Deployment Dinner Project Update: On the Road at the Fire Hall

posted on : April 12, 2015 posted by : reccewife 0 Comment

Here in my house, pity parties are not allowed to last the night.

Sure,
it’s okay sometimes to sit with your glass of wine and your bag ‘o
chocolate and moan because you’re doing it on your own again, or because
you’re little family won’t be complete at Christmas, or because not one
child will have dad home for their birthday this year…..

but then you pick your bloated, wine filled ass off that couch and you pull yourself together.

Life
moves on. And sometimes pulling yourself together just involves enough
energy for yoga pants and wiping the grime from the toilet before
someone thinks there’s a frat house using your bathroom.

But it’s still progress.

In my house, we move forward because experience has taught me nothing gets better if you’re waiting for the ideal moment to try.

So last fall when Dh left I decided we wouldn’t be sitting on our butt waiting for
community to magically appear and make this 4th deployment easier.

We were going to make community.

Inspired by Sarah Smiley and her book, we started our Invitations Deployment Project.

Each Sunday, we invite someone new for dinner.

Each Sunday, we have a new chance to expand our community.

Tonight’s dinner was on the road.

It was getting harder to book things when our house is on the market, and so we decided to go somewhere that we knew we couldn’t get them to come to us: the firehall!

After a few emails they agreed to let the crazy lady and her kids bring ham dinner over, and so after cleaning up for a showing and leaving the place smelling like the ham I had in the slow cooker, we packed it all up, dishes and everything and went down the street to Station 10!

Today, I was bringing 2 kids and a ninja turtle.

I never really know who I’ll have with me….

We were greeted at the door and immediately, they all tried to cook for me. You could tell these were guys that were used to caring for themselves! But I convinced them to sit and let us serve, and we had ham and potatoes and corn and lemon mirangue pie.

We sat with them in their kitchen and we talked about their jobs. About how many times they were working instead of being with family over special days. We talked about the stress but also how much the loved it, and there was some friendly rivaly with the police since Monster was proudly sporting his Kingston Police Hat!

After supper the kids were given a tour of the trucks and we were just wrapping up when the call came in. We watched the trucks leave, then headed back to our place, showing complete and a new heart for our local fire and rescue!

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