My Name Is Four

"Behold, children are a gift of the LORD; The fruit of the womb is a reward." - Psalm 127:3

Recently my wife returned to the world of full time work. It's been a transition in our household, with tasks and chores being shifted around, schedules being changed and a little unexpected chaos as the Captain of the U.S.S. Casa-Faggioli has been forced to leave by 7:30am each morning.

The kids and I braced for this change. None of us knew what to make of it, with Dad doing a school drop-off here or there, almost all the school pickups and - joy of all joys - the kids learning that having a self-employed father means, well, you get to go back to work with him after school for three hours each day.  God willing we'll be staffed back up in my office soon but until then, each day as we load up into my car after school I call a huddle, hands to the center, and the kids and I give a shout out as to how many days we have "survived" this routine. Yesterday was "10".

I feared this change would be a burden. Instead the Lord has made it a blessing. It's been revealed to me that before I wasn't just missing out on some things in my children's lives, but a lot of things. For example, I never knew what a zombie Sophia was when waking up every morning for school and I have taken great pleasure in doing the "good morning" dance for her each day, complete with out-of-key singing (most of you will have a hard time picturing me singing and dancing...trust me, you don't want to, it's pretty bad). If this doesn't work I flick the lightswitch on and off until she flies out of bed with her little paws up for a fight. She LITERALLY growls at me, with her hair in fifty directions and her eyes all puffy. Then, in spite of herself, she starts to laugh.

I also love hearing about their day; the way the girl that Anthony has a crush on perplexes him ("Dad, why is it that girls act differently around their friends than they do when it's just you and them?"), or what Sophia really thinks about this whole "color card" system in kindergarten ("It's not that hard Dad, you just don't get in trouble. But there's this one boy, he just doooooeeeesn't get it.").

I now get the chance to slip a little note in Sophie's lunch box or pep-talk Anthony the morning before a big test. They, in turn, can give me a head start on my day as well. Like yesterday, when I was leaving the house early and I saw a post-it note from Sophia that read : MY NAME IS FOUR. I had no idea what she was talking about, or what it meant, but it made me chuckle nearly the whole drive to work. 

Do Not Go Gently...

"Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." - Matthew 20

How firm, how strong, how rooted is your faith? Some of you who read this blog have a faith that is strong, others a faith that is holding the line, and others a faith that is, well, dormant. A faith that is strong need only hold the line. A faith that is holding on need only persevere.  But a faith that is dormant is a faith in trouble. It is, by definition, alive at some level, but not growing.

A dormant faith is asleep. If this is your faith then know this: you must wake up. A faith that is asleep too long runs the very real risk of dying. Don't let that happen. Wake up. If not for yourself, then for those around you.

Right now in your community 1 out of 4 children is skipping lunch at school because their parents can't afford it. In the United States a rape is reported every 5 minutes. That's a scary number. Until you realize that only 16% of rapes are ever reported in the first place. Last night anywhere from 2-4 babies were born immaturely and are fighting this very moment for their little lives at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena. That's only one out of over 1300 NICU's in the country.

My point is this: there is hurting all around you and people you don't even know, whom you haven't even met yet, who need you. How can you be there for people you don't even know in circumstances you have no idea how to handle without faith? How? It simply isn't possible. Because those people need hope. They need love. They need you.

Do not go gently into that deep responsibility. Rush in. Respond. Reach out. Use the hurts the world has thrust upon you to help others overcome their hurts and realize that as you do God is pulling for your glory.