Clean Water

There are lots of things in life that we, as Americans, can many times take for granted. Thanks to the ice storm of 2011, I have a new appreciation, make that love, for running water. On Wednesday morning, I woke up and realized that all of the water pipes in our house had frozen. You know what that means, right? No showering, flushing, clean dishes, clean laundry or drinking/cooking water. Wednesday wasn't so bad, Candice and I went over to my friend Kristy's house to shower and we made do the rest of the day. Well, Thursday, the temperature didn't get above 20 degrees, so you know what that meant? Still no water! And Friday? You guessed it! Pipes were still frozen. I will admit that by Friday morning I was in kind of a bad mood about this inconvenience. Dishes were starting to pile up, I needed another shower, my laundry was out of control ... you get the picture. I'm so thankful that I had people to turn to in the midst of my mini-crisis. I headed to my friend Larissa's to shower and then last night Candice and I ended up spending the night with her parents for a reprieve from the seemingly desperate situation.

I came home this afternoon to find that - Praise the Lord - my pipes have thawed out and we have water again! One of the lessons I learned from this experience is to always leave your pipes dripping when a potential freeze is coming - it's amazing how many people told me this AFTER our pipes froze. I'll never forget that lesson!

The other thing I learned, was to truly be thankful for running water. My friend Katie Ellwood reminded me of this earlier this week through this video she made with her brother. For their birthdays this year, they are asking for people to donate money to Charity: Water - an organization that works to bring clean water to the people around the world. Apparently, there are over 1 billion (1,000,000,000!!!) people in the world that don't have clean drinking water. The number is truly astonishing. While I was without water in my home for 4 days, I still had access to clean water in a number of places. These people face EVERY day without clean water. EVERY DAY! I'm sure Katie had no idea how this video would resonate with me personally this week, but I'm thankful for my friend who opened my eyes to a much bigger problem than my 4 days of uncomfortableness.

So, right after I did my dishes, I donated to Katie's birthday goal. Now, I'm going to hop in the shower and enjoy my running water.

Thank you, Lord, for teaching me to be thankful in unique (and sometimes smelly) ways!