I was served a witness subpoena today.

I know what you’re probably thinking—what an unsettling way to start an article for the RP Witness! It is an unsettling way to start an article, and it was an unsettling way to end a pleasant afternoon at home.

I was at home, minding my own business. There was a knock on the door. I didn’t hear it because I was in a different room with an air conditioning unit running. There was another, louder knock. I heard this one, but was confused; is someone knocking on my door? I never get visitors. I looked out my bedroom window and saw a police car parked in the driveway, blocking my car.

The panic set in.

I remembered that there were Bibles out on my dining room table; there are R. C. Sproul commentaries on the bookshelves by my desk. There’s even an issue of the RP Witness on my counter in the kitchen! How could I be so reckless? This may very well be the last time I see my family; my parents are probably going to jail, if they’re lucky. If they’re not lucky, they’ll end up in a concentration camp somewhere, or—like so many other people my family knew—we would all just “go missing” and never be heard from again.

All these thoughts ran through my head as I rushed to answer the door. There was a third knock—multiple knocks, actually—and the officer on the other side of the door said, “This is the police, open up.”

I opened the door, shaking. The policeman asked me to confirm my name and address and handed me some papers. “You’re being served a subpoena for a crime you were witness to,” he explained. “Sign here.” I was then to wait for a phone call that would notify me the case was going to trial. Then I would be told when I was supposed to show up in court to testify. I signed the papers, the cop and I made small talk with each other because he was familiar with where I currently work, and he went on his way.

Honestly, that was probably one of the more exciting things that has happened this month in the small town where I live in the United States. The police weren’t looking for Bibles or questioning my parents about their involvement in refugee work. This was just a small-town policeman, serving a small-town resident some court papers. So, why the panic?

While having the police knock loudly on your door is probably an unsettling experience no matter who you are or where you live, it’s especially unsettling when you’re a missionary in a closed country that is hostile to Christianity.

I would know—that’s the environment I grew up in.

I can’t publish the name of the country, because my family and friends are still involved in mission work there and it’s a security risk. However, I can tell you that growing up in a Hermit Kingdom has its pros and cons—and one con is that you experience more than one police raid in which they’re looking for evidence of you being a Christian or being involved in refugee work.

It really wasn’t until I moved back to the States to attend a university that I realized my childhood wasn’t like everyone else’s. No one at my university had any sort of formal training on what to do if you suspect the secret police are following you home from piano lessons every week. Everyone freely discussed their whereabouts, jobs, and relationships.

I grew up being told not to talk to anyone, even my closest friends, about what we were doing “inside” (code for the country we were working in, because even saying the name aloud could put a target on your back). We didn’t ask questions when people disappeared, and we certainly never gathered in large groups to worship corporately.

Imagine my surprise—and quite frankly, terror—in the first chapel service I attended at my university, where more than 1,200 people gathered to worship the Lord. It took over a year for me to feel comfortable in that kind of setting, over a year to learn that the police weren’t going to brutally punish us just for displaying our faith.

These days, I live in the US and am very thankful to have a bookshelf dedicated to commentaries, Bibles, and books about Christian living and theology. I’m grateful that I get to attend church three times a week—public worship, where we can sing together freely. No one in my current circle of friends has mysteriously disappeared, never to return. Their homes haven’t been raided for Bibles. Their family members haven’t been sent to prison, or worse, for their faith.

But the aftereffects of living overseas as a missionary to a closed country linger, as I was reminded of today when the police knocked on my door and I had flashbacks to a particularly scary night when my family had to flee our apartment and go to a different country for a few weeks. The government of a neighboring country had discovered our involvement in aiding refugees. (One of the pros of homeschooling your children is that they can take their schoolwork with them whenever they’re fleeing the country after a security breach.)

Why am I writing all of this? I want to bring to light something I don’t think we as Christians in America often recognize: spending time on the mission field can be traumatizing, and missionaries who have been abroad don’t just magically assimilate back into American society when they come home.

One of the things that is discussed in RPGM Short Term’s Explore training (which I highly encourage anyone who is interested in missions to take; rpglobalmissions.org/explore is the idea of sending missionaries, and what that can look like. I love that one of the suggestions for helping “send” missionaries is to help them when it’s time for them to come home.

There are many challenges for someone coming off the mission field. In fairness, we ex-missionaries don’t really talk about it. Some of the things are simple and only take a few weeks to adjust to—Chick-Fil-A is readily available now, most of my shopping is done at Aldi or Walmart and not an open market, etc.

But how do you prepare a missionary for panic attacks during chapel services? How do you ditch the paranoia of being watched by the secret police (who, by the way, weren’t so secret since they had matching uniforms)? How do you explain to your pastor that you’re terrified of being involved in vacation Bible school because, where you grew up, ministering to minors was the greatest crime you could commit?

I don’t have all the answers. Every situation is going to be different. Someone who served in a different country than I did is going to have a very different experience, and a very different response to reintegration. But I do want to cautiously warn against treating your ex-missionaries like a party trick.

It isn’t uncommon for me to be introduced in the following manner: “This is my friend [blank]. She grew up in [blank]. Isn’t that wild? She has so many stories to tell.”

For the most part, I don’t mind talking about my experiences overseas. I’ve come to learn that it’s necessary for me to talk about them. Turns out that bottling things up doesn’t work well in the long run.

I also think more missionaries need to speak out about our reintegration experience. So many people focus on what it was like while we were actively living in a foreign, hostile country that they don’t think to ask about what it’s like trying to come back from that. If only an ex-missionary had shared experiences with me about reintegrating before I came back to the States.

I don’t write these things to blame anyone for ever trying to talk to me about my missions experience. I’m fairly open to talk about it in person, though there are some questions I just can’t answer for security reasons.

Check in on your ex-missionary friends. Ask them how they’re feeling. Don’t pressure them to share shock-factor stories about their experiences in foreign countries. Pray for healing. Encourage them to seek the help they need as they reintegrate into their home culture.

Above all, show them grace. I understand my response to a simple subpoena wasn’t rational. Thankfully, the police don’t make a habit of coming to my house. I know what to be prepared for in terms of my own response next time. Your ex-missionary friends may also have seemingly irrational responses to situations. Love them. Pray for them.