War and finding your place at home...

We have that whole blockbuster on line deal so I often try to make sure that there are movies in the q that both my husband and I will like. This week we had a war movie, well, b/c my husband loves war movies...he tends to like the ones from the medieval period where people are slashing each other with swords the most...but I digress.

Last night I had a paper to write so my husband popped in this movie about some solders who had been to war and then came home. It was about how hard it was for the solders who had experienced a life so different and seen so much to come home and not only relate to those who had known them before, but try to live life in America. I could only partly pay attention because Augustine, Pelagius, and the Christological Controversy were demanding my time. But the parts I did catch, and the reaction of my husband that I noticed the most, reminded me of the days when I first returned from my two years in India. I by no means experienced the severity of war but I experienced a life so different than my life before I went. I was reminded of why I gravitate toward those who have been. Sometimes you just don't want to have to work so hard for someone to understand your heart and your struggles. Sometimes it is just hard to cope with things you have experienced and then slip right back into the ease, bountiful, and often shallow ways/perspective of America. We all handle it so differently. In the movie one man totally fell apart, one fell on his face but got back up and fought for his life, one disregarded all that was before and moved on to what was new...and one went back. While I don't do it as much as I did when I was first home I am guilty of the same reactions as the people in the movie. My heart still gravitates to those who have been, who have seen, who have changed in ways that only God and third world living can do in your heart. Part of me still searches for who I was before, who I was when I was over there, and fights to be who I am/should be in the present. I am just glad that I have God to walk me through it...