El Paso Strong

I'm having a very hard time wrapping my head around these two worlds. I barely stepped foot out of Uganda before I learned that there was an active shooter in my city. Not just in my city. But in my community. The area that my friends live. The stores where we shop. The places that we play. And then that was it. Boarding door shut.

Sixteen hours with no wifi.

I was able to get a couple of texts out before take-off and find the whereabouts of some friends. They were locked inside restaurants or told to stay inside their homes. The gentleman next to me on the plane got his phone to connect and showed me the next update; the gunman had been stopped. There is so much confusion and misinformation in the midst of events like this; no one truly knows what is going on.

I learned a very desperate act of trusting God on that plane. What if I have lost someone? What could I do? I was trapped in this tube in the sky.

I turned on my phone upon arrival, wondering what news I would receive. Slowly, reports from my friends began pouring in; they were okay. But my community wasn't. My community had been attacked.

I think that what we fear most is what we don't know.

We fear communities and people different than our own.

This man, this shooter; he definitely doesn't know my community.

He doesn't understand the resiliency of my community or the heart and soul of the people that live there. He doesn't know that we value the uniqueness of our city and celebrate the fact that we live in two countries, yet our cities operate as one. He doesn't understand the culture and depth of family, or that some of us have chosen to live there because of this community; not in spite of it.

He may have stolen lives, but he will not steal our heart.

The spirit that you see rising up after a tragedy is not new here. This is who we've always been. This is a community that builds bridges between borders and family across fences. A city that people travel to for miles to hug their loved ones without a border for three minutes. This is a community that passes baby supplies through fences when those on the other side don't have what they need. We are a community that opens it's doors to refugees dropped onto our streets and cleans their wounds for the journey. Our doors have been open for years to those that come from different places and are strangers here. If anything, El Paso has taught me how to love others unconditionally.

You don't have to try to destroy us to bring us together.

This is who we've always been.
It's who we'll always be.

We are El Paso. 
We've always been strong. 

El Paso Strong.