It was the most miserable year of my life.

I had come from a culture I knew I didn’t fit into, back “home” to a culture I was supposed to fit into and yet I didn’t fit in. I didn’t dress like my peers, and I didn’t understand their slang expressions. I even had to read the instructions on a can of Coke to figure out how to open the new tab-tops! I felt very confused.

Social differences were only part of the problem. I had seen things these teens had only read about, and I experienced things none of them would ever understand. It was a constant struggle to find some kind of common ground. I remember crying myself to sleep many nights, longing for my “home” in Guatemala.

I had no idea what was happening to me. I had been well liked in my Guatemalan school, and I had been respected at church because my parents were the missionaries. Among my new youth group peers, however, “missionary” seemed a disdainful word, synonymous with the word “misfit.”

That was over 20 years ago, and I have survived. However, even now there are times when I still feel like a misfit. In Guatemala, I looked like a foreigner so my differences were understood. In the States I look just like everyone else on the outside, but often I have different opinions and attitudes born from another culture. Even now if I’m unfamiliar with a part of American culture that I missed out on, my compatriots aren’t always so accepting.

Various research projects have recently studied “reverse culture shock” and it’s implications on children returning to America. Our family has often discussed how much easier things would have been if only someone had warned us. But at that time not much was known about the subject.

Fortunately, today there are ways to make that cultural transition easier for missionary kids. Simple awareness, coupled with re-entry seminars, counseling, and the empathy of supporting congregations can all lessen the trauma of coming “home.”