dirt streets and dreams

i don't know how this became my life.  i really have no idea how it happened.  it's been a whirlwind of questions and dreams and prayers for years.  i have no idea how my "normal" morning became trying desperately to translate an illiterate text message in spanish and fill the gap between a hurting woman in Juárez and a group from the states that became a part of her life years ago.  i don't know how i became the person to call when someone wants to create a new program in a foreign country and they reach out to me for help.  i don't know why i get awakened with texts in another language in the middle of the night or find myself on a normal basis answering a call that turns into broken Spanish gibberish. i just don't know.  yet here i am.  still.  looking around and staring.  still.

these dusty streets are such a far cry from all that i know.  it has never become normal.  never.  the people have become like family, but i think that i will always feel displaced.  like a fish out of water.  it makes sense.  this is not what i grew up knowing. this is not the air that i breathed.  and it is so contrary to every part of my soul and my longings that i would be more surprised if i wasn't still spinning; still trying to figure out how not to be lost.

some days just go by in the normalcy that this routine has become.  but some days create those moments where i sit and stare and continue to be surprised by this life that has become mine.  this is one of those days.  and today these dusty roads look more foreign to me than anything i have ever known.