Dallas

Somewhere in the airspace over Dallas is where I lose it.

I’m not sure what it is. I do okay in Fort Lauderdale. In Florida everyone is coming and going from the Caribbean and the people are so diverse and I’m still feeling excited about being back in America after three months.

But heading into Dallas is different. Suddenly everyone around me looks like a middle-class American soccer mom or business man. And even though I’m elbow-wrestling with the next person for two inches of arm rest real estate, I suddenly feel miles away from everyone else. And I sit there simultaneously hoping to stay lost in my thoughts without a word spoken to me so I can cling to every memory, and needing to tell someone everything I just saw and did to make it seem more real and less like a dream. But these people are miles away from me. They could never understand the things I walked through, not even the matching-shirted short-term mission team that was on the flight from Haiti. They have no idea. These people who look like my next-door neighbors are aliens to me.

I think Dallas is where my brain feels the split- two worlds that don’t reconcile. Dallas is where I start to feel like it was all a dream. Because if the kid with the iPad and the Starbucks every twenty feet and the immaculate climate-controlled building are all real, how can my malnourished babies and hurting mamas and dusty streets be real too?? It seems like they can’t possibly both be real. And that’s when the tears just come. Even though I was kissing those babies only hours ago, I feel like I’m losing them into that hazy dream-stuff already. And it scares me. Because the memories of those kids are more valuable to me than anything else in this world. I’m trying so hard to hold them tightly and it feels like they are just falling through my fingers.

And to the next person I just look like any other young American with a nice summer tan. They can’t see the frenzy inside as I cling to my treasures- the faces of babies we lost, and of kids that lived, the grief and joy and love defined by those faces. I’m a Texan girl back in Texas, but feeling like a stranger in a strange land.

It’s been a few days. I’m settling into that uncomfortable feeling. The tension of living with this irreconcilable reality. Re-learning how to live with a heart that is divided between two worlds. I’m feeling grateful for the Savior who spans the distance, who is rock-solid and sure in both places. Because if I know nothing else, I know that He is good, He is love, and He is real. Even in Dallas.