Last November I married Brett. I wish you could meet him. His heart for orphans and troubled youth is inspiring. When he asks questions, he genuinely cares about your answer. Being married to my best friend is one of my most cherished gifts.

However, he takes up a lot of time. Marriage takes up a lot of time.

A lot of my time used to go toward running, watching documentaries, or discussing the latest reality TV show. Now much of my time is invested in learning about my husband and how to love him well.

For instance, did you know men usually leave their socks on the floor, even though the hamper is only inches away? Or that it’s not fair to just assume your husband wants to watch a romantic comedy?

I still want to save the world, but before I do, I need to figure out what to make for dinner.

Before marriage, I never worried about cooking. In fact, I used the oven in my small apartment for extra storage space for my shoe collection! I knew how to budget for myself: money for food (that didn’t need to be cooked in said shoe-storage oven), my Compassion children, rent, and the occasional new pair of shoes. Now, I need to think about what is best for us as a couple.

You know what I realize as I begin to think about what’s best for us as a couple? I am really selfish.

Marriage feels like someone is holding up a mirror toward my face constantly reflecting who I really am.

When I look into that mirror, am I seeing someone who reflects God’s heart?

I know that God’s heart is for the poor. The widowed and the orphan. Are Brett and I making decisions to reflect that love?

Are you and your family reflecting God’s heart through your choices?

In only a few short months, marriage is helping me see more clearly that my time and my money are not my own. How can the lessons of marriage develop into a mind-set that is constantly more selfless?

I realize that the lessons are just beginning for me and Brett. I pray that as we learn and become more gracious with each other and the process, our hearts will become more Christlike and even more concerned with the matters of His heart.

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I drink bottled water because I like the convenience and because I like the taste. I LIKE … and every bottle I choose demonstrates what I value most. I value myself.

Drinking bottled water is not a sin, and this post isn’t about guilt, but they are both about perspective. And so I bring you to my perspective for making bottled water a whipping boy.

Bottled water is the embodiment of self-indulgence.

In 2007, the summer issue of Fast Company,  an innovative, subtly edgy and relevant magazine that pulls off personal and substantive at the same time, contained an interesting article about bottled water,  “Message in a Bottle.” Or as the magazine cover successfully sensationalized it, “Special Report: Bottled Water, $15 Billion Down the Drain.”

The $15 billion represents the amount of money Americans spent on bottled water last year, which is why I’m writing this post.

“We’ve come to pay good money — two or three or four times the cost of gasoline — for a product we have always gotten, and can still get, for free, from taps in our homes.”

What does that mean?

It means that our society has reached the level of affluence where we’re willing to pay for something that we can get for free, even when “one in six people in this world has no dependable, safe drinking water.”

When we buy a bottle of water, we’re buying convenience and the “artful story the water companies tell us about the water.”

“We buy bottled water because we think it’s healthy. Which it is, of course . . . But bottled water isn’t healthier, or safer, than tap water. Indeed, while the United States is the single biggest consumer in the world’s $50 billion bottled-water market, it is the only one of the top four – -the others are Brazil, China, and Mexico — that has universally reliable tap water. Tap water in this country, with rare exceptions, is impressively safe. It is monitored constantly, and the test results made public.”

And the money we spend for this healthy convenience may seem like nothing, but consider that

“In San Francisco, the municipal water comes from inside Yosemite National Park. It’s so good the EPA doesn’t require San Francisco to filter it. If you bought and drank a bottle of Evian, you could refill that bottle once a day for 10 years, 5 months, and 21 days with San Francisco tap water before that water would cost $1.35. Put another way, if the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000.”

But let’s talk about taste.

Well, it’s highly subjective. And even though I find Aquafina refreshing and think it tastes crisp and clean, while every other brand tastes flat and stale, I’d probably fail a blind taste test between waters at equal temperatures and presented in identical glasses. Most people do.

But forget about that, let’s talk about the environmental footprint that each water bottler leaves behind when bringing us the pure, clean and healthy alternative to our tap. It’s a significant footprint. It’s Sasquatch big …

Coke and Pepsi bottle their branded water at dozens of plants across the country to save on shipping costs — an eco-friendly idea. But then they place

“the local water through an energy-intensive reverse-osmosis filtration process more potent than that used to turn seawater into drinking water. The water they are purifying is ready to drink — they are recleaning perfectly clean tap water.”

Why?

Oh yeah! I drink bottled water because I like the convenience and because I like the taste. I LIKE … and every bottle I choose demonstrates what I value most. I value myself. I’m self-indulgent.

Drinking bottled water is not a sin, and this post isn’t about guilt, but they are both about perspective.

Whole Foods CEO and co-founder John Mackey said,

“You can compare bottled water to tap water and reach one set of conclusions, but if you compare it with other packaged beverages, you reach another set of conclusions . . . It’s unfair to say bottled water is causing extra plastic in landfills, and it’s using energy transporting it. There’s a substitution effect — it’s substituting for juices and Coke and Pepsi.”

And he’s right. We drink “almost twice the amount of soda as water — which is, in fact, 90 percent water and also in containers made to be discarded. If bottled water raises environmental and social issues, don’t soft drinks raise all those issues, plus obesity concerns?”

Of course the answer is yes. And so I bring you back to my point: Drinking bottled water is the embodiment of self-indulgence.

“In Fiji, a state-of-the-art factory spins out more than a million bottles a day of the hippest bottled water on the U.S. market today, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have safe, reliable drinking water. Which means it is easier for the typical American in Beverly Hills or Baltimore to get a drink of safe, pure, refreshing Fiji water than it is for most people in Fiji.”

Don’t you think there’s something wrong with that, even if you’re like me, self-indulgent, and most likely won’t change your behavior? Can’t we use that money for good and be no worse off ourselves?

World Water Day 2009 is Sunday, March 22. Think about it.

All quotes come directly from the article.

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But I didn’t have to travel to ME, the abbreviation we use when referring to Mexico, to see it. I only had to look at me.

I was in Mexico for the wrong reason. I didn’t go for the children, to become a stronger, more passionate voice for them. To serve them better. To serve you better. I went because I like to travel. I went for me.

There certainly are solid business reasons for me to have gone on the trip, but I didn’t get out of my own way long enough to realize them. I hate that.

How do I redeem the opportunity God gave me and that I squandered?

I dunno. Analyze? Internalize? Theorize?.

Take a look at the poverty wheel. The hub represents absolute poverty – living on less than $2 a day. The rim represents the opposite of poverty – enough. And the spokes represent the different needs of those in poverty.

But what is poverty?

Compassion exists as a Christian child advocacy ministry that releases children from spiritual, economic, social and physical poverty and enables them to become responsible, fulfilled Christian adults.

Poverty is spiritual. Poverty is economic. Poverty is social and physical. It’s not limited to the developing world. And this is nothing new to you. Right?

You know that the emotional disconnection we in the developed world struggle with is a form of poverty, right?

But why is it, with this enlightened consciousness, many of us still struggle with these chains? Why is it that with “enough” opportunity to become responsible, fulfilled Christian adults, most of us don’t act like Jesus and aren’t fulfilled?

Yeah. I know. We’re fallen. But for me, that isn’t acceptable! I despise that answer. It feels like an excuse. I want a better answer. I want to overcome that answer.

Hmm. Where’s God in that last statement?

HEY! Watch out! Fallen soul coming through fast.

I went on a house visit last Tuesday. The child’s family had nice wood furniture. It wasn’t just nice for their circumstances, you would’ve wanted it. The family also had electricity. A television. A DVD player. A refrigerator. A stove.

They aren’t poor like the poor I saw in Kenya. Dirt floors. Tin roofs. A 5’ x 5’ house that sleeps five. Raw sewage outside the door. And I thought, “Do they really need our help?” Just like many sponsors think when they see a child photo for the first time, that child doesn’t “look poor.”

The families I saw in Mexico were indeed poor in the things of this world. But in that moment, I was poor in the things of the Lord. I was full-on fallen. Self-absorbed and judging. Ugh!

But this post isn’t about me inviting you into my confession, and it’s not about me laying a guilt trip on you. Those may be outcomes … but they’re not why I’m writing this.

This post isn’t about saying how “evil” we in the developed world are or anything other than:

Last week, I was in Mexico. On a sponsor tour. And I saw the deepest, darkest poverty of my life. It wasn’t the first time though, and it probably won’t be the last.

It’s about the only message that I could pull out of the poison, Satan laced his flaming arrows in, before shooting them in my heart.

That was my trip to Mexico.

I’m not sure how this post squares with “doing my best to make you feel like you’re in Mexico with me,” because it doesn’t tell you anything about sponsor fun day, when the sponsors on the trip met their children for the first time.

And it doesn’t tell you about our shopping and boat ride experiences, or how easy the customs declaration form was to fill out on the return flight home. But maybe you can get all that from the photos I uploaded to Flickr the other night; the whole trip is there now.

I should have some brief and very simple video for you to watch some time next week too.

¡Dios te bendiga! May God bless you.

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