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I pull on my T-shirt manufactured in El Salvador, walk by a newspaper with a headline about Pakistan, stash some grapes from Chile in my purse for a snack and answer a call from my husband whose previous IT job was off-shored to India. As I look at the global interdependence in my life, it's definitely a Small World!

But at others times, my world as a mom seems very, very small: my home, my kid's sleep schedule (or lack thereof), my pile of laundry, my empty refrigerator, my family issues and my budget to balance. When my world as a mom closes in on me, nothing outside my four walls seems to matter.

However, when I lift my head up out of my very small world, I can imagine a mom in India doing laundry at the river, a mom in Rwanda wondering about the next glass of milk for her child or a mom in Afghanistan concerned about making her life in the home of a man she'd never met before they were married.

In my small world, I try to remember if recycling day is this Monday or next. Invariably I put the bin out on the wrong day! Then I remember some families live in the dump in Juarez, Mexico, and every day is recycling day as they eke out a living on what other people throw away.

I'm intentional about having a home that reflects for my children the Small World we inhabit in the 21st century. So we often enjoy dinner-table conversations with friends visiting from other countries. We keep a globe handy so we can see just where Myanmar is. We read e-mails from friends in Tokyo and decorate our walls with items from other cultures. In these ways, the Small World comes alive in our home.

While awareness of the outside world is important, so is acknowledging that our Small World's scarce resources are shared with billions of people. Our tiniest actions really do collectively create a large impact. So I turn down my thermostat another degree in the winter and sweat a bit without air-conditioning in the summer. I turn off the water a little sooner when rinsing dishes, leave the car home a couple of days a week, put the newspaper and excessive packing in the recycle bin and hope my actions positively impact a family somewhere else on our planet.

The words of the familiar song "It's a Small World" say, "It's a world of laughter, a world of tears, a world of hopes and a world of fears, there's so much that we share that it's time we're aware, it's a small world after all."

I'm not the center of the universe. My lifestyle of convenience and ease are not the most important values on the planet. The hopes and fears, the laughter and tears of other moms on other parts of the globe are equally important. The way I live in my small part of the world really does make a difference in the quality of life in their part of this Small World.

Carla Foote is editor of FullFill magazine and Director of Media for MOPS International. She and her husband have two children and live in Denver, Colorado, but maintain friendships around the world.

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