The Sacrifice, a Leap of Faith, and Our Final, Glorious Year

As school starts next week. Recently, a profound need was brought before the Live Like Cash Gaudio Foundation: a request for tuition assistance for a student who might not be able to return to Liberty Christian Academy due to financial struggles and health issues in their family.

When I heard it, I felt a massive, undeniable prompting from the Holy Spirit to share a very specific story. My first instinct was to resist. "Come on, no, I'm not going to reach out and share this." But I have learned the hard way that when I stubbornly don't want to do something personally, it is almost always the Holy Spirit pushing me. So, I prayed about it, and I am writing this out with the hope that it encourages any student and parent reading this. All I can do is my part and let God take care of the rest.

In April of 2023, Cash came to me and said he didn't want to go back to Smith Mountain Lake Christian Academy for his senior year. He was realistic; basketball wasn't going to take him to a Division I program, and he had no desire to play JuCo or Division III ball just for the sake of playing. He loved SMLCA and everyone there, but he was exhausted from the drive and he missed his people. He wanted to come home, spend his senior year with his best friend, Terry White, and graduate from LCA. Which means he would be ineligible by VHSL rules to play basketball his senior year.

At that exact moment, I was over $5,000 behind on his tuition at SMLCA. My business was actively struggling, and if I am being completely honest, I was not walking with the Lord the way I should have been. That June, I swallowed my pride and applied for student aid. I was denied. His mother, Shannon, wasn't in a position to help with LCA because she was already covering the George Washington University tuition for our daughter. I didn't fault her for that one bit; it was a completely fair deal.

I had no money, no aid, and a son who just wanted to go "home" to LCA for his senior year. So, I did the only thing I knew how to do: I prayed. I looked at Cash and told him I'd figure it out. Credit cards, whatever it took, he was going to finish his senior year and graduate from LCA in 2024.

I stepped out in blind faith. And that summer, everything changed.

My business completely turned around. For the first time since my bankruptcy, we were entirely without want. Because of that provision, Cash and I got to live his senior year wide open. We worked out together almost on the daily and grabbed Smoothie's. I didn't even travel to Florida that year. I was totally expecting him to find a girlfriend and watch movies every night. Instead, I got a son who was asking me every day after school when we were going to work out what we were going to do next. We went out to eat constantly. We took an epic ski trip. We flew his friends out west for a week. We watched Steph Curry play. We raced cars in Vegas. It was, without question, the most glorious, abundant year a father and son could have ever asked for.

None of us knew it would be his last.

I am so overwhelmingly thankful I stepped out in faith that summer. Cash wanted to be at LCA, and the alternative would have been E.C. Glass or going back to Jefferson Forest. Here is something many people may not know: Cash actually left LCA to attend JF middle school for 8th grade, and spent his freshman and sophomore years there before reclassing to SMLCA. At LCA, he made A's. At Jefferson Forest, he made D's and F's. And it wasn't just his grades that suffered; his walk with God took a massive hit during that time, too.

I want to be perfectly clear: Jefferson Forest, E.C. Glass, and other public schools are not bad places. We desperately need strong, equipped Christians standing in the halls of every single one of them. We cannot constantly live in the Christian or Liberty bubble. But for Cash, at that specific time in his life, LCA was where he needed to be.

Sometimes I wonder: If I hadn't trusted the Lord to provide that LCA tuition, would we have had such a fruitful, unforgettable final year? Would we have taken those trips? How would the year have been different? Would he have not been murdered?

I don't spend much time lingering on those agonizing "what ifs" because I know the Lord is completely in control.

My challenge to you today is this: Is there something the Lord is actively asking you to do? A leap He is asking you to take? Is it signing up for that weekend retreat, taking that family vacation while you still have the time, or scraping together the money to pay for your child's Christian education?

Sacrificing for your child's education is never easy. Unless you have unlimited wealth, that tuition bill is essentially a tough car payment every month. I remember Cash once asking me about stepping up my vehicle and getting an M4 BMW. I looked at him and simply said, "Well, if I wasn't paying your tuition, do you know what kind of car a $900-a-month payment gets me?"

I pray God's absolute blessings over every single parent who sacrifices for their child's education—whether it is K-12 or college. My personal view is that kids should carry the weight of their own college tuition; it is the best kind of debt they can have because it teaches delayed gratification. But as for K-12, to the parents sacrificing the BMWs and the vacations to keep their kids in a God-honoring environment: it means everything. You are actively training them up in the way they should go, and the promise is that they will not depart from it.