IF YOU HAVE A TOILET…

… then you are blessed.

Don’t believe your flushing toilet makes you blessed?

Water.org reports that more people in the world have access to a cell phone than a toilet.

I believe it. In early July I was in Haiti with our students. I saw people with cell phones in tent cities with no toilets.  I watched kids in an orphanage use a hole in the ground because they had no flushing toilet.  In Uganda I watched people walk into mud huts in the most remote of villages on Lake Victoria and have a cell phones, but no toilets.  The first time I met my now daughter Becky, she was peeing in a field, which is normal… cuz there are no toilets in fields!

Then a few weeks ago I was traveling the country to go camping with my kids and I was reminded that in the United States, we have toilets everywhere.  We have toilets in houses.  We have toilets in restaurants and gas stations and stores. We have toilets in campgrounds and in fields in the forrest and no joke….

… we even have toilets on the side of the road.  Yup.  On the side of the road, on all kinds of roads, we have places to pull your car over, sit in the shade, and poop in private on some multi-thousand dollar pooping spot.

Seriously?  Seriously!

2 weeks ago I was in the middle of butt-crack-nowhere Nevada… I swear, we passed one car every hour headed south east on hwy 140 headed out of butt-crack-nowhere Oregon and was like 120 miles outside of Winnemucca.  Trust me, 120 miles outside of Winnemucca, Nevada is the definition of butt-crack-nowhere.

And of course, one of my kids in the back seat tells me they have to poop.  I tell them, “Well, I have bad news for you.  We’re in the middle of nowhere and it’s gonna be 2 hours before you can poop in anything remotely resembling a toilet.”  Truth is, you could poop behind a different sage bush for the rest of your life on the road side where we were and never hit the same one twice and never be caught doing it either.  There is nothing and no one out here.

Then, I kid you not, we came around the corner and there was a “rest stop”.  I laughed out loud!  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  I’m on a 2 lane road used by 15 people a month and there’s a rest stop with toilets that someone has to drive out and stock with toilet paper, clean, and pump poop out of.  There was a shade cover thing and a section of road to park your car on.  Even a picnic table!

Unbelievable.  I drove almost 2500 miles through 9 states, never dodged a pothole, and stopped at roadside toilets so Americans don’t have to pee in “public”.  Try that in Haiti or Uganda or Mexico or… 100 other countries in the world.

Wow. We’re stupid blessed.  If you don’t believe me.  Go without a toilet for a week.  Or better yet, just drive across the United States counting public toilets.