When your NO is your new YES

Recently I woke up at 5:00 am with two emails in my inbox that started my day off in what one could describe as a flash flood.  

I am the Volunteer Coordinator for the new Winter Shelter for the Homeless in my community in a volunteer capacity.  This grew out of me being the Organization Volunteer Coordinator for the Cold Weather Shelter which no longer exists as of late December.  In order to continue my support for the new shelter in both my time and talent, I took on a few new jobs that I really had not said YES to but did these anyway.

One of the things I did not agree to do is coordinate and recruit individual volunteers.  I agreed to coordinate and recruit Organizations and Churches who took on one week at a time to provide volunteers, food, overnight hosts etc. as needed for cold weather events.  I knew there were changes with the new 60-night Winter Shelter pilot and even knew I was taking on more than my original agreement.

Back to this morning, I had an individual volunteer send me an email and ask me if she had volunteered for Sunday or Monday morning breakfast.  This helped me realize that my whole SignUp Genius schedule for a week later in January was incorrect and needed to be updated.  My mind proceeded to go through all the things that needed to be updated and all the people I needed to talk to to correct the problem with this schedule.

Then I read further in my Inbox and email #2 showed up asking me to help the shelter publish and manage a new volunteer schedule for individual volunteers to pick up and do laundry each morning for the remaining shelter nights.  I realized laundry had become a bigger problem with the shelter being open every night regardless of the weather.

First thing I am grateful for is that I am very involved with the shelter and that I am not in charge.  The Comal County Homeless Coalition was lucky to have an organization take on running the Winter Shelter for the 60 day pilot and for having one of their incredibly talented leaders take on overseeing this effort. Also, we are blessed to have a an extremely qualified project manager working under this leader to keep things running on a daily basis.   All that said, I am glad it is not me nor did I ever intend for it to be.  I have however stepped up to do more than I originally agreed to do.  At least until this morning.

This morning I had to sort through the computer system problems and the people problems that needed to be handled.  Going through this mental and emotional process helped me make some new choices and to communicate these choices.  Hopefully, I did this without making myself or anyone else wrong.  

There were definitely a few good laughs by me and others involved about the mess and especially the resulting clean up process.  In the process, I reaffirmed my commitment to the shelter and made it clear what I am willing to do and what I am not willing to do.  

Shortly after all was cleaned up and back in some order, I heard a song by Karen Drucker (one of my favorite singers) that I had not heard before entitled:  

     N-O is My New Yes 

Perhaps we should all be more clear when to say NO and when to say YES and even know when we haven't said anything at all but still keep doing what we are doing.   As she says in her song, The Disease to Please is often with us and when I say NO, I set myself free.  

May you and I become more clear about our NO's and our YES's in our lives.

Abundant blessings, peace and joy.