Places on a Map

Tonight I walked out of the office and breathed in deep the smell of a clear warm night full of restaurant exhaust and car fumes. It is that smell, that city smell, and it transported me to a place on a map. It brought me to a house in a city where 99cent pizzas and sour watermelons were my manna and that smell permeated everything but the smell of my unwashed dishes; where my interests became action; where discussions on couches or in classrooms felt like changing the world because changing the world was at our fingertips; where love was budding and community was blooming and even exhaustion felt like hope and joy because of the people around me.

It's the same way that the smell of fresh baked sandwich bread instantly takes me to a place on a map with sparkling winters and smiling faces. A place on a map that is also a place in my heart, that to me is the warmth of sunlight and the safety of childhood. Where a crisp Sunday afternoon with a beer brat and the Packer game is perfection; where the hot chocolate and scarves and fire places make me feel almost as safe as the entire town of people who all seem to know my name.

And it's funny how these places on a map look no different to the wanderers passing through and marking them off their triptik or GPS. Each holds its own struggles and failures on the timeline of my story. But something about their scent brings only memories that are worth holding on to and brings them so vividly to the forefront of my mind...

I wonder what the scent of this place will bring when I someday travel away from this place.

Some days I feel selfish for wanting this.

What makes me so convinced that I am called to parent, that I do not just yearn as every barren woman through time has yearned?

In a world with starving children, homeless families, hurting people, what makes me entitled to something that costs more than the average person in the world makes in a year?

How do I have the audacity to spend my time coordinating fundraisers to fill the rooms in my home with children, when those same fundraisers are being held by other organizations to fill the bellies of starving children?

Lord help me to hear you and to never lose sight of your Kingdom, it's purposes, and it's call to take up my cross. Do not let my heart grow faint of your will and your work.

Summer Is Coming!