P.A.D.S.

No Diet Pepsi yesterday! Yay! Maybe making a public commitment to not drink it will be the key to success.

No workout this morning. Today was a P.A.D.S. morning. That’s Public Action to Deliver Shelter a mobile overnight shelter for homeless people in DuPage County, Illinois. My church, the DuPage Unitarian Universalist Church (DUUC), is responsible for running P.A.D.S the fourth Wednesday night/Thursday morning of each month. DUUC is not equipped to host 40 people overnight, so we do this at the First Congregational Church in downtown Naperville. P.A.D.S involves preparing and serving a hot dinner for 40 people, providing overnight accommodations, preparing and serving a hot breakfast and preparing and handing out bagged lunches. We also have to provide people to monitor the overnight shifts while guests sleep. With 40 people in a rather small space, it is possible that things might go wrong. It is usually uneventful, but monitoring is still important. Being the early bird that I am, I prefer to go in for the breakfast and/or clean up on Thursday mornings. At 6:00 am, the lights are turned on and breakfast is served. As the guests wake up, we strip their sleeping pads and wipe all the pads down with a weak bleach solution. Most of the pillows are also encased in plastic and those are wiped down too. All tables and chairs are put away, the floor is swept and the bathrooms and showers are cleaned. My husband is our church coordinator and he and another man clean the bathrooms. I appreciate that.

What surprises me is that I find that I’m more tired from doing P.A.D.S cleanup than my workouts. What is up with that? I sleep a little longer and do less work but I feel exhausted all day. I’m starting to think it is bleach fumes… just kidding.

It is a shame that P.A.D.S has to operate. There really is no place else for someone in suburbia, who is homeless, to go. I don’t mind helping out and it reminds me of how much I’ve been given. I was born into a family that had means, valued education and taught me responsibility. When you think about it, not too many people on this planet are that lucky.

So tomorrow is another running day. I really look forward to my running days now. They are no longer torture but a joy. I have a long way to go, but I am getting there.
What are you joyful about?