It’s one thing to come back from a touristic trip or a vacation. You bring back photos and souvenirs, share your experiences with your friends back home, and jump back into everyday life.

It’s quite another thing to be to Narnia and back.

What I mean by Narnia is an experience that goes beyond an exotic location and fun activities. I mean a journey that challenges and inspires you in different aspects, and transforms you mentally or spiritually. It could be two days or two years long.

Narnia for the Pevensie children was not just a fun little tour. They formed powerful friendships the likes of which they didn’t have in England, suffered pain and grief, were stretched beyond what they thought they could stand. Then, suddenly, they were thrown back into 20th century England and the ordinary life of children. Aside from the professor, there was no one who would believe, or if they believed, understand their adventures.

We’re only 15 days into the new year and I’ve already suffered the Pevensie Children Effect. Again.

I just returned from Mexico. For a week of my time there, I was in the mountains, in a pine forest at 9000 feet. The forest is spotted with massive walls of stone and hides a beautiful British colonial town. I stayed in a cabin with 30 of the most wonderful people I’ll ever know. Several of them I practically grew up with and have shared the happiest and hardest times of my life.

We spent the week training in rock climbing techniques. The days we spent at the foot of the stone giants, shivering in the cold, taking turns belaying and scaling the stone, learning lead climbing techniques and new belaying methods, laughing every chance we got. The nights we spent huddled around a fire in the cabin, the single source of heat, with a noisy generator providing the meager electricity for the single bulb, and without water in the bathrooms. Those were the times for games, jokes, and solemn talk.

With several of those closest to me, I spent hours talking, praying, crying, laughing-more than I had in an entire semester, it seems. And come time to say goodbye, the hugs were long and the parting hesitant. And weary, cold, bruised, smelling of smoke, and encouraged beyond telling by the love of this band of brothers, I returned to my house.

I’m getting the Effect even in writing this. Even if I were to go into detail about everything that went on that week, I could never impress on you fully the meaning of that week and the change it wrought in me. Now I’m back in 20th century England, surrounded by people who can’t know what Narnia is, much less what I did there and what it means to me.

If you’ve not been to Narnia yet, you can’t know what I mean. But if you have a friend that recently had such an experience and they can’t seem to describe it to you and maybe seem kind of down now that they’re back, just love on them and bear with them.

The return is a high price to pay for the inspiration brought by the journey. You’re back, and it seems like no time passed. Your everyday tasks seem menial. Your friendships lack the bond born of shared hardship. And you hope to return to Narnia someday, but you don’t know when. It could be in a month. It could be in ten years. Who can tell?