When I was ten years old, I lived as a missionary kid in India. One day, my parents gave me a set of skinny charcoal sticks, and i tore off the wrappers and rolled them between my fingers, mesmerized by the soft, black dust that fell to the floor. That summer, I filled my notebook with sketches of the foreign world around me: village women carrying clay pots on their heads, mango trees soaked in monsoon rain, and the wooden porch where I played jacks with my sisters. I used art to understand. 

I carried art with me through another thirteen countries. Smeared creamy pastels on a page to process the jungles of the Philippines. Dropped thick globs of black acrylic onto paper to grapple with trafficked children in Ecuador, AIDS orphans in Ethiopia, slums in Hong Kong.

It is now the way i’m processing america in 2026. the grief and rage, the children alone in court, the mother whose nursing baby is torn from her arms. Where is the Lord in all of this? Where is the church? I would be entirely disillusioned, except…

in every turn, I keep finding Christ. I find that there is a God who moves towards our suffering instead of away from it. Through linoleum and ink and word, let me show you what I mean: