When It Takes More Faith to Come Back

Nobody warned you that coming home would be the hardest part.

For those who cross cultures to serve, the return can be harder than the leaving. Cross-cultural “re-entry” is often a hidden wilderness of grief, anxiety, stress, and disorientation—a season few around you can see or fully understand. Whether you’ve served in missions, the marketplace, the military, or the nonprofit world, the disorientation is real: home has changed, the people have changed, and so have you.

When It Takes More Faith to Come Back: Trusting God During Re-entry is a spiritual companion for exactly this season. Written by Dr. Brian Virtue—a professor of leadership and spiritual formation who walked through his own sudden, difficult return after nearly a decade serving in Asia—it offers forty devotionals that meet you in the honest, in-between work of reintegration.

These devotionals are not quick fixes. They are meaningful companions for disorientation, mourning, and lament—rooted in Scripture and seasoned with hard-won experience. Each one offers a short reading, reflection and journaling questions, a guided prayer, and a “Talk with a Friend” prompt for mentors, couples, families, or small groups, so you never have to process the journey alone.

Along the way, you’ll do the real spiritual and emotional work that returning requires: reconnecting with your home country, reclaiming your spiritual narrative, discovering where God is now at work, and honestly assessing your emotional and relational well-being. And in your season of disorientation, you’ll encounter grounding truth about who you are and where you belong—in Christ, and in the life that still lies ahead.

This book belongs in the hands of returning missionaries and their families, sending churches, member-care teams, and anyone who wants to understand the hidden cost—and unexpected gifts—of cross-cultural service. Endorsed by leaders in missions, theology, and clinical psychology, it names what so often goes unspoken and points steadily to hope.

You made it back. Now let this book help you find your footing—and discover that your adventure with God isn’t over. It’s just taking a new form.