Bremerton Foodline

Posted by Monica Bernhard

A woman came into our agency a couple of weeks ago…in her 40’s…married and mother of two…and in tears. “I’ve tried everything”, she said. “I’m a college graduate…I can’t find a job…I’ll do anything. My husband works, but it takes three weeks of his income just to pay the rent. I know we came in for a basket a couple of weeks ago, but we have no food…We’re so hungry”. Here was a woman, willing to work and unable to find anything …struggling to get by and feed her family. To each and every one of you in this room, I say: This is why we are here.

How do you continue to hope, when everything in life says quit? In a world with increasing poverty, unemployment, homelessness, looming recessions and hungry children, it would be very easy to be cynical…to cast blame on the politicians of either party…to assume that things will never change. But deep down inside, we are all here because we are a people of hope…we want to help…we recognize our blessings and want to share that with others. We have a need to know that lives improve…that kids are safe, that there is enough housing, enough food, and most importantly enough love to go around. Even when there isn’t. For me, my inspiration comes from the people we serve. Day in and day out, they inspire me to hope…they inspire me to believe in the strength of the human spirit….they inspire me to get up and show up one more day and try again. But there are days, believe you me, when coming back in and trying again is not easy.

How do you continue to hope, when everything in life says quit? A man in his 60’s came into my office and told me that he had tried to end his life. …several times. “What was the point?, No one cares about me. I have no one. I am so lonely.” But I knew he did not want to die…he just wanted what we all want…someone to love…someone who cared if he came back at the end of the day. So he comes down to the Bremerton Foodline…sometimes for food, sometimes for a smile…but mostly, I believe, because he knows that we care…and when he is feeling a bit unsteady, we help him restore his sense of hope.

How do you continue to hope, when everything in life says quit? A woman in her late 40’s, diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and undergoing round after round of chemotherapy and radiation, stops by and asks me an agonizing question… “Monica, what have I done wrong? Why is God punishing me? I’ve tried to be a good person, I don’t want to die….I don’t want to die.” We sit for a while…holding each others hands…I remind her that we are all standing with her. After a hug, DeMorris takes her back for a few bags of fresh produce.…and she sees a few friendly faces.. Linda became one of my dearest friends at the agency She died from complications from breast cancer a few weeks ago.

How do you continue to hope? Continue to hope when your electricity bill is $40 in the middle of winter because you never turn the heat on? Continue to hope when you have to turn to your kid’s piggybank in order to get $7.88 in gas money to get to the doctor? Continue to hope when you pay off one garnishment and are faced with surmounting medical bills. Continue to hope no one has funds to help pay the rent and you are facing eviction with young children. The answer to that is I don’t know…I don’t know how some folks can get up day after day after day, when everything in their life says quit. But they do it…they do it. They do it, because they “Dare to hope”. They dare to hope because the alternative is giving up.

There is a risk in choosing to hope. It is far easier to live life bitter…to be cynical. After all, what if things never get better? Why continue to believe when time after time, our dreams are dashed. Martin Luther King said, “If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all.”

In my role, it’s easy to be discouraged…in fact, I am not sure how I could do this…face this day in and day out if I did not live from a stance of hope. Hope is not some idealistic dream divorced from reality…hope is the lifeblood of life itself. Hope is grounded in the deep sense that life is good…that good things do happen…that people are worthy of our time and love. We must believe…continue to believe.. even when the world throws reasons at us to quit. We must hold on to our compassion …we must hold onto the promise of hope.

When I first started working at the Bremerton Foodline, I was filled with a sense of untested hope-filled idealism. I knew I had little experience in facing head on the struggles that so many face first hand, living with poverty. I believed the best in people…I chose to trust them…to look beyond and through their stories. Because deep down inside, I knew that good things will happen…people will be helped…problems will be solved.

It took two months before that would be truly tested…two months before I realized that for so many, hope isn’t about wishful thinking or blind idealism. One day in December of 2006, I was approached by two women. The first woman, a single mother of five kids ranging from five to 18 including a child with special needs, was facing imminent eviction. She asked…pleaded…if there was anything we could do to help? Coming up with $50 or a $100 might have been possible, but she needed close to $800 to cover back rent…and that kinds of money was no where to be found. The second woman, was also a single mother or two young children. She was going back to school to train as a nursing assistant, but was completely out of money. She had missed several days of work when her youngest child got sick…now she faced a prospect of losing her job and only source of income, as well as her home. Just days before Christmas, both woman faced eviction…with children…and no where to turn. I called around and connected the second woman with one of our board members who worked with her landlord to extend her terms, and thankfully she was able to remain in her home. There were no such options for the first woman and days before Christmas, all of her belongings were cleared out of her apartment and left next to the sidewalk. A tale of two woman…one we helped stay in her home for Christmas and the other was on the streets.

I was devastated…what happened to my idealism…my belief that good things happen? It took me a while and a great many tears before I realized that it was not about me. Each of us do what we can, day in and day out…but at the same time, the individuals we serve bring their lives, with all their complexity…and challenges that are not ours to solve. We can only do our part…To offer up what is ours to give. Food, where families are hungry…compassion where there is pain and suffering…and hope when there is despair.

As staff and volunteers, we realize that food is just part of the hunger that many people face. So many also carry a hunger for love…a hunger for healing of traumas from their past …a hunger for friendship….a hunger for validation…a hunger for peace for once in their life…a hunger for hope. They hunger for someone to see the tragedy of what happened to them a lifetime ago and tell them it was wrong. They hunger for someone to believe in their possibilities even when they can’t. They hunger for someone to hear their story and find the beauty in it…see the hand of God in their journey …hold it all and say yes.

Several weeks ago, a woman I see often stopped by in the morning before work. She is a drug-addict and a new grandmother, and in spite of all the darkness she faces day in and day out, she lights up when I ask about her grandchild. As she left…I got up to give her a hug. She stopped me and said, you don’t want to hug me…I’m so dirty, I’ve been going through dumpsters, I’m filthy. Of course I want to hug you…of course I do.

That is what we all do here at the Bremerton Foodline. Whether you are working in the repacking room, the front desk, running orders, stocking shelves, donating funds, working in the warehouse…we are all about offering hope. Susan, our office manager, offers hope with each food stamps application, with each story she listens to…Tim, our driver, offers hope with each barrel of food, each rack of bread, each bin of produce that he picks up…and Rachel, our supervisor, offers hope with each volunteer she mentors, each client she serves, each shelve she stocks with food.

Albert Einstein once said, “there are only two ways to live your life: One as if nothing is a miracle, the other is as if everything is. “ My friends, you are part of the miracle that I know as the Bremerton Foodline. If you sit here today, then you have seen first hand the struggle that so many people face in our community…you see how some succeed, while others fail. You see how some try and pick them selves up again and again, and wonder how you would do if you were in the same circumstances.

Our mission at the Bremerton Foodline is to serve people who are hungry in our community. And since the beginning of this year, we have served more than 11,000 food boxes to families in need. To those in the repackaging room…that’s a lot of rice! Perhaps just as important as our mission to serve food is our unspoken mission to be bearers of hope. So I challenge each and everyone one of us right now: Let us be people who dare to be hurt, Dare to be disappointed…Dare to be wrong…Let us also be a people who dare to believe in the people we serve…dare to love those who stand beside us. …dare to have faith in the goodness of life. Let us Dare to Hope!

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