probably ever and far removed from all that I’ve ever known and done to the me now. Couldn’t tell ya who she is, besides a child of the King which really is enough. But even that I have wrestled with and am trying to figure out what it actually means and what I do with it. But I know that I have been created for more and for a purpose. All that to say, if you’re even still tracking with me, that I have been a lot of really different versions of myself in a really short period of time and now I’ve been plopped down in the aftermath of it all and am trying to put the pieces together, to make it all make sense. And there isn’t a lot of sense to make of it right now. Who am I? What a loaded question. Most of the time these days I have no idea. Because all those different Taylors died, but yet they are still carried with me. Where do you put the past after new life has come? No one ever really talks about that. Our testimonies of Jesus coming and transforming our lives are powerful, but we don’t just get to forget about before. Our histories are a strange thing, especially when you start trying to reckon with them. Because many of my desires and traits and passions I had before I knew Jesus, I still have now. And trying to figure out what things inside me and about me are intentional and need to stay and which ones just got taught or nurtured and have no place in my life. It can be really confusing, and that’s before you even start to tag on cultural norms and everyone else’s opinion. We get a lot of voices and information thrown at us these days, discerning what is true and needs to stay within your own life and mind is a battlefield of its own.

This time in my life is unique because I am going through the typical transition into “real life” (as if the last 24 years I lived weren’t real lol) that all 20 somethings go through, but it’s also coupled with what we call re-entry and that’s two really big things that just shouldn’t date. However, at the same time, it makes sense for them to go together because this is literally the time for it. So, even though it sucks, I am thankful for it. If I wouldn’t have gone on the race I would have been miserably trying to join in and win the rat race by doing all the things that our society and parents tell us that we have to do in order to be successful and happy. The race proved to me that the American dream really isn’t much of a dream anymore, it’s more like slavery and I prefer my freedom, true freedom. I was reading a note on my phone from this time last year and I was talking about the Israelites when Moses led them into the desert. All they had was manna from heaven (as if bread falling from the sky was a consolation), but they were free and literally being led by God to a land flowing with milk and honey. Yet they quickly began longing to go back to Egypt where they had comfort and abundance even though they were quite literally slaves. And how often is that me, tasting and seeing that the Lord is good and faithful, yet running back to lesser things because they are familiar and often quicker. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourself be burdened again by the yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). The race challenged the way of living that I have always known and been taught and now, conforming to the world, much less the western world is not appealing. Tempting at times sure, and easy to do, but I know better because I’ve seen better. Now it’s just a matter of figuring out what to do with that and how to function here at home with the different perspectives and beliefs that I have come to hold. None of it really matters if I can’t have Jesus and most things we strive and work for aren’t him. And I’m not saying that having a good job or a lot of money/things are bad, they just aren’t ultimate. I’m trying to learn what I can do and how I can do it in a way that is pleasing to and brings honor to the Lord as well as who he created me to be and for what reason. 

The tension of being home is seemingly unbearable. On one hand I have SO much to be thankful for and the Lord has blessed me with a home and community and work and things/people that I love and adore here and could not wait to come home to. At the same time though, all of those things feel really dark and empty now. I’ve felt so far removed from the Lord and increasingly so the longer I am home. Why? Because we are a nation and culture full of greed and gluttony and we are excruciatingly selfish. And me? I am the worst of them. It is a tension because I have known and seen so so so much better and yet here I am, falling into the mindless and unfulfilling ways of this world every day. I get it, I really really get it when Paul said he was a wretched man and grieved over doing the things he didn’t want to do. Recognizing our humanness, our brokenness once we have died to the flesh is haunting. And for me, being back home just exacerbates that. 

I was just remembering before the race, when I was getting ready to go. One of the most common questions I got asked was what I was most afraid of or nervous about. My reply was always and without hesitation; “coming home.” Everyone was always a little shocked by that too. But for me, I deeply feared losing things by my leaving. Deep down I knew it wasn’t going to be the same ever again and that scared me. In retrospect, I was thinking more along the lines of people and things. I was terrified that people were going to forget me, or I was going to lose or break relationships. And that did happen, a lot actually. However, what I didn’t realize I was afraid of in coming home was simply the lack of comfort or control or familiarity. I wanted to come back and things be exactly the same, I feared the change. Ironically, I got a lot more comfortable with change on the race, seeing as we lived in a constant state of it. I even grew to like it, long for it. I remember before I left, my parents were talking about moving houses while I was gone. I begged them not to because I thought it would be literally the worst thing in the world. They ended up moving and kept it a secret for me for months because they were worried about stressing me out or upsetting me. The funny thing about it though is that when they finally told me I was so excited for them. I was like “this is great! I couldn’t care less. This is going to be so good for them. I don’t even have to move all my stuff. WIN!” I was originally afraid of the tangible and outward changes that were going to inevitably happen after being away for a year. Those have actually been some of my favorite changes and the sweetest things in coming home. What I didn’t anticipate however, was the internal shift in me, in the perspective of my mind and posture of my heart and wretchedness of my soul and how the heck to come back to a world, a me, that I died to and would like to continue dying to for the sake of Christ for the rest of my life. I don’t know how to hold those tensions. The mixed emotions, the anger and bitterness, the fear and shame, the joy and freedom, the excitement and defeat, the confusion and peace, all of it. The race is so beautiful because it allows you to step away from everything and everyone you have ever known. It is really hard to see things clearly when you’re up close, but when you get an opportunity to see from far away it all makes a lot more sense. The problem then is you can’t unsee it.

I got the chance to live a very different life for a year and I loved it. It was hard and I even wished to go home already by the end of it because I craved that normal and easy and comfort, but the comfort has vanished. God is the one and only thing who can hold me close enough that there is peace, and the life I came home to feels empty, at least in itself. It’s also a lot harder to see and hear and sit with God here because we are all running and forced to run at an alarmingly fast pace that we weren’t made for, but that’s another story. I long for the life I got to live last year, and admittedly I probably give a little too much credit to it as well. I just know how fruitful it was, how honoring to the Lord it was. It is hard for me to see that here, up close. It’s hard to write this without sounding bitter or ungrateful or just straight up disillusioned, but it is where I am, and it is how I am struggling, and I think they are good struggles. I am thankful for how hard it has been to transition back to life at home because it proves to me I was changed, now it is just a matter of what I will do with that and how I will allow the Lord to use that in me, here or across the world all the same. 

If you made it to the end of this, thank you. The love, support, and encouragement from people not only in my journey on the race but just my life and walk with the Lord in general is so special to me. I know I’m not on the field so blogging here feels a little funny, but the outlet of writing is a gift and I love it. I also think it is important to be honest and vulnerable because we are in our struggles together. I feel like my words fail me and I come off as upset or bitter when I talk about coming/being home. Some days that’s even true, but mostly I am just trying to figure it all out and love the people and the life around me to the glory of God, it has just been hard. My hope is that this helps people to understand some of what I am walking through right now and maybe even encourage someone else who is in the depth of a valley with seemingly no way out. There is a way, the way just isn’t always our way and that is a good, good thing. I love y’all. I’m thankful to be home and to have the life that I have. Please bear with me as I navigate my messy life and thank you for being in it with me. 

Jesus te ama

Xoxo Tay <3