Our little joey

This coming January we'll be heading south to Cairns, Australia (pronounced "cans") to welcome our beautiful second born into the world! I'm feeling all the same emotions I felt when we found out about Ray, just muted a bit. I stay mentally and physically tapped out keeping Ray alive, so it's not until the end of the day that I turn my thoughts (and anxieties) fully to Baby Garbo.

Which brings me to our nickname. Almost all pregnant women know about the online sites that send you a weekly update saying, "Your blessing of life is now the size of a kumquat!" to which you inevitably reply, "What the heck is a kumquat?!?" I'm not sure why they don't pick blueberries or apples or lima beans, but every email we got during Ray's months inside involved a quick trip to Google images to see exactly what foreign produce they were comparing my offspring to. When we added Baby #2 to our chosen website, we received the first of the emails. To our great relief they compared our tiny one to a garbanzo bean. Hey! I know what that is and have actually eaten it. Multiple times! So Brian started referring to Baby as Garbo. It's growing on me. Slowly.

Ray's completely rational reaction to the news.

Our child's citizenship has been the most common follow-up question to our news. Although we would love to give Ray fodder in future fights - something along the lines of "you're not even the same nationality as the rest of us" - it doesn't work that way. Just because Baby Garbo will be born in Australia does not automatically make him... or her... an Australian citizen. Just like giving him... or her... the gift of Australian citizenship wouldn't automatically give him... or her... a coveted Australian accent. So if we can't ultimately give our child the gift of an Australian accent, why have the baby in Australia instead of near family in America? Lots of reasons.

1) Getting to Cairns involves two flights. A one hour flight to Port Moresby followed by another one hour flight to Cairns. Done and done. Getting to the States involves at least four flights, one of them being as long as 16 hours. 34 weeks pregnant with a toddler? I don't think so. 

2) The expense of the flights is night and day. We'll be paying a tenth of the almost $10,000 it would take to get the whole family to the States and back again. No brainer.

3) The medical care in Australia is excellent. It's also significantly less expensive than comparable care in the States. We'll be paying thousands of dollars less to bring Baby Garbo into the world by choosing Australia.

4) We have two different insurance rates: overseas and stateside. If we go home our monthly premium will double. If we stay on this side of the world we get to keep our lower overseas rate.

5) "Our home" is now Madang. Just like most of my mom peers in the States, my nesting instinct is fully functional. Unlike most of my mom peers in the States, I can't leave my home when I go into labor, have the beautiful bundle in the hospital, and come back to my home a day or two later where I settle my two children into a comfortable routine. Instead we'll be living in a beautiful, but very unfamiliar city out of our suitcases. I'm going to want to get my family back to Madang and our home as soon as possible. We can mitigate how much time we spend away from our home by going to Australia where we know no one. However, if we spent the money to go all the way back to the States we would stay longer to reconnect with people. In order to stay healthy as a family, our plan is to be in and out in 3 months (mostly limited by the length of our medical visas).

6) Along those same lines, Brian will be working remotely while we're Down Under. He'll be more than ready to get back to PNG where executing his work will be easier.

7) Ray gets to see koalas.

8) Ray gets to see kangaroos.

9) Ray gets to see wombats.

10) Brian and I get to eat Bikkie Magnum Bars, the most amazing ice cream bar created. And it's only sold in Australia.

Many, many, many American missionaries living in PNG have gone before us to have children in Cairns. We're already connected to a doctor that will handle the birth and he's highly experienced in helping missionaries in PNG through this process. My parents are coming to Cairns to visit around the due date (hopefully it will be timed well), blessing us with family time. Then we look forward to seeing Brian's parents later next year in PNG. Though it's devastating to us that we can't share this with our loved ones, going to Australia for this momentous event is the right thing for our little family.

Swallowed by a fish

What was it like to be in the belly of a fish? I've wondered that ever since I was old enough to comprehend the story of Jonah, and I still wonder. The reality of it is simply gross. There must have been slime and stench. And what did he live on for those days? Did he sleep in the middle of the organ where gushes of stomach juice were churning around him? Or was his back propped against belly muscle? Did he even sleep at all? What about food and water? Going to the bathroom? Despite my many questions (and there's more) I have no trouble believing this story actually happened; I don't believe it's just a parable or tale. There are many major and minor stories in the Bible I have not the slightest ability to explain scientifically, but I'm not the type of person that cares so much. I'm okay not knowing and simply trusting that He did it. Somehow.

We read Bible stories to Ray each night out of a book that has wonderfully disproportionate pictures and one of the stories is about Jonah. Along with long toes and tiny eyes, the people in these books are colored oddly and are sometimes faceless. Sometimes toeless too. As he's reading, Brian never fails to add adjectives to the narrative where he deems appropriate. "And Jesus laid his hands on the orange children" or "the previously five-fingered but now four-fingered man got off his donkey" or (my personal favorite) "the permed angel from the 1980s came to Mary." I grew up on these books and never noticed the uniqueness of the pictures until Brian started adding their weirdness to the storyline. They are strange.

Some of the creative artistry in Ray's books. This is the story of blind Bartimaeus.

So in these books Jonah is swallowed by a prototypical cartoon whale. Not a whale that actually exists in real life, but the kind of whale always used to depict the benevolent monster that swallowed Jonah. This nonexistent creature looks to be a mix between a blue whale, a humpback, and a sperm: giant square head, blue body, striped white belly. It's just the thing for swallowing men whole, but it doesn't actually exist. So what swallowed Jonah and what in the world was it like to live that? 

Whenever I dwell on the story I put myself in Jonah's place. I'm fairly certain I would have perished inside the fish the first day, nevermind being stuck in there for three days. But Jonah didn't. He made other mistakes, and many of them, but he didn't doubt God's presence when he was lounging in digestive liquid. I habitually doubt that the circumstances I find myself in are actually strange solutions provided by God, rather than another notch in the "things going wrong" belt. In Ray's book they end each story with a lesson. For Jonah's story, the wrap-up lesson is that God knew just what Jonah needed and provided it. Really? He needed to get swallowed by a huge fish?? But in looking at the small glimpse we're given of Jonah and his personality I think, "If ever there was a guy that needed to be swallowed by a fish, it's Jonah!" God is consistently giving us what we need, but I often miss it for what I think is a justifiable pity party in the face of "bad" circumstances.

Last night the power went out. This is always frustrating, no matter what time of day or night. When it happens at night, we know as soon as it goes out that if it doesn't come back on within 30 minutes Ray will wake up screaming. Then she fights going back to sleep once the power does finally return. It's a long, sleep-depriving process that doesn't go over well at 3 in the morning. A few months ago I switched the kind of malaria prophylaxis I take. The new pill brings with it lots of vivid, unpleasant dreams. Last night I had a series of about five dreams that were disturbing enough to keep me from getting quality sleep. The power went out three different times; each time allowed me an opportunity to escape the dreams and collect myself. Ray only woke up once, just to cry out briefly; a small baby curse to the electric company's powers that be and then back to sleep. I'm still tired today, but who knows how many other disturbing dreams I would have endured had my sleep not been interrupted by the still darkness? Normally I would choose to place both of those events, the power outages and the dreams, into the same bad category and simply say it was a bad night. Jonah must have thought that both the storm and the fish were equally unfortunate at some point in his experience. But eventually he chose to see them as God's provision for his true needs. I hate power outages, but perhaps last night they were just the fish to swallow me.