Fog in the Valley

By Carla Foote

It was foggy one morning this week and I realized that fog is a soothing, familiar blanket for me. Fog is rare in Denver, where I live now, but it was common in my childhood in Washington State.

As I drove to work in the fog, I noticed that the low-lying places had more fog than the hills. There was a sensation of descending into the fog. And I realized that I had grown up sensing this reality — that fog obscures the details of life — but the larger structures are still visible, even through a dim and altered vision.

The valley moments of life can feel like a fog has descended. The edges are blurred and there is a quiet that muffles. But even in these valley moments, some of the essential structures and landmarks of life are discernible. Even if we cannot see the details, the shape of home is evident. We see the outlines of trees, giving context and dimension to what we know to be true about ourselves and the world God created.

Living through the valley moments, when the fog has descended, focuses us on the essentials. Lots of small details don’t matter when we are in the fog of grief or fear. In those seasons, as we listen for a sound to direct us, our senses are focused and rather than being distracted by many things, we listen for the one thing.

In a curious way, as fog obscures our vision and softens the edges of landmarks in our life, there is greater vision and perspective that comes with knowing that we are focused only on what matters and that the rest of the concerns of life have been pushed aside. If our valley is walking through grief, then a million small details of life that mattered to us when we weren’t in the valley seem irrelevant.

I remember a season of grief when a 10-year-old friend died tragically. We were in the middle of remodeling home and adding another bathroom. The contractor said I had to pick out tile that week to stay on schedule. I told him I didn’t care what tile we had in the bathroom, I couldn’t pick out tile when I was only vaguely aware of the contours of home and faith and God in the midst of the fog in my valley. The tile in the bathroom didn’t matter, but helping my son walk through the death of his friend mattered most. That was the only outline I could discern in the fog. I had been in the fog of grief before, but my son had not, and taking this walk through the fog together was essential.

Now, more than a decade later, there is plain white tile in the bathroom, because that was the easiest decision to make when it really didn’t matter to me at all. But now that the fog of that season has lifted, I can see that my son did walk intact through that valley. Ten years later, when another friend of his died unexpectedly and tragically, he had markers of faith and family and friendships to walk him through the fog.

Carla Foote is Director of Communications at MOPS International (www.MOPS.org). She and her husband have two children in college. Outside of work, Carla enjoys time spent gardening, because it is good for her soul. Her garden blog is www.urbangardenver.wordpress.com.

2010 is the year I hope to ...

by Karen Booker Schelhaas

... invest in the friends that I don't have to clean house for -- a good indicator that I feel loved enough to show them my mess, and that they're strong enough to sit in it. It's good to have friends who love you pretty or ugly.

... teach and discipline my children without shaming them. It's too bad they can't be perfect like their mother... hmmmm... long way to go on this one, wretch that I am. Glad John Newton and I have one little thing in common -- both self-described wretches, desperately in need of grace. If only I could write a lovely song...

... exercise even when I don't feel like it, knowing that discipline is something children catch rather than hear. And physical discipline spills over in to so many other areas.

... call my 95-year-old great aunt more frequently, because she has stories from her years serving God in Africa that have the potential to change my life and the way I live it.

... drop my issues with my appearance once and for all (the scars, the acne, the muffin top, the cellulite, the miniature raisins that were once my breasts, the non-shiny thyroid diseased hair, etc), and focus instead on having a heart that looks beautiful to God. No more wasted minutes on things gravity and aging will make me surrender anyway.

... learn from my mother's wisdom instead of fighting her over it. After all, she's usually, if not always, right.

... respect my husband in front of our kids by keeping my mouth shut most of the time (it is most often seen open, and gapingly so). Somebody recently told me that the difference between a good marriage and a great marriage are the two or three things you don't say every day. True.

... dance more, and in a way that completely embarrasses (yet delights) my children and adds years to my life. Perhaps it will jiggle off some of the above body issues. Wait, I'm not thinking about those any more.

... let go of the past instead of dragging it with me, like an ugly elephant, in to my present. No one likes to look at an elephant, really, at least not in the zoo that is my life most days. Elephants serve no purpose other than to sit there, and look big and ugly. Really. Enough with taking up too much space with my junk. I am even tired of looking at it.

... study and ponder what real freedom feels like -- and resolutely silence those voices in my head that snicker at what I know is true in my spirit. Shut up already.

... quit obsessively washing my car. It just doesn't matter in the greater scheme of life whether or not my car is clean, and having five children makes it nearly impossible anyway. My neighbors think I have a Windex problem, and I'm not even Greek.

... cook with ingredients that nourish my family and remind us that real food is art, created by God. It's meant to bless us, not make us fat. We pray that God will bless food to our bodies -- not dimple our thighs with it. Time to throw out the grey garbage, and eat colorful portions that satisfy, not stupefy.

... listen to my friends. Not listen in the way that I sometimes do, figuring out how their current topic relates back to my life and how I can snag something from it, and then shooting it back to them with a cute spin and sometimes a curtsy. But instead, choosing to be filled by my friend's joys and struggles, waiting for God to prompt me, or not. Quiet listeners are a gift to all people.

... ponder my baby's decade in heaven, and how God's grace has helped me purposely share my pain time and time again. Pain hogged all to oneself seems wasteful.

... invest in a make-the-Griswalds-proud amount of icicle lights to finally oblige my children's Christmas desire to have OUR house be the one people drive to see... in 10 years, I won't have anyone left to care about that. The time for gaudy, cluttered gutters and lawns is NOW.

... judge less. I remember watching a woman with a screaming child at Disney World, the happiest place on earth, and forgetting about all the times I've been the one with the shrieking child on the airplane that nobody can calm down. 45 minutes in to the Disney World screamfest, I said something snide about the poor woman's parenting abilities. My sister-in-law just looked out the window, her head shaking side to side and said "no judgment, no judgment..." I have never forgotten her perfectly executed words about that stranger in distress... nothing but love, people. Nothing but love.

Quite the list. I heard a sermon recently, though, that exhorted me to invite the power of God in to my life, just as David so majestically described it in the Psalms, and to start by laying down my own abilities. I usually get that equation backwards. My feeble attempt to tackle this list can certainly be made perfect through His power. It is power available to me to do and be all of the above, as He wills for me to do and be it. This is a resolution I can get behind, inviting this power in, and it's one that's full of God, and less of me. Always a good thing.

Something BIG

By Elisa Morgan

I wanted something BIG to do.

After twenty years as CEO of an international parachurch – day in day out leading a ministry that swept me under the wake of its growth more than once – I found a welcoming slowing and then gradually…a restless inertia.

Okay, I transitioned a print magazine to digital delivery. I forged real relationships with virtual co-workers. I paid bills and licked stamps and walked envelopes to my curbside mailbox. The budding ministry was – just that: budding but not yet in full bloom.

I had time on my hands.

Mercy, you say, really? Give me some! Who has TIME on their hands?

I did.

Not really hours or days or even big 30 minute slots. I still traveled to various speaking engagements, kept up with a zillion emails, picked up my 5 ½ year old grandson at kindergarten and squished Play Doh into snakes and pasta and meatballs on my kitchen island. I did the laundry and cleaned out files and met friends for mentoring – both for them and for me.

But there was something missing inside me. And every time I peered into the hollow hole to investigate it further – you know to like say “GOD WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO CALL ME NEXT AND JUST EXACTLY WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO DO IT?” I’d get a still, small voice response along the lines of “Chill, Elisa.”

Chill. Right.

I wanted something BIG to do.

I couldn’t rush the growth of FullFill™. Relationships take time. There was only so much money to invest in the next issue. Women can only read online for so long.

I couldn’t push the purchase of my new book, She Did What She Could. It was, afterall, a book focused on doing the next thing, not everything.

I couldn’t even hire myself. I didn’t have enough seed money.

So I listened to an urge that had begun to grow more loudly each month. It had first appeared last spring when I was caring for my adult son’s 90 pound Rottweiler, Darla. Yep. 90 pounds. (I weigh about 110. Shut up – it’s genetic. I take no credit whatsoever.)

Now before I go any further, I need to let you know that I didn’t even like dogs. Anyone could tell you that. Dogs bite me. I don’t know why but they always have and still do.

But in a motherly moment when I agreed to help out my adult son, Darla came to live with my husband, Evan and I for several months. She wolfed down dogfood in our laundry room and pranced around our area rug covered hardwood floor in her pink leather collar. She put her head under my elbow and nudged me to pet her as I typed on my keyboard. She slept in a crate in our bedroom. After a few weeks I’d wake to the sound of my middle aged husband cooing “Good Girl” through the wires of her crate in the morning, releasing her to stretch and yawn and then cajoling her to stillness while he fastened her “jewelry” in place. He was besotted.

Every day – in my new work wardrobe of pajamas or workout clothes, I’d eye the clock and arrange my phone appointments until it was mid-afternoon where Darla would magically appear and I’d know it was time to head out for our walk in the wild behind our house. When we hit the grass, I’d let her off leash and watch with a strange contentment as she ran, free and happy.

One late afternoon as I returned I was focused on my life – or lack of one – and my eyes scanned only the ground beneath the feet. I looked up just at the last second to see two ENORMOUS Akitas hurtling toward me – off leash. There was no human companion in sight. On her Gentle Leader, Darla froze. So did I. Did I mention I never liked dogs? That they bite me?

In seconds, the attack Akitas pounced on Darla. I railed up like a giant grizzly and howled - screamed - yelled for them to GET OFF! One bit my leg before heading for the bushes. Stunned and shaken, Darla and I turned to each other and examined our wounds. We were both bleeding, but okay and limped home where we nuzzled each other like two siblings of the same species.

About a month later when it was time for Darla to return to my son, it was hard to let her go. She had brought something meaningful and distracting and joyful and purposeful and BIG into my days. Her absence tore a new hole into my life.

A few weeks ago I completed my fall speaking schedule and looked at the yawning weeks of home work – back at my computer and decided – I needed something BIG to do. Knowing that God was not yet calling me to the next spot of ministry but rather to continue in the work where he had placed me for this season, I went hunting. I came home with a Rottie Wannabe. I named him Wilson because his favorite thing in life, besides me, is a tennis ball. He’s three years old, a Rottie/Lab Mix, and weighs about 75 pounds. He’s BIG enough.

And as life would have it, three weeks after Wilson became mine, Darla returned for another extended stay. So now we have two crates. Two harnesses. Two leashes. And if you see me out in the wild, you’ll see me happily being pulled along sans sled by two black and tan giants that look and act NOTHING like Akitas. (No offense to any Akita fans…)

That’s BIG times two. BIG squared. BIG on steroids. Uber-BIG. Ah,,,aint it grande?

Holding Patterns

By Nicole Unice

“Folks, we’ve got a bit of a situation.” The pilot’s voice rose above the static of the radio and the drone of the plane. I jiggled my son on my knees and shook a toy in his general direction, straining to hear over the flush of the airplane toilet. “Air traffic control is having some congestion problems, so we’re going into a holding pattern over Chicago. Sit tight and I’ll update you shortly.”

Uh-oh. Holding Pattern?

I had been a mother for less than two years. I didn’t feel qualified to travel anywhere with my toddler son, much less entertain him for an undetermined period. Our little family was folded into the last row of seats in the plane, nestled between a large businessman and the back wall of the bathroom. My diaper bag, usually full of enough stuff to outfit a preschool: depleted. My energy level: low. My hope that we would survive: zero.

Like this plane trip, holding patterns often sneak up on me. And life is full of them. Motherhood, relationships, and ministry can all bring times of holding patterns. They are times of waiting, with undetermined outcomes and nebulous timelines. A holding pattern may be days, or years, long.

I hate them. But I can’t avoid them, especially since I’m trying to have God lead my life.

Holding patterns can be miserable or manageable, depending on focus. I am sixteen months into a holding pattern, which at times has been excruciatingly painful for a go-getter like me. But somewhere in the pain, I know there is good. Here’s a few things I’ve realized in the process:

Holding Patterns Reveal Character.
Both pretty and ugly, holding patterns reveal who I really am. I went into our plane trip optimistic, buoyed by my unflagging energy level and attitude. But mothering has since taught me that energy eventually runs out and attitude always goes south, and then I’ve got nothing.

It’s easy enough to feel faithful to God when swimming in blessings. True character reveals itself when prayers seem unanswered and God seems far. By nature, I tend to be optimistic and adventurous. My current holding pattern has uncovered a fearful and anxious part of me that I usually escape through work and achievement. As much as it hurts, seeing my self as I really am has softened my heart for receiving God’s grace.

Holding Patterns Stretch Patience.
James 1:3 says the testing of our faith produces endurance. The definition of perseverance in the Bible is a “patient enduring”. The holding pattern on the plane and in my life reveals a much different kind of enduring. Rather than patient, I tend to be a moody sojourner. I endure, but not patiently.

When trapped in 37B, I tended to hold it all together for a few minutes, then rapidly cycle into sighing, crying, and needing reassurance from my husband that “YES, we will one day get off this plane….” That kind of patience isn’t the kind talked about in the bible, because it’s the patience that I try to conjure up from my naturally impatient personality. The kind of patience that can endure trials and holding patterns of all kinds is the one that God grants me, through a fingertip-clinging to the truth that He is always faithful. Even when I don’t understand it or can’t see beyond the airplane seat in front of me, He is also good. So I cling, repeating His promises like a cheerleader to myself. It helps.

Holding Patterns Test Trust.
My current holding pattern has left me yearning for stories of God’s faithfulness. In scripture, in my history, and in the lives of my friends, I delight in hearing about God coming through in the end. It gives me hope to know that He has not forgotten me. Sometimes in the space between awake and asleep, I sense God asking me, “Do you trust me?” I say with my whole heart, “I want to trust you. Help me to trust you more.”

A part of me knows that this holding pattern is part of a great story, even if I’m in the section when all hope seems lost. My independent faith is never enough in a holding pattern. Only with God’s patient and consistent reminders am I able to sustain trust in his plan.

Survive or Thrive?
I have two choices in holding patterns. I can survive, emerging weak and weary on the other side. Or I choose to thrive. I can cling to the truth of who God is. He is faithful. He uses holding patterns to build faith. He loves me. He has good for me. I have an opportunity to patiently endure, to cling to the hope that I have in Him, and to go two, twenty, or two-hundred times a day to rest in his presence and choose to be OK with holding patterns.

My husband and I laugh about our Chicago trip. Our secret weapon turned out to be a bag of candy I stuffed into my diaper bag. For almost two hours, my curious toddler unwrapped each lollipop, licked it, and then wrapped it back up. He delighted the passengers around us, who were happy to be entertained. He took the moment and relished it. I want to be like him. I want to find the fun in the holding pattern, take hold of the moment, and let God take care of the rest.

I know my current test of faith will eventually end. But until then, I’m holding on to the memory of a chubby-cheeked toddler and a bag of Dum-Dums, and looking forward to the things I’ll learn from the great holding pattern of ‘09.

Home as Spa

By Mary Beth Lagerborg

I don’t suppose you think of your home as a spa. But then your spa-thoughts probably run toward the fluffy bathrobe, ice water with a floating lemon slice, and that Enya-esk music. But on this week after Christmas, when the chaos of a holiday season can leave us longing for some peace, your home as a spa could be the perfect thought.

Your home is a spa – it needs to be – if you think about it. When I think of my home as a spa I’m thinking about eating a couple of chocolate chip cookies (plus any broken ones in the jar) when I get home, pouring a glass of iced tea topped off with cranberry juice, and slipping on my jogging pants, a sweatshirt and slippers. Then I’m comfy and I can best relax. I shed stress with my heels and binding clothes.

We all need home to be a place where we can let down, rest, be accepted, go without make-up, and wear the really old sweats. Because home is where we refuel, so that we can make a difference outside its walls day after day.

It doesn’t really matter how large or small our home is, or how nice our stuff is. Because home as spa looks different for each of us, and is a matter of making the most of our resources, whatever these may be.

Granted, the concept is complicated because generally other people live in our homes too. And they each want home to be their spa. And they have different ideas of what home as spa looks like. But taking this all into consideration, how to we maximize our home as spa?

• Recognize the home as spa needs of each family member, and give room for them. Give thought to how each family member likes to rest and to play at home, and mentally “give them permission” as much as possible.
• Think about how you use the spaces in your home, and purposely create spaces for play – like with a game table or craft supplies – and places to rest, like with comfy throws. Lighting can make a big difference in creating a playful or a restful space.
• Create your own “away space,” even if it’s a favorite chair in the corner of your bedroom.
• Identify the times and places at home where you feel most energized, and capitalize on those. For me, that would be taking a shower or a long, hot bubble bath. Inevitably that hot water releases my best ideas and solutions to vexing problems. So I try not to have to shower too quickly in the morning.
• Create some oases of beauty in your home, because beauty is restorative. When our three sons were young, we had what I call two pretty rooms: the living room and the master bedroom. These were the only two rooms with “good” furniture, and I tried to keep the bed made and these two rooms picked up. No matter how chaotic the rest of the house sounded and felt, I knew I could step into either of these and experience some order and peace. I could take a deep breath.

We have great adventures ahead outside the walls of our home. So I figure it’s a good investment of my time and my thought, to make the best of my home as spa.

Mary Beth Lagerborg is co-author of Once-A-Month Cooking Family Favorites, the ultimate do-ahead dinner technique, and eight other books including Dwelling: Living Fully from the Space You Call Home. She is former Publishing Manager at MOPS International (Mothers of Preschoolers), and writes and speaks on topics related to creating the well-lived home. Find her online at www.dwellingspace.com and www.once-a-monthcooking.com.

Mary and Minute Rice

By Jonalyn Grace Fincher

I've been identifying with Mary lately, pregnant with a firstborn son, experiencing the inconvenience of travel in my 7^th month.

In modern terms Mary's journey to Bethlehem would be tantamount to my husband and I flying stand-by to Alaska for tax registration a week before my due date. The kicker-- there's no room in any inn, so I’d have to give birth in the janitor closet of a Motel Six.

If that was what God had in store I'd wonder, "Couldn't you, the Maker of all things, orchestrate the arrival of your Son a little more majestically?"

Mary got one dream from the angel Gabriel explaining this Holy-Spirit-produced baby in her body. Joseph got at least three dreams, explaining where to move, when to leave, how to find safety and what God was up to. I think I would have felt a little gypped, but Mary didn't.

How did she do it?

How did Mary have the strength to bear the Son of God and the serenity to respond to Gabriel's shocker of a newsflash with, "I am the Lord's servant, may it be to me according to your word"? (Luke 1:38).

Mary was not just a teenage woman pregnant outside of marriage. She was a Jewish woman who knew the God of Israel.

Mary’s serenity came from a relationship few of us tap today.

Around Christmas time, I notice women running around with lists of things to do. Minute Rice put together an advertisement in 2008 that summed up the way we often feel around the holidays. Surrounding a package of Minute Rice with a Santa Hat are hundreds of things we try to get done.

get decorations out of the attic
write annual holiday letter and try to sounds modest while bragging about the kids
drop off food at church
hang candy canes
try not to eat candy canes
clean house
keep tinsel away from cat
shop online during lunch hour
drive around and look at lights
plan menu for Christmas Eve
have patience when visiting in-laws
read "Night Before Christmas" out loud
attend candlelight service with family
remember reason for the season
pray for peace on earth.

That last item on the list makes me stop and wonder, "How can you pray for peace when peace is an afterthought?”

Can I recommend another to-do list, one that I imagine Mary relied on as she awaited the birth of Immanuel?

Micah 6:8
"He has shown all you people what is good. What does the LORD require of you?
To act justly
to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God."

What would it look like if we acted with justice, loved mercy and walked humbly with our God this Christmas? Would there be more peace on earth?

Let me unpack the first item.

Even though I'm a fan of the work for justice and social equality for others, one way I see women refusing to act justly is in the manner in which we make time for ourselves. Women are perhaps the worst at taking a day off, of honoring the Jewish law of the Sabbath. We do not treat ourselves with justice.

When Jesus says, "Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:33), we don’t know what he means. How can we love ourselves? There’s just no time, have you seen how much we have to get done today?!

We do not let God love us one day of the week so we can love others the other six.

I don't think Mary had this problem. If Mary had a Minute Rice list, she scrapped it so she could make time to process the reality that the Son of God was going to enter her life.

As soon as Mary found out she was pregnant, she took a retreat. Not for a weekend or even a week, but for three months. She spent this time with her cousin Elizabeth. I'm sure they cried and talked and grieved and laughed together. I imagine Mary did a lot of processing.

One thing is certain, after her time away, resting and thinking, Mary sings a song that has gone down in history as Mary's Magnificat--a testimony to Mary's experience with the God of Israel (read it in Luke 1:46-55). It seems likely to me that Mary's time of rest provided the margin for something like the Magnificant to bubble out of her.

If we want the serenity Mary had, we must begin to take time to do justice to ourselves by accepting God's gift of rest.

Open the present marked out for you to relax. Like Mary, let the God of Israel bring you peace on this earth. Invite him in with this simple prayer at the beginning of your day off, “Jesus, I receive your peace.”

He does a better job than Minute Rice!

Jonalyn Grace Fincher is a female apologist and co-founder of Soulation (www.soulation.org), a non-profit dedicated to helping others become more appropriately human. From their home in the Rocky Mountains, she and her husband, Dale, work as a national speaking/writing team. Jonalyn’s first book, Ruby Slippers: How the Soul of a Woman Brings Her Home (Zondervan, 2007) uses her M.A. in Philosophy (Talbot School of Theology) as well as her degrees in English and History (University of Virginia) to delve into the woman’s soul. She is joining forces with her husband for their second book Coffee Shop Conversations: Making the Most of Spiritual Small Talk (Zondervan, 2010) on how to share your faith in a post-Christian culture. For Jonalyn’s ongoing musings visit her blog at www.jonalynfincher.com. After long days behind her laptop Jonalyn loves snowshoeing with her husband or curling up with her three corgis and watching re-runs of The Office.

HERstory: Jennifer Grant

By Jennifer Grant

In her book Dangerous Surrender: What Happens When You Say Yes to God, Kay Warren tells the story of how she became an advocate for people affected by poverty and HIV/AIDS. As you probably know, Warren is the wife of Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in California. And, for years, Kay Warren felt that her gifts were overlooked while her husband was ever in the spotlight. But, ultimately, she found her calling.

Warren writes,

“…I’ve found that discovering God’s will often resembles looking at an undeveloped Polaroid photograph. When the camera spits out the picture, the images are gray and shapeless, but the longer you look at the picture, the clearer it becomes.”

After I read those sentences, I laid Warren’s book down in my lap and let the words sink in. A fuzzy Polaroid picture – Warren so precisely put words to the moment I’m in.

I’m 42 and I’m in transition. After 13 ½ years of full-time motherhood, my four children spend their days in school, and my life has freed up a bit. New opportunities are opening up to me as a writer and recently I’ve had the privilege to cover stories I care deeply about. From a young age, I witnessed what life is like for people in some of the world’s most resource-poor settings and now my imagination is stretching its legs a bit, restless to find what is next for me, and how I can make a difference in this world.

A few shapes and colors started to emerge from my blurry Polaroid picture on a recent trip to New York City. The trip was a homecoming of sorts. Although I’ve lived most of my life in Wheaton, IL, my husband and I lived in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn for several years before moving “back home” to start our family. I still miss my Brooklyn neighborhood: the Farmer’s Market at Grand Army Plaza, Lime Rickeys at Tom’s Diner, letting my dog off the leash in Prospect Park, street fairs, the West Indian Carnival, and the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island. It didn’t wear off for me, the novelty of it all.

And there was something else about my recent trip that felt like a homecoming: I spent my days there immersed in conversations about HIV, about cultural practices in Africa, and about how best to empower women. My job, pre-motherhood, was with The Population Council, a non-profit health organization with headquarters in Manhattan. My years there educated me about HIV, female genital mutilation, and gender-based violence. Like Warren, I sometimes held my fingers over my eyes as I looked at photographs or read reports at my desk. I was, as she aptly puts it, “ruined for life.”

Warren writes that on her first two trips to Africa, she encountered a reality she could barely reconcile with her life in Orange County. Warren encourages her readers to be “seriously disturbed and gloriously ruined” as we learn how “the least among us” live in so much of the world – whether the person is dying of AIDS in rural Africa, lies forgotten in a nursing home in Wheaton, IL, or is a child whose promise goes unseen in a ravaged urban neighborhood.

So last week, I attended the 5th Annual World AIDS Day prayer breakfast, hosted by World Vision. I met with advocates for those affected by AIDS in the organization’s New York offices. I was introduced to the work of Golf Fore Africa and World Bicycle Relief. I was inspired by World Vision’s multi-faceted humanitarian programs.

Before working at The Population Council, I’d already been spoiled for life, if not ruined. My parents traveled extensively when I was young. My mother was a college professor and writer; my dad, among other things, an independent filmmaker whose work included making promotional films for organizations such as Compassion International. We traveled to Africa, to Latin America, to Eastern Europe, to southeast Asia.

As a young girl, I remember the sensation of sitting on a plane, secretly wondering where it was we were off to this time. These trips afforded me the chance to see firsthand the contrast between people in some of the world’s most resource-poor settings and my family with our big split level house, our cupboards stocked with food, and our closets full of clothes and toys. We weren’t wealthy by Wheaton standards, but I knew we were rich.

That travel also injected me with a lifelong case of wanderlust. Volcanoes and lush forests in Quito, Ecuador. Spirit houses and ornate shrines in Bangkok. Mist coming off of Victoria Falls. Is the afternoon I spent playing with kids in a dusty yard outside of their orphanage in South America somehow related to the adoption of my daughter, born 30 years later in Guatemala? I don’t know.

Now, with older children, I give more time to my writing. I have the chance to hear women’s health advocates make innovative plans to improve the lives of families around the globe, and I wonder…what is the work I should do? The picture is blurry and I’m waiting for it to come clear. Waiting is hard - as a culture, we quickly dispensed of those old Polaroid cameras when One Hour photo booths began popping up in parking lots and, later, when the little screens on the back of our digital cameras gave us immediate gratification after we clicked the shutter.

But, this Advent, that is just what I’m doing. Waiting. Waiting for the image to develop. Walking forward with faith, giving that blurry image a shake, tentatively entering what feels like a new part of my life. God knows what awaits me there.

Jennifer Grant is a journalist and mother of four who writes for the Chicago Tribune Find her online at www.jennifercgrant.com.

Other website's Jennifer recommends: (http://www.golfforeafrica.org/), World Bicycle Relief, (http://www.worldbicyclerelief.org/), World Vision (http://www.worldvision.org/), Kay Warren (http://www.kaywarren.com/pages/), The Population Council (http://www.popcouncil.org/)