The summer of 1992, things were looking bright. I had my license in hand, soccer season was just around the corner, and the girl of my dreams just walked into my Sunday school class.

But everything changed one crisp fall afternoon as I crossed the threshold of our home, still sweaty from soccer practice and wearing my favorite "God's Gym" shirt. The front door shut with an ominous thud behind me. Certain sounds require no explanation. They strike a primal chord, like the howl of a mother wolf across a clear sky after losing a cub. The sobs escaping from our study were just such a sound. Time slowed to a halt while I waited to learn who had died.

My duffel bag fell to the mudroom floor as my right hand grabbed the door casing. Peering around the corner, I caught sight of my mother slumped in a heap in front of the desk. Her face was buried amidst folded arms, so only her dark chocolate hair was visible. A stripe of gray ran along her roots like a snow-covered highway at midnight. She had been fighting it back with dye since Suriname.

"It's so big; it's so big, just so big," she murmured between sobs.

Her body heaved and then fell. Wave after wave of tears came rolling out, emerging from a lifetime of untold pain. As I held her in my arms, our roles reversed like shifting magnetic poles. Mom needed someone to care for her.

The unraveling had started a few years earlier with bouts of uncontrollable crying, revealing hidden inner turmoil. Solitary drives home after dropping us off at school became her refuge, where she'd break down singing hymns like, "Draw me closer to thee, oh Lord, draw me closer." Her episodes soon infiltrated our Sunday services at our non-denominational Bible church, tears silently screaming her pain.

That fall day, in that embrace, a realization dawned on me: her journey to draw closer to God was also a path leading her to disclose hidden truths.

It was about carefully unspooling forty years of tightly wound pain... and the secrets that, like patient shadows, had been quietly shaping every corner of our lives.

What untold stories had she buried in these years of silence?

Wild stories emerged, of rebel leaders, government mind control programs, and secret societies. Some years later, while flipping through the pages of a weathered leather album tucked away in my parents' house to a snapshot that caught my eye. It's of my mother, standing somewhat apprehensively in downtown Paramaribo, the capital city of the tiny tropical country Suriname. A few years prior to the photo, our missionary family had escaped a civil war.

It was a candid moment captured by Dad. I remember hearing that he’d done it discreetly, snapping the photo from his hip to avoid arrest by the MPs for photographing military points of interest. You know how after someone cheats, their spouse questions every move? Well, I began starting at that picture, wondering what my dad was up to. Why would he take such a risk?

Our backyard was a tropical haven, hosting star fruit trees with their rubbery skin and kiwi-like flavor, and a meandering red-footed tortoise who nibbled on fallen banana leaves. But, it was the punk rock iguanas, though, with their spiky mohawks and matching soul patches, that stole the show, skittering by with their feet never touching the ground for too long (hot, hot, hot!).

Bouterse's high brick wall, topped with a menacing array of broken glass bottles, was a clear boundary—a mix of local Fernandes sodas, including the unnaturally yellow Super Pineapple and (my favorite) Cherry Bouquet, alongside imported Coke and 7 UP bottles, forming a colorful but dangerous crown.

One afternoon, Mom ran outside, wild-eyed with fear, and began whisper-shouting at me and my sister. We were perched atop our A-framed playhouse, trying to catch a glimpse over Bouterse's wall. I had extended my pocket telescope, hoping for a peek at the rumored black panther in a cage. Instead, the real show started when I panned to the right. There, two teenagers paced back and forth, cradling black Uzis, just like on 'Miami Vice.' How cool was that!

Across the street lived a missionary pilot named Mr. Rogers. My sister enjoyed playing with his daughter. It was a regular day when suddenly, the calm shattered—armed teenagers surrounded Mr. Rogers just as he was taking photos outside his house, no different than what my father had done. Their words, sharp and rapid in Sranan Tongo, sliced through the air. Even as a child, not fluent in this pidgin language, I could sense the gravity in their tones. Sranan Tongo, with its undertones of English, Dutch, and African dialects, was like an angry jazz riff, a vocal embodiment of Suriname's tangled history.

Their accusations against Mr. Rogers, something about unlawful pictures of Bouterse’s house, were clear in their hostility. In moments, the scene escalated. Army green Mercedes swarmed in and—poof—Mr. Rogers vanished into them. They hauled him off to the bowels of Zeelandia—a moated pentagon-shaped fortress constructed of red brick standing sentry at a bend of the muddy Suriname River.

In 1986, a civil war erupted in Suriname, led by an enigmatic rapper, soccer player, and former Bouterse bodyguard known locally as "the Black Robin Hood." It was amidst this chaos that we left—though 'fled' might be a more apt description. We exchanged the enchanting yet bewildering tropics of Suriname for the safety of a different realm—an American "Land of Ahs," where the prairies of Kansas stretched endlessly. My father had secured a position at a small Christian school in the suburbs of Kansas City, presenting a stark contrast to the vibrant chaos we had known. Initially, it seemed we had escaped unscathed, but slowly, the facade began to crumble.

I was determined to figure out what other secrets my parents were not telling me. Was my mom telling the truth? Were we really the good guys, or was there more going on in the mission field than I'd come to believe? The answer would take me thirty years to uncover—and what I discovered was far bigger than even my mother's wild stories had imagined.

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