It’s all about the journey. At least that’s what we’ve been told. Is it though? Anyone who’s bounced between continents, countries, or even cities may testify that sometimes we just want to get there. Move from point A to point B. Skip the hard stuff, the demands of packing and nausea and opportunities … Continue reading The Tyranny of Transition: How to Stay Awake for the Journey

Noticing unique differences in children is challenging for most parents. It’s common for parents to wonder if a behavior is just quirky or if there’s more to what they’re seeing, asking themselves, “Is this normal? Or not?”  For example, having a child with food or texture avoidance can be just a normal part of being …

We didn’t have words for TCK loss back then. Not when I left Cameroon at nineteen and stepped onto U.S. soil as a stranger to my own country. But just because there weren’t words doesn’t mean the ache of loss didn’t burrow deep. Nineteen and newly repatriated felt like drowning in a sea of people who looked like me and talked like me but didn’t know the red-earth-Africa that shaped me. 

On my first day as a missionary, while riding from the airport to my new home in the obscurities of East Africa, I suddenly had this overwhelming sense—“What have I gotten myself into?!” Full-blown panic attacks always make me want to run. But in this case I did not run. I did not say anything. I rode in silence, deeply troubled but unable to explain why. 

I pedaled as fast as I could with one hand on the handlebars and the other raised in a fist, yelling in Albanian, “You destroyer of beauty! You destroyer of beauty!” I had just watched a driver throw garbage out of his car window, and my bottled rage exploded – a vivid memory from 15 years ago of culture shock squirting out badly.