After looking back over the last 15 years, I’ve come to an understanding that half of my life in another culture has placed me between two worlds. After getting married over seven years ago, it was the first time to actually live in the United States and speak English as a main language again in many years. I had arrived in Mexico at age 19, really still just a young boy, and returning to the United States seven years later as a man brought forth a huge culture shock.
It’s funny looking back because I felt crazy to give up everything and just move to Mexico. I didn't speak a word of Spanish. It was the hardest thing I had ever done in my life, but I knew it was the right step. There were challenges and times of great loneliness, feelings of not belonging, rejection, fears, and great struggles, but nothing compared to what awaited me back on that freeway of life in the United States. I had lost friends and relationships, which is normal after being gone for over seven years, but what I didn’t expect was that I no longer belonged where I was born. I wasn’t Mexican, but my worldview and values had shifted, my way of communicating and understanding, and even the ability to fully express myself in my native tongue seemed like a major task at moments. My culture shock was coming home, to the United States.
I can’t find the words to really explain it, but the joy that I had expected to await me upon my return seemed much more like being lost in an ocean of thoughts that had no answer. It's hard to define and call it by name, but there was a fracture within when the revelation hit me that I didn't belong anymore. I belong neither here nor there, but somewhere in between. Lost between one world of the politically correct, fighting for an American Dream, while being lost in the lie of consumerism and being defined by what I have over who I am. Racism all around, in a battle of education to get into a good school, to get a high paying job, to work hard to pay off school (without letting marriage or family ‘now undefined’ get in the way). The goal? At best to pay off student-loans and save money to buy a house, car, vacations, to one day retire and enjoy life while all too often it has already passed us by. At worst, it was all a front hidden behind credit, nothing real, and just a superficial identity. This is obviously an extreme view that isn’t complete, but it is what my eyes could see and perceive and they were overwhelmed and confused moving back across the northern border.
The other side of the border was a war of cartels. Blood, money, and the abuse of power to be somebody. “Why do today what I can do tomorrow”? Relationships on the surface, but never going deep and honest with anybody. Always together, but always alone. Dreaming of change, but the plan for tomorrow and work was just an afterthought. Abuse, matriarch society and machismo, but at least family matters. Many were simply drinking their life away, but loving today with no thought for tomorrow. Timely and accurate communication appearing to be an unknown principle, and changing plans more than the thought of even planning. Finding myself offending everyone with every wrong word or look, using too honest of words, and feeling lost in a world that appears to be hiding behind just another mask.
Looking back it seems almost silly but they were two worlds separated by a river that might as well have been an ocean, but the greatest challenge was yet to come. Despite facing a wall in returning stateside, the bigger bridge to cross was driving back with my new wife. I had left the States as a young man finding my way in Mexico. But as I had returned to the States I began to understood who I was as a man again after seven years. All the of the hidden details of everything that had never bothered me, or the details that I had never even noticed kept me from seeing beyond my American reality. It seemed like I had gone the wrong way; everyone was coming North and we had moved South of the Border again.
Mexico was like an island in an ocean without a Motherland to connect to. Spain so far away, but the United States carrying a different language, history, culture, and reality. I was simply trying to find my way again. I was walking through brokenness to find great breakthrough, and becoming lost to finally be found. I was returning home to a Mexico that would never really be home again. Nothing had changed, but within me, something had shifted. The American Dream? No. Yet a veil had been lifted and we were now stuck between; a baby and a move to bring us into a new season finally the answers seemed to appear.
It's not about where we come from, or what we have come to, but simply who He is. We aren’t from here, but both of our kids, our car, our animals, and our friends are Mexican. Looking North we don’t belong there, but we greatly love and miss our culture, language, family and friends. We've had to create our own culture, our own family, and our own dreams. A citizenship that is literally out of this World. Like a chameleon fitting in wherever we go and a glow on the face that shines for His glory. Carrying two tongues, two realities, but just one identity. We just simply don’t belong, we are stuck between, but we are Home, with Him and together, we are Home!
Our story is pretty unique, but getting married and having family are simply a new reality. Either we can accept our differences, embrace the challenges, and change, or we try to unite two worlds that aren't able to mix. "The two shall become one!" Living, the ExtraOrdinary! Marriage is one of the greatest ways to reflect God and give Him Glory, but the cost is high and the challenge is daily. Let go, and let God!