It's a Blessing to Be a Blessing

In Hagerstown, Maryland, Deirdre Norris — though almost nobody calls her that, it's Mama D — leads a small ministry that started with sandwiches and a whisper she very nearly didn't listen to.

The Whisper

For a solid month, she says, God kept telling her the same thing: feed my people. And she let it sit.

Honestly, who could blame her? She was tired. Fifteen years at Unilever, working since she was thirteen years old, never once taking a real break.

Then the plant closed in the summer of 2012, and something in her finally settled. She wasn't going to work for anybody else again. She took the whole summer off just to be with her kids — and by October, the ministry had quietly begun. A black station wagon, a few meals, and the help of friends and family.

Word travels gently in a community like that. No flyers, no announcements. Just people starting to flag her down on the street, calling her "the food lady."

How It Got Its Name

The ministry found its name almost by accident, on a March afternoon in 2016.

Deirdre was parked outside the library, down to her very last few lunches, when a man came running up — worried he'd missed her. As she handed him his food, their hands touched, and he asked her, simply, why she does this.

She heard the answer before she even had words for it: because it's a blessing to be a blessing.

She sat in her car afterward and cried. And she had her name.

Still Standing

What started as two days a week slowly became five, and it never really stopped — not even through the pandemic, when Deirdre's ministry was one of just a handful still standing in the community.

She's moved a few times along the way, once at the request of the local police chief for her own safety. She found space in a local church in 2020, then a larger space in 2022. Now she's looking for a new home again, and trusting completely that one will turn up.

"My People"

At first, she only fed people who were homeless. A couple of months in, she felt God gently correct her — He hadn't said only the homeless. He'd said my people.

So today, most of who she serves are elderly neighbors and the working poor, the folks who are so easy to overlook. Somewhere between 500 and 650 meals go out every week, to hundreds of familiar faces she's come to know by name.

And there's so much more than food. A clothing closet. A little blessing box pantry. Hygiene items. And something Deirdre calls her life skills program — not a handout, she's quick to say, but a hand up. Budgeting. Job applications. Learning how to speak up for yourself at the doctor's office, or on the phone, when nobody ever taught you how.

Walking Toward It

Her own words say it better than we could: the streets are inviting, but so much stays hidden in the dark.

Somebody has to be willing to walk toward it.

Mama D decided a long time ago that it may as well be her.