When You Have A Rich Daddy…

Some families are born into wealth. I have been acquainted with some, you know those who planned out their children’s births to be exactly four years apart so that they would not have any children in college at the same time, as they foot the bill and all their expenses. Then releasing the trust fund to them when they marry, setting them up in their first apartment, with the “normal”…furniture, the deposit, bills, and the first 6 months of rent covered so they can “get on their feet.”

This is a world I know nothing of, but I have a very Rich Daddy.

I was one of six children. My father did not finish high school and was a musician who left it all at one point with nothing but his guitar and the clothes on his back to go to L.A. to pursue his music career. It didn’t work out for him and he was met with crisis after crisis.

He was born into poverty. He lived in a 24 X 24 square house with his parents and sister, with no drywall on the walls or interior doors. His parents slept in the living room on a pull-out couch and they had no shower or bathtub and one toilet in the corner of a room.

His parents smoked, and he spent most of his childhood sick. He missed 131 out of 180 days of school in 2nd grade. He knew nothing of wealth, health, or abundance, only sickness and lack.

In his early 20’s he went through hell and found himself at the very bottom, at a place where he no longer wanted to live.

My mom came into his life at this painfully low moment and without really knowing why, she brought my dad a gift, a token that was nothing but grace, love, and light, to a dying soul.

Their journey together began and they began singing together and then found the way of “Jesus” together. And this changed everything.

As they studied and learned about the ways Jesus taught, they heard of a life of “abundance” of healing, of wholeness, of health, and of peace and they wanted this life.

So the best way they knew how they began to walk out their understanding of what it looked like to live with abundance and to have a “Rich daddy” who wanted to take care of his children.

They began to live generously even when they had almost nothing. They began to study to change their minds to think differently about life. At one point they began to practice being rich. They would wake up and get dressed in their best clothes, dad in a suit and mom in a dress, and study the bible together, then dad would change into his construction clothes and go to work.

The changes did not come immediately or without lots of struggle. My younger life was a roller coaster of having enough and then not, and my parents struggling to feed us six kids. But what we lacked in monetary resources has been the greatest gift to our lives.

You see when you watch the struggle, when you feel the struggle, when you have to be creative, resourceful, work hard, problem solve, pull together, think about the whole not just yourself, contribute or watch challenges come and watch your parents push through, overcome, and keep going, keep praying and praising and showing gratitude in the mix of it all. You create a breed of children that can do ANYTHING.

As my dad worked his way to being a healthy flourishing man, and slowly shed the skin of poverty and sickness which was ALL he knew, he instilled in me and my brothers and sisters things that no money or trust fund could have ever accomplished.

He showed us how to live a life that is so so so rich, because he showed us how to live with PURPOSE.

He taught us how to live for something greater than ourselves and how to create, create, create. He taught us how to pour out our lives like an offering. How to use all that we are in resourceful ways. He taught us how to courageously take a step in uncertainty and if you fail you get up the next day and try again. He showed us how to start with what is in your hands, to start with what you’ve got, and you create.

If you don’t have money, you put on a suit as if you did, and you start there, if you have an old fence board, you use it. If you have two hands, what can you create with them?

Start today, start now, you don’t have to wait, a beautiful life is at your fingertips. And as you create and pour out your life for something greater than yourself, all the resources you need will follow, all the money will follow, there is no need to worry about that… when you give your life for this “Kingdom” cause, you are part of a family that has a super duper “Rich” daddy, and he always takes care of his children.

I am so thankful for my dad who didn’t come from a “trust fund” but from poverty because of the struggle he taught us how to be so so so Rich.

From My Heart to Yours
Em