We Have A BIG Family!

It's now been three years and three months since Keith and I hit the road as he became a full-time traveling preacher (or circuit-preacher, as they were known in the olden days).  Really?!?  Thirty- nine months on the circuit?  Time flies when we're having fun!  After a recent three week extension out in California  I just enjoyed a few days at home "catching up" on things as I sent Keith and Pete on to Alabama to preach the word without me.  When I visited on Sunday at the Hendersonville Church (I say "visited" because even though our membership is still there we are gone more than we are there...not unlike a few of the other members :-} ) I was asked the question that I often hear:  Are y'all  still enjoying all this traveling?   For Keith the answer is always, "Yes!"  As long as he can be preaching  somewhere he's having a ball!  And Pete is quite a trooper as well.  And for the most part I'm still loving it too....but every now and then I think back to our wedding vows when I quoted  in an innocent, child-like 19-year- old voice from the book of Ruth,  "Wherever you go, I will go.  Wherever you lodge, I will lodge..." and I wonder if I REALLY knew what I was comitting to.  Yet after almost 35 years of marriage I still tell Keith, "I go where you go, amigo!"  And for the most part I do go and LOVE it.  I mean, what's not to love, getting to travel the country seeing God's creation, meeting wonderful people, eating countless pot-luck meals, hearing God's word preached almost every night of the week (he keeps me on the straight and narrow!)  Our grocery and utility bills have been drastically reduced since we're never home and we now spend ALL our time together 24/7 (which may be an advantage OR disadvantage).  But honestly sometimes I just crave to be sleeping in my own bed, enjoying the home that I spent over 30 years building, furnishing and maintaining.  I just want to stay home long enough to cook a nutritious meal and do a thorough Spring cleaning.  Keith laughs at this and finds it hard to believe but I really mean it and, truth to be told while Keith was born a rambling man, I was born to be a homemaker. It's what I've known and loved for most of my life...it's my comfort zone.  But I'm learning that I can also be comfortable in Alabama...or Arkansas...or  Kentucky...or Missouri...or Georgia...or Alaska...or California because home truly is wherever your family is.  And I'm not just talking about husband and children but my CHURCH family.  It's been amazing to me how many times we've pulled into a place not knowing a soul and left with a true connection to our new brothers and sisters and a reluctance to leave them.  We've discovered so many wonderful family members everywhere we go and our family just continues to grow!  And the amazing thing we've experienced is that wherever we go there is someone who knows someone else that we know and the connections just go on and on.  We recently enjoyed our "family reunion" (that's exactly what visiting different congregations feels like to me) in California.  Folks there get especially excited when they find out we're from THE SOUTH...and to them THE SOUTH is anywhere west of Colorado and south of Michigan.  They immediately start telling us of  Brother & Sister So & So that they know in THE SOUTH and would we tell them hello for them when we get back.  Last Sunday when I was conveying those greetings passed on to one of the members at Hendersonville he remarked, "It really is a small world, isn't it?"  And I replied, "No it's not a small world but  We have a BIG family!"