Lyndsey

Hi Everyone! I’m Lyndsey Carpenter and I am a guest blogger for Lesley Delivers. We went out last night with Sarah DiGiaimo as a co-leader. There will be other people taking leadership roles, such as co-leader or blogging, as Lesley Delivers grows. But now on to the good stuff! We had 15 people come out with us tonight for the first sandwich run of the semester! That’s such a great turn out considering that a lot of people are already swamped with work.
Once we got into Harvard Square we began to realize one thing – we weren’t seeing many people. In fact, we ended up with a few bagged dinners left after the run was over. During the debrief we discussed this with mixed feelings. It is mostly a good thing to have food left over because we can only hope this means that the people on the streets have found safe places to stay. There is an underlying worry about not being able to reach everyone, people who go unseen to the passerby. But we have to remember that we are doing a great thing by going out each night that we do. We cannot do everything, but if we can make the night more comfortable for one person, it’s worth it.

While doing a loop around the square again, we saw a man who we had given a dinner to earlier. He was eating his sandwich, and this made us feel good about what we were doing. Another moment that created a warm feeling within us was when we passed by a place where we had left a few dinners and noticed that they were gone. We can only hope that they were being used and enjoyed.

In our discussion after the run, we gained a new insight on what we are doing from a participant. She said that the people we may come in contact with “may have homes, but may still be hungry.” This reminded us that not only are we fighting homelessness, we are fighting hunger on its own. We also talked and gain a new perspective on homelessness and shelters. A participant talked about how sometimes one would have to go from shelter to shelter looking for a bed, and that is oftentimes detrimental to getting back on your feet. She said, “You can’t move on with your life when you’re looking for a bed.”
It is hard to do, but I want to ask you to think about one thing. What if. Yes, the dreaded “what if”. What if the bed you are sitting in, or thinking about retiring to, was no longer there? What if you had to go find a place and wait for your name to be drawn to know if you had a comfortable, safe place to rest? Could you do it? Some people don’t have the luxury of answering that question. Some people just have to do it. It takes energy to think about it, but it takes much more strength and courage to live it.