This Border

I don’t ever want to forget what it felt like to walk into my friend’s home in Juárez, México and then to walk into the mall in Juárez. To sit with her as she cried with me because she has cancer and doesn’t have enough money to feed her family and continue treatment, and then to walk into the mall and see all of these people with nice clothes that the cost of could save someone from disease... and realize that these people are me. I don't want to forget that even when I don’t feel like I am rich; that I am. That although I live in an attic and have had my life decisions questioned and often wonder if I have everything that I need ... that I am rich.

I think that for me there is usually a disconnect. I usually go from sitting in a home with a family or a friend in Juárez and then go back across the border to my home. I don’t know why this is different, but it is.  This time I went from my friend’s home in Juárez to the mall on the same side of the border. There was something about seeing the stark contrast between the rich and poor in the same city, that made me realize that all of those people walking around that mall, are me.

I took my old toilet seat and an old bath mat and some other used items to my friend in México. The ones that weren’t “good enough” for my home anymore. But I knew that she would want them rather than me throwing them away. We took an old boom box that I brought and plugged it in and put on a USB with Mariachi music and she decorated her home with the "new items" like it was Christmas Day.

I never want to grow so numb to the need that it just becomes familiar to me. I never want it to become "normal." Even after 18 years of serving on this border, I want the dichotomy to still make me stop and stare. I want it to make me question my needs. I want it to make me look at my life. 

I am grateful that God continues to allow me to live this life on the border. I don’t ever want it to become normal. I don’t ever want to not care.