Faith, Love and Charity

Most high and glorious God,
bring light to the darkness of my heart.
Give me right faith, certain hope, and perfect charity.
Lord, give me insight and wisdom, so I can always discern
your holy and true will.

St. Francis of Assisi

St. Francis is probably the Saint that I can so closely relate to. My parents are what are called lay Franciscans which is the followers of the Franciscan order. The brothers and Franciscan priest I have met have always been very loving people. They take a vow of poverty and live in the tradition friars robes. My parents brought us following that love of the Franciscan way. I absolutely love the prayer above.

I kind of did a check tonight how I am as a Mom. My kids have brought so much joy in the past few days. Although I am not right now bringing them formal faith (troubling subject to say the least for me) I do let them know how much God loves them and we talk about God and the stories of the bible. Over the last month I have been teaching them about charity. With the economy the way it is I am acknowledging how lucky I am to have a job, a home, my health and food every night on my table. I want my children to realize that. Two weeks ago during our grocery trip we put together a grocery bag for the food shelf. The kids helped pick it out and even picked out a soup to send a long for the children. It felt so good and I don't know what impact it had as they didn't see where it was going I just feel good that I planted the seed.

Tonight I just about burst. I was deep cleaning Adam's room getting all the garbage out and organizing his room a little bit. I got to his toy box which was over flowing with many things he doesn't play with. Usually I just go through their toys and sneak them out and put them in the to donate pile. Tonight I just had a heart to heart with Adam telling him that many kids parents can't afford new toys and that if we donated some of his old toys to Goodwill some kids will get a wonderful toy for Christmas. I took out his Woody doll in which he hadn't played with in a few years. "I think there is a little boy who would love Woody just like you do. So what do you think." To my astonishment he agreed. For the next 45 minutes we went through every single toy and car and he chose which ones to keep and which ones he would give away. I was astonished at the box of toys that we have to donate: Geotrax plane set, Thomas the tank train tracks (Wasn't ready for the trains yet) Woody, Cars characters, Many matchbox cars, as well as some of his plane and helicopter collection. He admitted to me in his own way he didn't have room for the toys any longer.

He certainly redeemed himself from the raging fit he had this morning because he wasn't getting what he wanted. All is forgiven. I may be going overboard with this part as right now I am in a purging mode. I have moved from a 2500 sq ft house to a 1600 sq ft townhome and have no room for extras and really right now don't want a lot. When I was married I wasn't allowed to give anything to charity as it may be used down the road for some spectacular feat which never came. I hated it. I felt so heavy. I lived in a house way to big for our means that was full of stuff we never used and couldn't shed it so I could give it to someone else. Now I am just shedding things and I keep on shedding as I just went through my closet today for the second time in four months. I have a huge pile to donate and it feels good. Every time I went to put clothes away I realized how little space I had because of all the clothes I had....some I never worn, hadn't worn in a while....or when I wore felt cruddy in as I felt it had bad karma from the past. I now have room in my closet and a large pile of clothes to donate to charity.

There are two things that I think of with this. One is the story of Jesus asking people to follow but having to much to do in order to follow and putting God off. The second is the Rich Francis giving everything to the poor he had and wearing a plain brown robe and serving the poor and the people of God by building a church by hand brick by brick. I can't and I won't take vows of poverty in a Vocational sense because I have chosen my vocation to be (eventually) married person and I have children. I can take care of the poor in the ways that I can. Where ever I run into. What does God want of me next.....I don't know....but it feels good to finally be in the position to teach giving, loving and faith.