God is good?

“I was scared and lost heart, but when I collected my head I realized I wasn’t dead.” My life has been full of complaints lately. I injured something that wraps around my ribcage making it nigh impossible to do anything without painful grunting. Complain. I incurred the injury by ineffectively wrestling Jett to both stay […]

A girl and her dog

I couldn’t find her anywhere. All the doors leading to potential danger were firmly closed so I wasn’t panicking, but the house is small. There are only so many places she could be and she wasn’t in any of them. Suddenly, as I scoured the kitchen and living room with a quick eye, I heard […]

Practice does not make perfect

For three weeks now I’ve been experiencing one of the hazards of being a stay-at-home mom: terrible neighbors. One would think in a country like PNG there would be no chance of having neighbors with a garage band that has zero self-awareness. One would think. Sadly, our neighbors do have a garage band made up […]

These agonizing choices

The walls of the buildings are colorful, the grass is a rich green, and the playground looks out onto the moody ocean and a street lined with coconut palms. The international school looks pleasant enough from the outside, but is ultimately an unknown. Just one more unknown in the mountain of unknowns looming in our […]

Returning with class

We’ve traded white and yellow cockatoos for leathery fruit bats, air conditioning for the occasional sea breeze, indoor church for outdoor church, restaurants for home cooking, and suitcases for closets. There are certain aspects of Cairns we sorely miss, and I briefly adorn my “going south hat” when I see the morning and evening flights […]