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 month 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. So we set out.  A few rules we made: 1. Our Sunday dinner guests might be people we know, but they had to be new to our table.  We have great friends.  These had to be new friends. 2. Our Sunday meals needed to be drama free.  I promised to make something all would eat (which is a feat in a house with 2 picky eaters and an autistic child with Selective Eating Disorder) but in return, all had to agree to put it in their mouths. 3. Our Sunday best went on the table.  Whether we had a young…