A few summers ago I was in El Paso, TX, doing some mission work with a youth group. A church housed us for little over a week and we helped them run camps for local kids. Our last full day there was a Sunday and that morning I volunteered to go with a group of people to pass out food in downtown. Parts of that city remind me of New Orleans and it felt so familiar it almost scared me but I also felt the way you feel when you're in a new city and everything is fresh because you've never even seen a picture of the place. You feel like you're seeing it better than the people that have spent their lives there.
We met a man there and offered to bring him back to the church with us after getting to know him a little. He came back with us and two other girls besides myself sat at a table to the left of the stage/front with him. Before and after the service we all exchanged stories but I honestly only remember some of his. I know his father left his family, which is actually in Juarez. He sent some money to them I think. He has a little brother. He came to El Paso to get away and the only thing I remember thinking is: Why not go farther? That's about the only thing I remember about him. We had a nice exchange and he told me, personally, thank you for sharing my struggles and opening the table to him. What I remember more is that no one else went out of their way to talk to him. I think some of the adults (actually most) considered it strange and were a little iffy about it and I remembered being disgusted with them. They ignored a new comer. How dare they behave so exclusively. Christianity isn't a club folks get over yourselves.
Also, while I was working in an art camp there, a girl about 9 told me she wanted to be a stripper when she grew up. She had no remorse about saying that to me, either. She said it like she was telling me her favorite color (which she had told me a few seconds earlier so the indifference had that much more of a sting). I actually remember two solid reactions about it in that moment. My first was a visible cringe. None of the girls around us were caught off guard when she said it. But hearing her say that made me cringe and then want to cry, the uncontrollable sobbing kind of cry. And I did later that day when I had to share this with the group of students, to make some kind of impact to show them that this was what these children grew up in; no one to tell them that aspiring to be a stripper was unnecessary.
Those are about the only things I remember from that trip. I honestly can't tell you if God taught me anything, if I had some huge awakening to salvation. I don't even know what that would feel like and I can tell you most Christians I know don't know. They pretend that it'd be some great eye-opening enlightenment and they'd suddenly be at peace with all things. That's some bullshit. As an almost logical human being wouldn't becoming enlightened make everything that much harder. Being more aware and being conscious of more than yourself and also to the relationship you have to others and being able to think in more than generalities and break everything down into their own generalities and I just don't even know. You'd question everything, not be surer in your walk with the Lord (or at least a smart person would). The only people I've met that I've ever taken seriously in their faith and religion are those that have endured some kind of hardship. I don't believe you can claim belief in something until you've doubted it at least just a little bit. If you're not thinking about your life choices, and religion orients your entire life so it definitely counts as a life choice, then I'm not sure what you're thinking about.
That fence that separated me from the gunshots in Juarez is the same border that keeps me from a terrifying unknown and I cross it every day. I drive myself crazy chasing things I don't understand and thinking about every option in every scenario and paralyzing myself in thought. I wish everyone crossed it but who am I to say others don't. Maybe they just ignore it like all those "Christ followers" in that church.
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