Months ago, when the only thing I had planned at the end of March was attending the wedding of two close friends, before we were going to be moving to another state, I volunteered to coordinate a “Food Fair.” In both Houston and Atlanta, I have volunteered with food pantries and it has always been a deeply moving experience. It reminds me, on my hardest days, of exactly how much I have to be thankful for. However, it is very difficult for many food pantries to stock fresh fruits and vegetables and other perishables, like milk. The health and safety standards associated with these items are beyond the reach of many smaller pantries. Houston Food Bank’s response to this need is a “Food Fair” where the food bank delivers 10 to 20 pallets of fresh produce to a location with the intent that it will all be distributed in one day. It’s a huge undertaking once you consider getting the word out to people in need, coordinating volunteers to run the event, and finding a place to hold it.
After so many months of planning, I was sick with worry by Friday night. What if no one came? What if the truck was late? What if we didn’t have enough volunteers? What if it rained? (We had only a very loose contingency for this because we didn’t have an indoor venue that would ever have been big enough.) What if we ran out of food before serving everyone that came?
I’m sure I’d worry just as much if I had it all to do again, amazingly, it all went off so smoothly that I spent all of Saturday wandering asking volunteers what I could do. After months of planning, the big day came, and I had little to do besides stand back and watch in wonder. At this point, this whole post may sound disgustingly self-congratulatory, but that really isn’t my intent. However, the back story was needed for the real purpose of this post.
On my umpteenth trip around our “fair ground,” I paused to look around and just watch everything in motion. In that moment, despite all my worries about other things going on in our lives, there was nowhere else that I could imagine wanting to be. I was surrounded by a group of amazing volunteers who all were willing to give up their Saturdays to direct traffic, to cart heavy food around, and to stand on street corners holding signs and directing traffic. I moved around asking people if they wanted a break and was turned down time after time. No one wanted to stop, even for lunch. Despite the heat and, occasionally, the rain, everyone was willing and happy to keep going and it was one of the most amazing, humbling things I have seen. And that was totally worth everything that led up to that moment.
