I pulled leftovers from the fridge. Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka—ages 23, 21, and 18—buzzed around the kitchen, rummaging in the cupboards for chips, plating lunch items, and heating up their selections in the microwave. They settled onto stools on one side of the kitchen island, and I sat opposite them. Husband, away on a work trip, didn’t know the lunchtime conversation he was about to miss. And neither did I.
I gazed across the island at my girls. “So, any interesting updates?” I said, scooping up guac with a tortilla chip. But the mood in the room anchored my breezy question.
“I think God’s calling me to go,” Flicka said, her eyes watery. She talked about the five hundred—the number of missionaries the pastor, years ago, envisioned sending—and how she might be one of them.
“Me too, I think,” Ricka said, her expression solemn. She had spent months counting the cost, money having nothing to do with it.
Names peppered my thoughts—Amy Carmichael, Gladys Aylward, Lillian Trasher—all single women called to move the world, one war, epidemic, orphanage, or impoverished nation at a time.
My heart drooped. But hadn’t I bounced my babies on my hip, praying God would spark fires in them for humanity? That He would capture their affections and spur them on to greater things? Now here they were, talking about the uttermost parts of the earth while I sat with my guacamole, sensing the start of a rip in my soul.
“I wanted us to live close to each other,” Dicka said, and I felt my third girl’s statement like it was my own.
“I always wanted a Brodleville too,” Flicka said, referring to the fictitious name for the two-block area where four of her grandma’s siblings lived in Riverton, Wyoming. “But I know it’s not for me.”
I broke from the fragile moment and strode toward the box of tissues, perched on the counter for island moments like these. I placed it in front of Flicka. She drew one out.
“I think of the cabin life, living near family, doing weekends together,” she said, dabbing her nose. “I always wanted that.”
Ricka’s eyes filled. I slid the tissue box over. “Same here.”
Send me, send me, I’ll go anywhere, I’ll go anywhere, the song lyrics floated through the house like they’d been curated for the moment. Dicka sniffed. Ricka slid the Kleenexes to her younger sister. I saw Amy Carmichael rescuing over a thousand children out of prostitution in India. Gladys Aylward leading one-hundred Chinese orphans over mountains to safety during a military invasion. And Lillian Trasher growing an orphanage in Egypt that also housed widows during World War II. The Kleenex box came to rest in front of me.
An extravagant Love. A complicated calling. The promise of trials. Two-thirds of my girls were leaving us at some time, going to some place, and into all the unknowns. Peace mingled with longing and found a home in my chest.
And the island held us.
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*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.