I just recently started cooking at a homeless shelter.  My shifts are long and the meals are huge- and I'm trying to learn how to do it all.

The best part about it is working alongside the residents in the shelter. They are my "prep cooks"- we work as a kitchen staff together.  I am in the learning stage of all of this- learning how to measure out enough food for 200 people, learning how to handle giant equipment and when to ask for help.  I'm learning what it means to wake up early..and to be exhausted and satisfied when the day is over.  My hopes are to incorporate more creativity into the meals I am serving as I continue to get the hang of what I'm doing. The residents that I work with are upbeat and joyful- and they humble me and make me wonder why at times I am without joy myself.  When I have no reason to be in a somber mood- why do I choose to be? Even the people who have every reason to be negative and hopeless- it's strange how over the past week they have been the most hopeful.  I guess that at times we get comfortable in our "pits" or in the places where we "wallow"- in places of feeling discontent and forgetting to be thankful. 

Why am I not just as joyful as the residents I work with? I am not only learning about cooking in bulk, but on how circumstances should never affect your attitude in life.  These people living in the shelter are thankful and happy in ways that I wish I was- and I will hopefully learn how to be too.  I guess they are in touch with what it means to be thankful for a roof over their heads and to have a hot meal- maybe that's what it takes sometimes to realize that you are blessed. To be without these things and then to have them again seems to wake you up in a way that we all need to be woken up to.