What if?

“For I was hungry, while you had all you needed. I was thirsty, but you drank bottled water. I was a stranger, and you wanted me deported. I needed clothes, but you needed more clothes. I was sick, and you pointed out the behaviors that led to my sickness. I was in prison, and you said I was getting what I deserve.”
-Paraphrase of Matthew 25 by Richard Stearns, president of World Vision

“To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice.”
-Confucius

“If charity cost nothing, the world would be full of philanthropists.
-Jewish proverb

A question has been rolling around in my head since I had to passionately (albeit uselessly) defend a company I believe is doing a commendable work for our world in the social justice realm about two weeks ago.

TOMS shoes is a company that, for every pair of shoes you buy from them, gives a pair of shoes to children in countries where covered feet can mean the difference between life and death because of diseases that inhabit the soil. Millions of children in these underdeveloped countries are getting shoes every year because of the people who decide it’s a worthy cause to support

Millions more are still walking around with unprotected feet touching toxins like our generations have never known in America.

Maybe we don’t realize what’s at stake here. Maybe we don’t quite fully understand that it’s life or death.

Maybe we just don’t care.

This is not an advertisement for TOMS shoes (though if you want it be, the Web site is www.toms.com). This is just a preface to the question that’s been following me for the last few weeks.

What if we lived in a TOMS economy?

One for one.

We buy that cute, overpriced-for-the-sake-of-fashion winter jacket (that might not even be warm). We give a jacket with the same price tag (but maybe a little more functional and a little less stylish) to that homeless person we pass every day on the way to work, who’s only wearing a T-shirt with threads so old it’s almost see-through.

We buy that overpriced-for-the-sake-of-health organic chicken at the grocery store. We give an actual chicken (because they cost about the same) to that widow in Africa who could use it to sustain her and her five children for years and years and years.

We buy that overpriced-for-the-sake-of-living-the-American-dream house. We build 400 houses for the people in India or Argentina or Haiti who live in paper boxes.

One for one.

What if?

What if, for those two bottles of mosquito spray we buy every summer so our kids won’t have to deal with the inconvenience of itchy, irritating bites, we sent a bed net to one of the millions of children in Sierra Leone who die every year from malaria-ridden mosquito bites?

What if, for every bottle of water we buy, we sent the same amount to help provide clean and sanitary drinking water for the children across the ocean who every day consume disease-infested water, who are drinking their death?

What if, every time we paid the monthly bill on our vehicle or our insurance, we sent the same amount to something like the Personal Energy Transportation Project, which provides wheelchairs and the gift of mobility for those in “greatest need and with the least resources in poor and underdeveloped countries” or to an organization like World Vision, which provides small business loans (amounting to about $200—unheard-of startup costs here in America) that impact the sustainability of not just a family but an entire community?

One for one.

What if?

What if, for every penny or quarter or dollar we spent, we gave one away?

What if, for every minute we spent shopping or just playing on facebook, we spent in a homeless shelter, serving up dinner for those who don’t know when they’ll eat again or sorting clothes for those who own only the dirty rags on their backs? What if, for every hour we spent working to maintain our standard of living, we spent walking the streets with the homeless who have lost everything or caring for our forgotten orphans in the foster care systems or the ones on the other side of the world who are watching a generation of parents die from AIDs and becoming heads of households at 8 years old.

What if?

I’ve just finished reading the letters and writings of Mother Teresa, a woman who spent her entire life ministering to the poor, living as one of them and denouncing the materialism of the world by vowing to own nothing. One of the most poignant things she said in her book was, “When you don’t have anything, then you have everything.” She was a woman who believed she could only get close to Jesus when she got close to the poor, when she traded everything for nothing.

What if?

In his book, The Hole in Our Gospel, Rich Stearns (president of World Vision, a Christian relief organization that changes the lives of orphans and widows around the world) said that the total income of American churchgoers is $5.2 trillion (more than five thousand billion dollars). He says it would take just a “little over 1 percent of the income of American Christians to lift the poorest one billion people in the world out of extreme poverty.”

What if?

Other statistics Stearns points out:

Amount available if all America churchgoers gave 10 percent of their salary: $520 billion
Estimated annual cost to eliminate extreme poverty in the world: $65 billion
Annual cost for universal primary education for ALL children in the world: $6 billion
Annual cost to bring clean water to most of the world: $9 billion
Annual cost to bring basic health and nutrition for the world: $13 billion
Total to eradicate the world’s greatest problems: $93 billion (1.8% of American Christians' income).

What if?

What if we could bring an end to world hunger, solve the clean water crisis, provide universal access to drugs and health care for the millions dealing with malaria and AIDs and tuberculosis and cholera? What if we could eliminate the 26,000 children dying every day—20,000 of those related to hunger?

Maybe we’ll never get there. Maybe we’ll never even come close.

But what if?

The other night, I was talking to my 3-year-old about how some kids in certain parts of the world don’t have enough food to eat or the right clothes to wear to protect them from diseases that could kill them or how they don't even have anyone to love them. Jadon, in his innocence and of his own volition, said, “Well, I’ll give them one of my shoes and some of my food, too. And I love them."

May we all have the hearts of a child, hearts that look so much like Jesus.

“It is not our fault that people are poor, but it is our responsibility to do something about it. God says that we are guilty if we allow people to remain deprived when we have the means to help them.”
-Richard Stearns

letter to my husband

“Together they bore the complete image of God.”
Frank Viola, From Eternity to Here

“Place me like a seal over your heart,
Like a seal on your arm,
For love is as strong as death,
Its jealousy unyielding as the grave
It burns like a blazing fire,
Like a mighty flame
Many waters cannot quench love;
Rivers cannot wash it away.”
Song of Songs 8:6-7
-our wedding verse

Dear Ben,

Seven years. I can’t believe it’s been seven years since this life with you, as your wife, began. And if we’re counting all that came before that day, Oct. 11, 2003, when you recited your poem and I read my “love story” off nine college-ruled note cards held in shaking hands, it’s really been a decade.

A decade. How quickly it’s gone.

Do you remember the beginning?

Do you remember the excitement, the anticipation of meeting this person you’d e-mailed on a whim and who, strangely enough, happened to open the e-mail from an unknown address and responded with honest answers to your questions? Do you remember the traffic lights and the limited parking spaces that kept you from making it to worship practice, to the promised meeting place, on time? Do you remember the awkwardness of that first face-to-face conversation, me a little miffed that I’d waited around for a “no show,” you a little frazzled from fighting your way across the Texas State campus, just to finally say hello (because you knew worship practice had ended an hour ago)?

Do you remember the disappointment in discovering a relationship beyond friends was not part of God’s plan? Do you remember hanging out in the same places with the same people at the Baptist Student Ministry, worshiping together on the music team (I got to make all the decisions then because I was the worship leader :)), pretending the awkwardness had melted away even though it reddened our faces every time our eyes met? Do you remember being the “piano man,” the “guy with the awesome voice” who played every instrument known to man, the man of almost every girl’s dream there in that college ministry?

Do you remember moving on?

Do you remember, two years later, seeing each other for the first time in a year, possibility opening its petals like a midnight-blue morning glory when you realized I had written off all attachments and you had just become “free?” Do you remember watching Harry Potter at a mutual friend’s house, talking about your band and its newly recorded album, asking me casually if I might want to hang out sometime? Do you remember coming to watch me sing the national anthem at a Texas State basketball game—supporting me with friends and as a friend—and watching the football team beat Stephen F. Austin and playing beach volleyball on opposite teams?

Do you remember falling?

Do you remember walking me home at 3 in the morning, after I’d finally sent the university paper to print, holding your umbrella so it encapsulated the both of us while the rain fell in sheets on the pebbled pavement and soaked our shoes? Do you remember scaling the side of my apartment building when my roommate accidentally dead-bolted me out and sneaking in through the patio door we never kept locked and letting me in my own living room? Do you remember our first kiss, beside the theater building pond, when the campus was deserted except for the black birds that startled every time we moved?

Do you remember the certainty?

Do you remember our first date (after you stood me up on a double date to see Sweet Home Alabama and I ended up going as a third wheel), watching the sunrise from Prayer Mountain in Wimberley, driving to San Antonio in my car because all you had was a bike, falling asleep while I was talking on the way back home? Do you remember the Majestic Theatre, watching the Nutcracker ballet, practically dragging me backstage because you planned to propose and I was just hungry? Do you remember dinner at The Olive Garden and that Italian chocolate cake, celebrating our engagement, calling all our friends and family even though it was almost morning, the ring still foreign on my finger?

Do you remember dreaming?

Do you remember Oct. 11, that misty, disappointing-weather day, scrambling to move everything from our spot beside the lake into that small, historical church, starting the wedding 15 minutes late because your new mother-in-law spilled makeup all over her brand new dress, holding my white-gloved hands dampened by tears and nose drip because I just couldn’t hold it together? Do you remember the magical days after our wedding, skipping through Disney World like the two married kids we were, missing our carriage ride reservation, riding on every roller coaster we could find? Do you remember driving all night after our plane landed in Houston, walking into an apartment overflowing with presents and gift cards and hand-me-down furniture and knowing we were home?

Do you remember promising?

Do you remember starting our music ministry, playing in coffee shops and churches and whoever would let us in their doors, writing our first songs together, recording our first album after saving up more money than we’d ever saved and spending it on a CD instead of a home? Do you remember late-night conversations, my head on your chest, your cheek on my hair, date nights whenever the urge struck us, running miles and miles around high school tracks, panic-filled biking while trying to outrun a thunderstorm? Do you remember the one-year-anniversary trip back to Disney World, discovering Downtown Disney, fighting over video games, eating fudge and candy apples, buying our second set of Mickey and Minnie Mouse hats so people would think we were newlyweds and let us cut in line?

Do you remember hoping?

Do you remember that first pregnancy test and the three more after it because we couldn’t quite believe it was true, buying our first and only house (so far) and turning it into our home, new and old jobs? Do you remember Lake Conroe and reconnecting and strolling through Old Town Spring like just-married lovers and biking through Sam Houston National Park (well, I was biking at least…you were flying over your handlebars) and watching the sunset on Lake Conroe while devouring our Subway sandwiches (6-inch for me, 12-inch for you)? Do you remember the joy of number 2 and the surprise of number 3 and the fear mixed with excitement at our quickly growing family, the intentional late nights and early morning chats squeezed in after the kids were asleep and before they woke up for the day?

Do you remember?

In seven days we will mark our seventh anniversary. Seven years of memories. Seven years of this sometimes-intense, sometimes hard, always beautiful journey of getting to know each other better. Seven years of daily becoming a more and more complete image of God.

So I just wanted to tell you that, even if I had known the time I would waste cleaning our room or doing your separate laundry because, somehow, your shoes don’t make it into the walk-in closet and your clothes don’t make it into the laundry hampers, even if I had known how busy our life would be and how it sometimes just makes my head spin to think of all we have to do in one day, even if I had known we’d have a field growing in our backyard because you don’t like to mow, I would still choose you. Because you fit. What you bring to our marriage—strength, faith, love in spite of my imperfections—is exactly what completes me. And eight years ago, when I begged God to protect my heart so it wouldn’t be broken again, when I entreated him to only let go of my heart when the man-boy he had chosen for me came along, he did exactly that. He held it, and when the time was right, he gave it to you.

I love you more than any words could ever say. More than any numbers could quantify.

So here we are. Seven years down the road. Seven years of laughing and crying, fighting and making up, planning and dreaming. In the years to come, I look forward to learning even more of the mysteries of you. You have placed me “like a seal over your heart,” just like our wedding verse said. Thank you for the man you were, are and continue becoming. You are my lover, my sidekick, my best friend. And you are “radiant and ruddy, outstanding among ten thousand.”

143.