Making A Difference

1:24 am Sunday morning....

You would think that I'd have enough sense to go to bed after a long day but no....

What a crazy day....and what a great day for Sean.

And, what a great day to be Sean's mom.

We're in the final weeks of school, final weeks of extracurricular activities...  Thus, it's a concert here, a field trip there....always a bump in the road around every corner.  The schedule changes are tough on everyone but likely affect Sean the most.

Even these past few weekends have had their must-do's and this one was no exception. 

Today (or shall I say "yesterday"?) Sean had to perform some community service hours with the Boy Scouts.  We signed up for the entire 3-hour commitment.

I had never stocked a food pantry before, let alone know that one was less than a mile from my house.  I've seen food banks on reality shows and other programs but knew almost nothing about which we were to dedicate our Saturday afternoon to.

Sean accepted the idea of going when we told him it was time to get ready.  He even tried to scold me when I said I'd be ready in five minutes and wasn't....

I knew little going into the project other than we were going to unload and sort what the local postal carriers had picked up in a food drive...that's it.

When we walked into a not-so-large room filled with roughly twenty people and a dozen or so tables, I was not in the most positive frames of mind.

Chaos... even the controlled chaos that it was.... was still chaos.

And I knew Sean wouldn't be able to handle it.

We tried sorting for the first shipment but things went too quickly - even for me.

While waiting for the next load to arrive, I pulled Sean out into the hallway and asked someone what jobs there were to do today.  One of them was unloading the trucks and putting the boxes of food onto carts.

Sean jumped at the chance and I thought it was a perfect fit.  It was outside, away from the chaos.  He could take breaks in between shipments.  And, Sean really loves doing anything physical - labor included!

For the rest of the afternoon I simply let him be.  I concentrated on my task.  He concentrated on his.  Somewhere along the way I asked one of the gentlemen how Sean was doing.  He said that Sean was doing wonderfully...jumping into the truck and hauling out the boxes of food - an estimated over 2 tons worth.

It rained most of the time we were there.  Sean was soaked but he only asked what time it was once.

He never complained.  He did his job.

And, today....Sean....my son... made a difference.  

It was a great day indeed.