High School Reunions, Han Solo's feelings about stuff, and the delusion of Nostalgia.

I still remember the feeling when the reality set in that I was officially “old.”

You may not have come to this place yet or remember where you were when it hit you. This became apparent to me the moment I realized that I had been out of High School for 10 years. (People older than me are totally judging me right now saying something like “you are not even close to knowing what ‘old’ means”… but nonetheless it’s real).

Seriously though, there is something that came over me when I realized that I had not been in public education for over a decade. The fact that I could even count the time that had elapsed in decades and not singular years told me that I had passed through some threshold of elderliness.

The shock was partly that I did not feel THAT old coupled with the reality that the calendar does not lie.

It keeps counting, even when you lose your place.

Or maybe it was the thought that I had to revisit all these people that I had moved on from. Some I once loved, some I did not. It is weird to think that this collection of outlaws that I went to High School with occupied so much meaningful space in my life and thoughts at one point, only to move on to a place of obscurity in a blink of an eye.

It was this dramatic shifting of gears and not something easily down shifted into again without the engine noticing. 

Where did these people go? What did they do in the time and space that I was no longer present? I know that I had changed monumentally by the grace of G-d, but its hard to imagine the people I do not see regularly as being anything other than what I remember them to be. My lack of imagination fools me into thinking they stayed exactly the same. As if my presence or absence matters in such things.

These characters inevitably became the metric by which I would judge people who came into my life later in the story. They are the benchmark, the early experiences that would either be expanded upon by others like them or autocorrected by something more real. With roles once so meaningful, you would think that their memories would be easier to grasp than the mist they have now become.

I cannot accurately imagine them having lost or gained weight. I cannot see them married or divorced.  Or having more kids than me. I maybe selfishly want them to stay the same way. A way that is familiar, manageable even.

As though their world must stop turning simply because I was not present: this is low-grade silliness.

I think the most potent nostaligia I have ever experienced sat in during that time. When I thought back, I struggled to remember half the bad from that era that G-d used to move me on from that stage of my life. Everything, good or bad was coated in sugar. The evils of my youth were whitewashed by selective memory loss.

One must tread softly around nostaligia. It is seductive. Nostaligia is a strong delusion and often clouds our present living and decision-making.

(Selah)

As the date began to close in for our reunion, I began to see that more clearly and realize this revisit to old stomping grounds would be anything than what I imagined it to be at first. All the Hollywood movie scripts do reality an injustice and prepare us for very little when you think about it. I am not sure I even ended up going, but I cannot forget as the time grew closer how much honesty flooded back to me.

The big plans to drink beer at the lake by the party planning committee set the world back on its tilt for me. Nevertheless, the shifting feelings I processed during that time were weird and strangely unavoidable.

This brings me back to another return and another revisit of old digs. It has been nearly a year since our family left our step-motherland of France. France, the land of my father’s ancestors (and the people my mother’s Chickasaw tribe slaughtered). The same France that wooed me away from my home here in the New World with all its familiarity and comfort and BBQ. As I pack my bags to go back to her again, it draws all kinds of the same emotions from me that my High School reunion once did. While G-d’s hand shepherded the decision to step back from her, it has not come without a full bag of emotions. Clarity about how G-d has led in the past does not cure the swirling of expectations for what lies ahead. At this point I will not be surprised by any range of reactions that will bubble to the surface as I step off that plane and smell baguettes again and/or the funk from the public transit system.

I am battling the tendency to quote Han Solo at every turn and declare that “I have a bad feeling about this” … if for no reason other than there are a lot of things I know that have become unknown.

It has ripped at our guts to be away from our people there and while I am sure of very little, I am sure that it has changed. That’s sad to me for reasons I cannot quite explain. The nearest I can come to it is by saying that its like being a character who wants to be in two stories at once and finds himself bound to the pages of one or the other. It could be said bound to one story at expense to the other… therein lies the kicker.

It almost made the Mexican food in America a little less amazing... 

(almost is the key word here.)

It was hard for us to move our lives into France to begin with and it was even harder to leave. The people, the culture, the mission, the Church, and how the Lord used us were all bigger and more beautiful than we could have imagined. The hardest times and the most stunning; a mingling of the worst and best stuff G-d has to offer in life.

It has been a chapter in our lives written with the harshest language but penned in gold letters.

It was one of the greatest joys of my walk with Jesus thus far to dispel the rumors of what Jesus could not do in France. These rumors being largely based on conversations with well meaning people with airtight excuses for why the Holy Spirit does not work there as in other places. The long story short was that these excuses are based on lies not from the Father. The whole battle deepened our faith in the Gospel to do what the Gospel does, regardless of the longitude and latitude. 

While the challenges to take the Gospel into darkness were real, it had very little if any bearing on our decision to take a pause. Multiple surgeries, terrorist attacks, blown out knees, language problems, and French schools all were factors but not the straw that broke the camel’s back. The cracks in our sending organization, the unfitness of the direction of leadership, and the questionable decision making above us became beyond what any set of healthy convictions could submit to.

G-d often uses the bad along with the good to move us along in life from places we were never meant to occupy for very long.

Our French brothers and sisters kept us afloat and were a visible extension of G-d’s grace to us. They were the ones in the trenches with us and covering us when the fog got thick. They did not always understand the drama of our sending agency, but soon it became apparent that we could not align strongly with those we went with. We had to come to grips with the reality that the current setup for our work in France was not sustainable. It broke our hearts because we were sold one thing, only to find that we were asked to do something entirely different. My wife was catching bullet wounds from friendly fire in the process and that is hard for any husband to ignore for a prolonged period of time. We needed repose from the politics and dangerous path we were being ushered down to say the least. I think since we are eternal beings, it is hard for us to think that anything we do in life is less than permanent. We had settled our roots there and birthed as much fruit as grace and time allowed, only to be transplanted once again.

Some parts of us never came back from that place. Parts of our heart still linger there.

That all being said, to come out of all that hot mess with healthy hearts and vigorous faith has been the most stunning miracle of 2017 for the Corsaut’s so far. We know many who never come back from that dark place of politics at all. I will probably write more about what went down at a later time, but for now we sleep with clear consciences and a lingering passion for France. I would go further to say, I am as passionate about missions as I have ever been. We are much better positioned now to work for the Kingdom. We are in a place of serious faith, healthy relationships, and sound vision.

We feel a bit reloaded, a sense of readiness again.

The best is yet to come.

It was the people of France that Jesus drew us to in the first place and those same people that draw us back again. We miss the people that Jesus grew into our surrogate family and who occupied the trenches beside us. Babies have been born, Gospel has been shared, Catan has been played, Food has been grilled, disciples have been made, and Churches have taken a step one way or another.

We are overdue to catch up and feel strangely like Paul who necessarily had to leave his people for a season.  We have a new ministry base to launch from in Colorado that has stirred up all kind of old joys and new partners (more about that another time too).

I want to invite you to pray for us all over again. To hold the rope as we keep sowing our lives down into the well of the mission field. This is the big breath before the plunge. This is the scared feeling of a warm body about to hit the shock of cold mountain water. Its frightening and makes us shiver preemptively. 

We want to invite you to pray for our people in Europe who are fighting the good fight and will never make the news. We want you to pray that our brief time there during the month of November will be a breath of fresh air to people who might of lost theirs somewhere along the way. We want you to pray for our boldness to share the Jesus who gave Himself and not just information.

The Jesus who did not cross the Atlantic but the universe to get at us.

We have never done this kind of stuff alone and have no intention of it in the future. This Kingdom business is both a team sport and we need our family in Christ all over again. We covet your prayers as we take all kinds of new risks with old friends. As we discover all the things that have changed and play our role in encouraging others we find along the way, we hope that you would push us out the door and make sure that we go in force instead of skip out or miss out like one might be tempted to do at other such reunions.

Grace before peace.