If I'd known you weren't coming to dinner...

I definitely wouldn't have made this enormous roast.
The past couple of months have been a state of limbo. Our paterfamilias, KP, took a new job as a consultant - a traveling consultant. Waiting for his first commission, KP geared up for this new fragmented life. We waited for the news of his first assignment. It came, and it was local. The luck of the draw! We began adjusting to life with KP at home. Not just home. Working from home.
Then start of this week, I'm minding my own business, running errands while the kids are in preschool, and my beloved phones. "I got a new assignment," he says. "I fly tonight."
All I can think is, what about the roast in the Crockpot? Who's going to eat all that meat?
He packs, he leaves, and I'm setting a table for three. Our girls, aged 3 and 1, are mostly oblivious to the change. But I feel like I've experienced whiplash of the heart. I instantly miss my husband with an intensity I didn't see coming. Probably because when I said my prayers Monday morning they didn't include asking that he have a safe flight before we even sat down to dinner.
Five years ago, I could not have imagined this life. I had just returned from a mission trip halfway around the world. I had a promising career. I was the adventurer, the dreamer, the doer. Then AP came along, and turned my world upside down. I looked into that sweet little face, and gave my heart away. I knew in my bones that my place was with her. Meanwhile, KP's career took off. Now here we are.

I keep imagining KP as a modern-day explorer. Which leaves me as the wife pacing the widow’s walk, waiting for some sign of his ship on the horizon. I didn't see myself as the one to stay behind, tending the hearth, children tugging on my apron strings while I cook dinner. Yet somehow in that imagery, the roast I put on Monday morning fits.
You never know where you’re going to be sent. As I learned in my Bible study yesterday morning, God calls each one of us to an extraordinary life. But, like David the shepherd before us, that doesn’t mean we leave the field we’re in. David was anointed to be king, yet his trade was tending sheep. He didn’t leave that call until it was time. The time in the field is what prepared him for everything to come.

I am now the person by the hearth. I am the rock in my family's lives. I know my new role is to keep a light on for them. To do my best to keep it lit so they can always find their way home.
This is my adventure.