Friday, December 25, 2009

3 Gallons a Day…

That is how much water I have found that you ACTUALLY need per person each day. That includes drinking water, bathing water and cooking water (for tea, mac-n-cheese, whatever).

My two older girls have their blogs, my wife actually has two. I wanted to blog about things that interest me and that I am concerned about. So here it is: Most people have TV. Most TV tells us through advertising and the shows themselves what it is we need to have be “happy”, “popular”, “beautiful”, etc. That we need the fanciest, newest car; the million dollar job; the biggest house in the perfect neighborhood, with all the newest and most up to date gadgets in it. So I question this and wonder what it is that we REALLY need.

I have a family of 5 – my wife, myself, 2 daughters; 13 & 11 and a 3 yr old son. I have two part time jobs – for which I am VERY grateful - it’s more than some have. We try to live off of my income, so that my wife can be home for the children. So in 2009, due to hard economic times in Michigan, and more specifically my family, my electricity has been turned off twice and right now our gas had been off for three weeks. Our gas was turned off 3 weeks ago, JUST before the temperatures dropped to freezing and they wouldn’t be able to legally do it. But that is neither here nor there…the bill came and it needed to be paid.

Those are circumstances, the real question is “What do we need?” Here’s what I have found: We need…

1 – A comfortable, dry place to live; where we can eat, and enjoy our lives with our family in service to: first, our God; second, ourselves; third, our spouse; fourth, our children and fifth, others in this world. Not necessarily in that order all the time.

2 – A way to support having that place. A job that pays the bills.