The Disappearing Act

 I think I sort of…disappeared. 

 At least, I ended up on the other side of the planet. In all my childhood whims of living in the wilderness or having a dozen children or starting an orphanage or joining the persecuted church and becoming a martyr, somehow marrying an Australian and migrating to Brisbane never came to mind. 

 Between December 25th, 2023, and December 25th, 2024, I managed to get engaged, celebrate two wedding ceremonies on two different continents, and move my entire life to Australia. Even for someone who moved about a dozen times as a kid, including to Austria, that was a lot. 

 Now, I often live day by day as if everything is normal—being married, having a job, living in a rental. It’s in moments of missing my family or feeling too easily overwhelmed or having anxiety about being in groups of people or trying to fill out a permanent residency visa that I remember the massive amount of change I’ve been through this year. I feel like a transplanted seedling, struggling to reestablish roots in new soil, to be truly “normal” again, let alone to grow fruit. 

 Don’t get me wrong; I love my life. I love the man God gave me to be my best friend forever. I love the continual green plants and glorious blue waves of the ocean in this new land I find myself in. I love our sassy calico cat that meows a little hello to me when I say her name. 

 “Your life sounds amazing,” my friend from Austria told me. 

 It is. My life is amazing. That’s not bragging; that’s the goodness of God. But amazing doesn’t always mean easy. 

 This year, I’ve spent a bit too much time in bed trying to gather the strength to do life, wrestled with anxiety that kept me home instead of socializing, hidden in the church restroom too many times, and missed my family so deeply that it felt like no one else understood me. 

 I’ve been hiding. From the world. From myself. 

 I say I want friendship but avoid people. I say I want to be creative but push creativity to the side. I say I want to be known but don’t make myself known. And I’m intimidated by what’s lurking below the surface of my thoughts and experiences. 

 But anything that is exposed becomes light.l (See Ephesians 5:13-14). So I want to expose it. I want to be creative. So I’ll share my creativity. I want to be known. So here I am—with all my chaos and imagination and stress and beauty and stories about working through life or growing as a creative or trying to survive an Australian spider the size of my palm showing up on New Year’s Eve (no joke. It was terrifying.)

 Manna. Translated literally: “What is it?” It was God’s provision of bread from Heaven for the Israelites in the wilderness. I’m looking at my life now, the various aspects of it, and I see manna. I’m trying to piece together what it all is, but I believe God is in all of it, through all of it, and that in Him all of it holds together (see Colossians 1:16-17). So I want to find Him in it. 

 So I guess…this is for me. This is for you. And this is for God. 

Manna: the scribblings of a world-traveling, homeschooled, missionary-raised, newlywed, artistic, musical, storytelling Jesus-freak.