It was a chilly December Saturday morning when I met with Isabel to learn her story.  We met at a Barnes & Noble in the children’s section so her kids could read and play while we spoke.  I grabbed a seasonal latte from the in-store Starbucks and waited for her to arrive.  Isabel is a busy mom of two adorable children.  She works as a manager at a Fortune 500 company where her days are long but she likes her company and appreciates the opportunity she has there.  As a working mom and wife, her days are quite busy.  Typically filled with meetings, school events, dance classes, doctor’s appointments, and more, her time is sacred.  Saturday mornings are usually dedicated to her family but today, she was giving a little bit of it to me.

I met Isabel a few years ago.  She’s thin with a cute bob haircut that just brushes her shoulders.  Her straight black hair twinkles with highlights.  She is small in stature but big in enthusiasm.  In the time I’ve known her, she’s not been afraid to give constructive feedback on a project or process and she openly shares her ideas.  She works hard every day and she gives out appreciation like candy at a Christmas parade.  It didn’t take long for me to realize that, though she is in her twenties, Isabel has wisdom beyond her years.  She has resilience that can only be obtained through trials and tribulations I could hardly imagine.

Isabel is an American, but not by birth.  She was born in Mexico and grew up in a small, rural town.  Her hometown was too small to have professional medical care so she was born in a town nearby.  She described her hometown with a warm smile.  She told how everyone knew each other – and knew everything about each other.  She described it as a place where she was rich with family.  They were together often, usually at her grandparents’ house.  And her town was full of hardworking people who worked most every day to provide for their families.  They were mostly farmers, growing various crops and raising livestock.  Many people had fruit trees in their yard.  I imagined long sunny days and warm clear nights, long dirt roads and children playing care-free.

Once she entered kindergarten, Isabel would walk to school every day on a path beaten through the corn fields.  Most everyone traveled on foot or by horse so it wasn’t uncommon to see young children take the 15 minute trek to school by themselves.  She has an older brother and sister that walked with her when they attended the same school.  At school, her aunt was a teacher.  She recalled that her aunt taught the youngest students dances for special occasions and they performed for their parents.  She remembers liking school, even if it wasn’t always easy or the teachers weren’t always kind.

Despite the beauty and love in her hometown, it was also wrought with poverty, hunger, and painful memories.  The public elementary school was tuition-free but secondary schools were not, so most people lacked an education beyond sixth grade.  But if their family was particularly poor, children would stop attending elementary school to help the family.  Isabel’s dad had a third grade education and had spent most of his life doing the back-breaking work of a farmhand.  In her town, the next meal was rarely guaranteed and many people spent their day searching for sources of money or food, usually both.  Education was a luxury for the rich.  So the children would leave school to help the family earn money and food.  They would sell what they could.  Someone who had a lemon tree on their land, for example, would pick the fruit to sell.  If they didn’t sell the fruit that day, the lemon would likely become their meal for the day.  Nothing edible was forsaken.  In a town where food was scarce, fear of death by starvation or robbery was high.

Isabel’s lip began to quiver and her eyes teared up.  She didn’t think she would get this emotional.  It was a long time ago.  I told her to take her time as I glanced away just long enough to notice both of her children had stopped in their tracks and were watching us.  They obviously don’t see their mother cry often and they were worried.  She pretended not to notice them as she wiped her eye and joked that she should have worn waterproof mascara.  She quickly gathered herself and told me how she often didn’t have enough food to eat.  No one in her family had enough food to eat.  She never asked for more at home because everyone was hungry.  She also knew there wasn’t anything more.  I imagine that her mother gave the children the largest portion of food and likely went hungry more often than not.  I imagine the emotional pain of watching your own children starve without the ability to comfort their aching stomachs and I began to hold back tears myself.  There was little relief from their hunger.  At school, lunch was not provided like it is in the United States.  Isabel often got her lunch by asking the street vendors next to her school for food.  She would reach her hand through the fence and the nice women would give her a little food to eat.  She never paid but she was always fed.

Long before Isabel was born, her dad received a U.S. work permit for farming.  With his third grade education and almost no possessions, he came to the United States in the early eighties.  He had a job as a migrant farm worker.  His high hopes were that it would provide enough money to take care of his wife and child in Mexico.  He hoped that hours bent over at the waist or crawling on his knees picking vegetables could dig them out of poverty.  His wages were beyond low and the cost of living was high but he sent every extra dollar back to his family.  Soon one child became three and more than a decade had passed with little improvement on their situation.

Isabel is the youngest child but like her siblings she didn’t see her father often.  Since he worked in the U.S., she would only see him for a few weeks out of every year.  And since his situation was not much better than theirs, they could only afford to speak over the phone once per month at a pre-arranged time.  On those days, Isabel would walk with her mother and siblings to a woman’s house who had a phone.  They would pay the woman to use her phone and would sit to wait for her dad’s call.  Meanwhile in the U.S., her dad would walk about 30 minutes to the phone he’d arranged to use.  She recalls how she didn’t know her father then.  He felt like a visitor or a distant relative.  Isabel’s father made many sacrifices for his family on the journey to a better life – a life they prayed didn’t include constant hunger.  Certainly, his greatest sacrifice was a close relationship with his children during their formative years.

Through persistence and hard work, Isabel’s dad eventually earned his permanent residency in America and left migrant farming for the more highly paid construction industry.  For more than 15 years, he had been working in America, sending his meager earnings back to his family and dreaming of bringing them all to the U.S.  After all that time and effort, after all of the sacrifice and pain, they hadn’t made much progress.  They were still hungry and poor.  They were still barely making it.  Isabel isn’t sure what sparked the next series of events.  Maybe her parents were tired of waiting, maybe their situation in Mexico had gotten worse, or maybe years of trying had turned into desperation.  Isabel was too young to know or understand completely.

In 1998, when most 10-year-olds in America were laughing at Eddie Murphy in Dr. Doolittle or marveling at the bravery of Mulan, Isabel was asked to brave the world without her parents.  Her father had saved just enough money to bring her mother and brother to the United States, illegally.  Her mother and 14-year-old brother made the journey across Mexico, met a “coyote” paid to bring them passage, and risked their lives crossing the river into the U.S.  Isabel tells me how she once asked her mom if she was scared.  She had crossed into the U.S. in one of the most dangerous ways possible.  Her mom told her she was not afraid for herself during this time.  Once they made their way safely into America, they both began full-time work.  I can only imagine the desperation that led Isabel’s parents to choose to leave her and her 16-year-old sister in Mexico by themselves.  I can only imagine that mom and brother left so they could make money faster because staying in Mexico much longer was not a viable option.  I can only imagine the trauma and fear that captivated Isabel at the time.

Isabel and her sister became closer than ever.  At 16 year’s old, her sister was hardly ready to take on the role of parent, but she wouldn’t let Isabel down.  Isabel still walked to school every day.  Her sister boarded the bus to the high school.  After school, they would meet up at their grandparents’ house.  Isabel’s grandparents were kind and giving.  They didn’t have much but they shared everything they had.  Isabel recalled how her grandparents already had several people living with them.  There simply wasn’t room for her and her sister, especially when they had a home of their own.  So, every day after school, she and her sister would meet at her grandparents’, share the meager dinner with the household, and head home after dark.  Since vehicle transportation was scarce and much of their way was on beaten paths, the town was void of street lights.  Isabel was afraid every night when they walked home.  Walking in the dark through the corn fields with only the moon to light their way was scary enough.  Some nights, they’d hear strange noises, footsteps, or the clank of horse shoes on the ground.  It could have been their imagination.  Or it could have been someone following them.  They never saw anyone.  But the entire town knew they were alone.  Everyone knew they walked by themselves, they slept by themselves, and they woke by themselves.  Everyone knew they were vulnerable.  One night after they’d made it home safely, Isabel and her sister heard the metal clank of the fence that encompassed their yard.  They had a few sheep in the yard with hay to feed them.  The noise didn’t sound like sheep at the fence at all.  It sounded like someone attempting to open the gate.  Terrified, her sister grabbed dad’s rifle.  He used to hunt rabbits for dinner when he was home.  That had been the only use for the rifle prior to then.  But that night, Isabel’s sister took the rifle and her sister and locked themselves in one of the bedrooms.  They crouched low and huddled together.  Her sister told her that if someone opened the door, she would shoot.  She wouldn’t wait.  So they sat there, huddled together, gun pointed at the door for the better part of an hour while they listened to the noises outside.  The next morning they couldn’t tell if anything was missing.  Maybe a sheep had been taken.  Maybe some hay, another limited commodity in their small town.  But they never stayed alone again.  Isabel’s uncle would come every night and stay with the girls until morning.

After that incident, it seemed even more urgent that the family be united in the United States.  As her parents looked for a way, Isabel and her sister worked for ways to get more food and money.  Working in America, her parents could send more money but they still lacked basic needs.  So, on Saturdays, they would spend all day helping her grandmother make masa.  They would spend the entire day shucking corn, boiling the cobs, cutting kernels off, and grinding them into powder to make the corn flour used to make tortillas.  Then on Sundays, they would travel to a large town about 40 minutes away.  This town was larger with more money.  They had a bus station and a hospital.  It was the place where people went to spend money – or to make money.  So Isabel, her sister, and her grandmother would travel to the town, set up a street booth, and make fresh tortillas to sell at what we would call a farmer’s market.  At the end of the day, her grandmother would buy them a gallon of milk or other small luxury food to take home with them.  The rest of the weekend’s earnings would go toward feeding the family for the week.  Even then, Isabel was in awe of how her grandparents made sure everyone was taken care of.  They may have had little, but they made sure everyone had a share.

Soon, her dad had a solution – at least for one of them.  He’d made friends with an American who had a daughter Isabel’s age.  The man offered to pretend that Isabel was his own daughter to get her across the border.  So her dad paid his friend several hundred dollars to travel to Mexico with his wife and son and return with Isabel posing as his daughter, Mary.  For months, Isabel memorized Mary’s life.  She learned her place of birth, friend’s names, family’s names, teacher’s names.  Isabel memorized the girl’s address, phone number, and school name.  When the fateful day came, Isabel would have almost 24 hours to become a part of this new family.  She had to become Mary.  She couldn’t seem like a stranger.  She had to play, joke, and fight with the boy like he was her brother.  She had to engage with the parents like they were her mom and dad.  And she had to pretend she knew more than 11 English words.  She was told to follow her “mom” wherever she went…to nod when she heard the name Mary and never to speak.  When they finally got to the border, they were subjected to a random search.  The “family” was pulled out of the car while the vehicle was searched.  Isabel was terrified but unlike much of the last year, she wasn’t afraid for her life.  She was afraid of being caught.  For Isabel, being in America meant bright lights, a comfortable home, a full stomach, and most of all – her parents.  She imagined how her life would be perfect when she reached America.  Her images of the U.S. were the ones you might see in a Better Homes and Garden magazine.  Isabel was anxious to come to America.  Any fear she had was overcome by her courage.  Her bravery had already been forged by her daily walks to school, her daily search for food, and the year she’d just spent without her parents.  Becoming someone else and crossing the border to a better life took far less bravery than everything else she’d already endured.

Sometime after crossing the border safely, Isabel met up with her dad somewhere she can’t remember.  It was a long drive to her new home.  She doesn’t remember much.  She can’t remember what her and her dad talked about.  She can’t remember if they spoke at all.  She only remembers being anxious to see her new home.  When her father told her they’d made it, they were pulling into an apartment building.  She was confused.  Her new home was supposed to be better than Mexico.  They were supposed to be making more money.  When he opened the door to the apartment, she immediately hugged her mother and brother.  And then it hit her.  As she glanced around the apartment, they had no furniture.  There was no couch, no table, no beds.  They were sleeping on a mattress made of a few layers of blankets.  They were still in poverty.  A great sadness overcame her, though she would never say anything to her family of it.  They had sacrificed so much to get her here.  Surely, they had to know more than she did.  Surely, her dreams couldn’t be out of reach.

The next day, she boarded the school bus for the first time.  She stepped into a middle school for the first time (enrolled as herself, though it would take years to forget Mary).  She ate a free school lunch for the first time.  And though she spoke no English, she could excel in one class where the language is universal – math.

A few years later, her dad turned his legal permanent residency into a citizenship and was able secure Isabel’s citizenship as well.  Eventually her sister made it to the U.S. to join them.  And everyone earned their citizenship, though some had a more difficult road than others.  Isabel married her high school sweetheart.  He, however, didn’t have his citizenship.  Like Isabel, he’d been brought to the U.S. illegally when he was a child.  Though Isabel was a citizen, for years they feared that if they sought his citizenship, he would be deported.  Soon, the newlyweds turned into parents of two.  They had a small home they owned and a car they shared.  Isabel had a good job but her husband was the breadwinner as a manager at a fast food restaurant.  When Isabel’s youngest child was just a toddler, her husband’s employer found out that he wasn’t working legally and he was fired.  They sought the advice of an immigration lawyer and her husband had to return to Mexico.  Even though he hadn’t lived in Mexico since he was a young child, had no place to work or live, he had to move back to the country his family had escaped from years earlier.  They didn’t know how long it would be.

Soon, Isabel found herself behind on her mortgage, behind on her electricity, standing in line at the food bank each week.  She had a good job, worked in a corporate office, but her situation left her again in fear.  Her family helped her with childcare but couldn’t help beyond that.  She applied for need-based grants to help get through this short time but was denied since her husband had been an undocumented immigrant.  But just when she felt her American dream might be lost, her prayers were answered.  Someone aware of her situation, but who remained anonymous, began leaving her money every so often with letters of encouragement.  She felt hope.  When a careless driver rear-ended her one evening totaling her car, she received enough money to buy a cheap car and get caught up on some of her bills.  For nine months, Isabel managed to keep it together just well enough that they didn’t lose everything they’d worked so hard for.  And then they received word that her husband had been approved to come back to the United States.  She wants to make clear that this was not easy.  It required an inordinate amount of money and time.  It required multiple reference letters and pleas on his behalf.  And it required many prayers.

Up until this point, I’ve been so enthralled with Isabel’s story I haven’t noticed much else around us.  But the store is getting busier and an employee comes to tell us that they’ll be doing story time soon on the other side of the children’s section.  Isabel tells her children to join them for the reading of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.  As we return to our conversation, I notice the great song “Hallelujah” playing over the speakers.  It seemed the perfect time to ask Isabel what her dreams are now.  Isabel feels like she’s achieved her American dream.  Her dreams don’t include a bigger paycheck, a bigger house, or a nicer car (though all of those things would be nice, I’m sure).  Isabel’s dreams are much deeper than that.  She dreams of a way to repay all those people that helped her through the hard times on her journey.  She dreams of teaching her children good values and the love of God.  And she dreams of becoming a foster parent in the future.  She wants to show foster children that they are worthy of love, that they are important, and that they are not alone.  She tells me that God has guided every step of her path, that her journey was paved for a purpose, and that her future is in his will.  She shared her story with me so that she could inspire others.  She wants you to know that if you are struggling, there is always an opportunity to have a better life.  She wants you to remain hopeful and to put your faith in God to light your way.  And once you have found a good place, help others.  If you are not currently struggling on your journey, know that others are.  Their pain goes deeper than the surface.  After all, most people that know Isabel know nothing of the obstacles she’s overcome.  Find a way to help those around you.

You see, Isabel is a great American.  Her life may not have started in America, but her epic story was always the American story.  She went from reaching her tiny hand through the fence at school for food to sitting in a Barnes & Noble sipping on Starbucks coffee.  She went from sleeping on layers of blankets in a practically empty apartment to owning her own home and working for one of the largest companies in America.  She went from cowering in a bedroom with a rifle to dreaming of being a foster parent.  She went from standing in line at the food bank to finding ways to give back to her local community.  She takes nothing for granted and she loves her country.  Isabel’s story may be different than yours.  Like the path through the corn fields, her journey has been filled with twists and turns.  Sometimes the corn was too high to see what was just around the corner.  But her courage, her bravery, and certainly her resilience are qualities we should all admire.  This is Isabel’s thread.