Edie Wadsworth

Caiti’s Senior Pictures

March 29, 2011 by Edie Wadsworth 57 Comments

We tried every way in the world to get a ‘real’ photographer.

Unfortunately, most of my favorite ones aren’t that easily accessible. So, alas, she’s stuck with me.

At least I have my new great camera, the Nikon d7000, along with Karen’s photography class, which I’m currently auditing. Those things along with Jody’s MCP photoshop actions and plenty of inspiration from my favorite photographers, we got some shots that Caiti loves. We plan to do a second shoot during the golden hours, with an outfit change, if the weather will ever cooperate. I thought, overall, they turned out pretty good. We drove to Knoxville for part of the shoot and ate a yummy lunch and did a little shopping. It was a great day. I love this girl. Her funny self-deprecating coupled with her easy confidence make her lots of fun to be around. She makes me proud to be a mom and she has quite the talent for photography herself. Which makes her almost as picky as me. Which makes finding a shot we both like nearly impossible. But here’s a few that made the cut.
You would have cracked up if you’d seen us pull off a very busy highway to shoot at this roadside junkyard. But this is probably my favorite picture so it was totally worth it.
she laughs and calls this the glamour photo—but I insisted we keep it 🙂

In other news, our house is ready to begin. The demo was complete in three days and we’re just waiting for a spell of dry weather. It’s so exciting to dream about. I’m frantically looking at house stuff on the internet and in magazines. I’m still debating about hiring a little help.
One thing I’ve become a huge fan of is ONE KING’S LANE. Follow this link to join their mailing list and I will get a $25 credit if you ever make a purchase. Then you can invite your friends and you can get the same credit. I followed the link from my sweet friend the Nester sometime last year but I was slow to come around to it’s wonderfulness. Now, I check their sales everyday and have made several purchases. They have great deals on furniture, rugs, bedding, etc. I bought a few things from this line, like this sign and pillow.

Hope you are having a great week so far. I’ve listened to this Issues podcast twice now and will certainly listen again. Pastor Jared Melius is interviewed about the consequences of the fall into sin. Very enlightening and fresh take on ‘the fall’—definitely worth a listen. His wife, Jan, has a great blog called Just Imagine Heaven which I’ve recently discovered. You’ll enjoy her recipes and her photography and you’ll admire her immensely for homeschooling 6 kids!

Blessed Lent,

love to you all,

edie

not alone

March 21, 2011 by Edie Wadsworth 95 Comments

Today is the 3 month anniversary since our house was destroyed by fire.

Today is the 9th birthday of my baby-child.

Today, we began our journey to rebuild.

Today is a precious gift to us from our Father.

He will move this mountain for us. And He will move your mountain too.

Timshel by Mumford and Sons

Cold is the water
It freezes your already cold mind
Already cold, cold mind
And death is at your doorstep
And it will steal your innocence
But it will not steal your substance

But you are not alone in this
And you are not alone in this
As brothers we will stand and we’ll hold your hand
Hold your hand

And you are the mother
The mother of your baby child
The one to whom you gave life
And you have your choices
And these are what make man great
His ladder to the stars

But you are not alone in this
And you are not alone in this
As brothers we will stand and we’ll hold your hand
Hold your hand

And I will tell the night
Whisper, “Lose your sight”
But I can’t move the mountains for you

Lent {for the newcomer}: Learning from my Father

March 7, 2011 by Edie Wadsworth 69 Comments

**Edited to add: This podcast on Lent with Pastors Todd Wilken and Heath Curtis is one of the best I’ve heard. Blessed Lent to you.

Thank you for those who came to the live chat last night! It was fast and fun and maybe we’ll do it again some time. You can view the transcript here.

Lent begins this week on Ash Wednesday and lasts 40 days with it’s culmination in Easter. This is a repost from last February {and the February before that!) and will explain Lent in further detail for the newcomer to the season. My thanks to Pastor Will Weedon for allowing me to republish part of his post.

“Lent begins with this realization. That we are a people in exile. That we are wandering far from our true home.

And thus the beginning of repentance isn’t merely the terror that one finds in wandering in a strange land; the beginning of repentance is homesickness.

Lent teaches us to fess up to how often we settle down in the land of our exile as though it were our true home; attempting to still the yearning the Spirit has created by throwing at it physical or psychological pleasure, and how it never works.”

courtesy of Pastor Will Weedon

Lent is a 40 day period leading up to Easter that is characterized by prayer, reflection, repentance and often fasting, then culminating in the celebration of the resurrection and the feasting of Easter. It roughly mimics the 40 days Christ retreated to the wilderness and wrestled with the devil. Many evangelicals reject ‘lenten’ observance because it’s just too Roman catholic and because there is no mandate for it in scripture. As a former evangelical, I can say that I’ve spent 30 years enjoying the ‘feasting’ of Easter without the penitential and preparatory time of Lent and I wish I could go back and change that. I find that one of many benefits of following the traditional church calendar and being in a liturgical church is that nothing gets overlooked.

It’s a methodical way of proceeding through the scriptures and it prevents such things as quickly glossing over the celebration of Christ’s resurrection without spending time in quiet reflection of His death on the cross, the mental anguish and suffering which took place while He was in the wilderness, and the details of the events of His life during Holy Week. It’s like walking in ‘real time’ with Him during the last weeks of His life. Is Lent discussed or commanded , per se, in the scriptures? No, but penitence and fasting and prayer are and what better time to observe a more rigorous christian discipline than as we reflect upon the last days and weeks of the life of Christ.

And we all practice degrees of discipline already. Lent is the spiritual equivalent of physical exercise for the body. The body gets stronger when we demand much from it—not when we always ‘give in’ to what it wants. The same is true in disciplining our children. Because we love them so much, we demand what is best for them, which is often not what they, in their immaturity want for themselves. In C.S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain, he puts it this way:

“It is for people whom we care nothing about that we demand happiness on any terms; with our friends, our lovers, our children, we are exacting and would rather see them suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging circumstances. God has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense………The Church is the Lord’s bride whom He so loves that in her no spot or blemish is endurable.”

Though the analogy breaks down when taken to extremes, God compares our relationship to Him to that between a parent/child. And Lewis, in his book, compares our being brought into God’s family to a very ‘badly brought up boy’ being introduced into a decent family. When they see traits in this child that are detestable, Lewis says ‘they not only hate it, but they ought to hate it. They cannot love him for what he is, they can only try to turn him into what he is not’.

…we are at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, and as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves.”

God our Father, despite our unloveliness, has given us everything we need and has clothed us with the righteousness of Christ, but we, like Adam, want to ‘clothe’ ourselves. Lent is a time to strip down; to take off the filthy clothes of our own righteousness and to let our Father give us from His hand what He knows we need.

It’s like the picture of Stevie teaching Emme to fish. We learn from our Father by spending time with Him. There is much He wants to teach us and much that needs to be changed in us. But more than all that, He wants to give us Himself—-knowing that we were created for relationship with Him. And nothing will satisfy the deepest longings of our soul save Our Father’s perfect love. Lent is time to retreat with Our Father. To confess to Him that we have wandered so far from home and that we have become far too ‘comfortable’ in the pleasures of this life. To confess to Him how utterly dependent we have become on everything, but Him. And He will gladly ‘receive’ us back with open arms: not because we demonstrate to Him our growing discipline and holiness, but for the sake of Christ and Him alone.

A few stray thoughts:

1. Lent is a time for penitence and reflection and the practicing of christian discipline. It does not make God ‘more pleased with me’ and is not a ‘good work’. God is pleased with Christ alone and good works are those things which I do in service to my neighbor.
2. If I purpose to ‘give something up’ for Lent and then two weeks later find that I fail and can’t keep my lenten discipline, God is not disappointed in me. God is pleased with Christ and thus pleased with me when I have faith in Christ. I am a sinner who fails and sins constantly. And my failing is not a surprise to God.
3. If I keep my lenten discipline to the ‘tee’, I must be careful not to try and convince myself that I’m ‘more spiritual’ or holy than before. I have been freely clothed with the righteousness of Christ and am only learning to ‘fit’ into clothes that were given me by God.
4. We must also be careful not to view our discipline as ‘suffering’ and remember that Christ suffered on the cross for our redemption and we do not get to choose our own suffering (by giving up, say diet pepsi for a month).
5. It is a good exercise to occasionally deprive our bodies, to not give in to every fleshly desire. We are so often slaves to our own bodies and teaching ourselves discipline in any area is often met with resistance.

I leave you with another quote from Pastor Will Weedon who kept me from seeing Lent as a season where ‘I work hard to become more holy’;

The holiness into which you seek to grow has already been given to you, whole and entire! It’s yours in Jesus Christ, the gift of His righteousness fully bequeathed you in Baptism, and constantly renewed in you by absolution and the Holy Eucharist. Through these wonderful gifts, we get to GROW in the apprehension of that which is already our own, learning to live more and more from it, more and more from union with Christ and less and less from the old self. So it is not that holiness grows in you; it is that you grow in holiness! Getting used to whom God has made you to be in His Son. There’s real effort here, of course, but the effort is working at resting in Him who works all things through us. I don’t overcome sin by my willpower (ha!), but by the strength of Him who has united Himself to me.

I have been unbelievably blessed since I started blogging and using various other modes of social networking. I’ve made wonderful friends. I’ve been inspired in countless ways. And I owe you a debt of gratitude for how you’ve encouraged me and shown God’s love and grace to me. But the internet can quickly suck you into a black hole where you’re left wondering where the last 2 hours went. During Lent, I’ll be going ‘unplugged’ (no blogging, twitter or facebook) for parts of the season to rest, refocus, reenergize. I’ve said it before, the internet makes a great servant but a poor master. I’ll try to finish answering your questions from this post in the next few days and then will sign off for a while after Wednesday. I will be praying for you. I wish you a blessed Lent.

You might find these podcast links helpful. The Gospel-Driven Church, Dr. Micheal Horton , Ash Wednesday and the Season of Lent, The Sermon on the Mount with Carl Fickensher, The Parable of the Lost Son with Bill Cwirla all brought to you via my favorite radio program Issues,Etc

Kyrie Elieson

Fireside Chat Vol I

March 6, 2011 by Edie Wadsworth 27 Comments

1. Hello everyone. Welcome to Edie’s First Fireside Chat. I’m a moderator for tonight’s session. (<----welcome to my friend Ami!----listen to her, she's smart and will protect us from ourselves). A few things before we start: 2. Sign in to the chat. You can use your Facebook account info or create an account with your email address. You can also sign in as a guest and the chatroll will assign you a guest username. 3. Once you sign in, introduce yourself to us, tell us where your from, the name of your blog–if you have one, and whatever else you want to tell us about yourself. 4. To contribute your opinions and ideas to this chat just enter your text into the text box at the bottom of the chat area and press "Enter" on your keyboard. You should see your comment appear instantly in chat. 5. If you would like to respond to an individuals' comment, start your text with "@ individual name" like "@edie". If the comment is for everyone, no @ tag is needed. 6. To send a private message, click the status icon next the user's name, and click "Send Private Message". We want to keep the chat interactive, so please only use private messages for technical assistance. You can send tech questions privately to "ami_d", but please send all questions to other chat users publicly. 7. Before starting the chat session I would just like to remind you all to be polite and to respect one another's opinions. Please refrain from using any profanity or from ad hominem attacks. In short, follow the golden rule and we're sure to have a jolly good time. (I said that, not Ami. She probably doesn't say 'jolly good time' and I can't rightly blame her.) 8. Users who do not respect the rules or who are disruptive to the chat will receive a warning and will then be banned if negative behavior continues. (I can only imagine this scenario if my cousin JamieKnoxville joins in. She'll be the one signed in as Loretta Lynn using a lot of asterisks. Perhaps this will be over before she gets wind of it:) ) 9. We are working on making a transcript of the chat available but are unsure at this time if this will be an option. 10. Most importantly, have fun! Don't be afraid to jump in and contribute, even if it's just an "amen" or " i totally agree" comment to get your feet wet. Chat is fueled by your contributions and the discussion will be enriched by a variety of opinions. Please forgive us for questions or comments that might go unnoticed or unanswered in the chat. We will make every effort to answer them in the post below this one within the next few days if we miss them or run out of time tonight. I was mistaken about the number of people that can 'chat' at one time. It's 100 instead of 50. Our heads may be spinning if that many actually sign in! The chat will go live a few minutes before 7 in this post. See you there! If we blow up the internet, it was nice knowing you...... [chatroll width='700' height='600' id='RZKC25v5tXK' name='fireside-chat-at-life-in-grace-3-6-11' apikey='lcyhvjdj7mghh1uv']

can we talk?

March 5, 2011 by Edie Wadsworth 103 Comments

Edited to add:

Live Fireside Chat tomorrow evening Sunday March 6th starting at 7pm.

here’s the 411:
There will appear at approximately 7p a small box in a new post which is a live chat box. You must sign in to the chat but you can use facebook or sign in as a guest. The sign in process is easy and doesn’t require any personal information besides a name. Don’t trick me with funny names like Loretta Lynn, because then I’ll just be jealous. The chat is limited to 50 people, which I highly doubt we’ll surpass, but if you want to participate, sign in right away as soon as you see the chat box appear. You can watch the chat without signing in too which will probably be even more fun. It will likely be kinda chaotic and confusing so my trusty friend Ami is gonna be our moderator. See, she started this whole thing anyways. I was planning on just using the actual comments section and writing back and forth to each other there for a live chat—kinda Sanford and Son style—– until she asked me sophisticated questions like “Which chat forum will you be using?” and “Will there be a transcript?”

Then I started to ask myself questions like, “Are you even allowed to have a blog Miss “I don’t even know what a chat forum is”? So I did what any respectable tech-challenged blogger would do and I took my questions to google. And that’s where I met Chatroll. Ms. Ami does things like this for a living and will keep us from hurting ourselves. And apparently, there are rules for live chats.
1. Once you sign in, introduce yourself to us, tell us where your from, the name of your blog–if you have one, and whatever else you want to tell us about yourself.
2. Don’t be scared, it’s just us talking to each other. I tried it out last night and a few of you saw me and jumped into the chat and said hi. It was such a thrill, like I was doing great and adventuresome things. Again, I realize I don’t get out much but humor me, ok?
3. Treat everyone with respect and don’t use foul language, unless you’re quoting Doo from Coal Miner’s DAughter and then just add *** to finish the word. Also, when quoting Coal Miner’s Daughter, it helps if you write in the local vernacular. For example, “Hey Doo, who’s at sow you got wallering around in yer jeep?”
4. Hopefully, we won’t blow the internet up. Amen.
We’ll chat til’ you run out of stuff to talk about or until I fall asleep. Also check this post periodically—as I will answer some of your questions at the end of this post!

I’m editing a post for Lent to be posted on Monday. I’m also taking some time off from the world wide web of social networking. Before I disappear for a time, I thought I’d do a little q and a. I’ve been dreadfully behind on answering emails and such and I thought it’d be fun to answer your questions or chitty chat with you all in one post. I’ll end this little online conversation with a live chat on this comment section tomorrow evening, which will be Sunday March 6th. What time is good for you? I was thinking maybe 7-8? Can you be here? We can talk about whatever you want. Boots, lip gloss, insurance, tomato soup, homeschooling, current fads in Christianity, my love for C.S. Lewis, photography or even my favorite lines in Coal Miner’s Daughter. You pick, we’ll chat. If you can’t be here, you can just leave your comment or question on this post and I’ll either post my commentary in this post or the comment section. I’m all ears, just like Hank!

I’ll start with a recent question from one of you about current pics of where we are living. This is the awesome house we’re currently renting. We love it. Beautiful established neighborhood and VERY convenient to everything. We are so blessed to be able to live here.

and here’s our bedroom with a bed–no headboard, a dresser and a lamp.

Now, it’s your turn. I’m grabbing my coffee.

***********************

1. Melissa asks about my favorite jeans.

I could speak all day on this topic. But here’s the short and skinny. Every girl needs a pair of jeans that fit perfectly. It won’t be the same brand/cut/style for each person. But ‘good’ jeans are a must. I wear jeans almost everyday so I’d rather pay $150 a pair for one good pair than $50 a pair for four mediocre pairs. I like American Eagle jeans but I find that I’m always *hiking* them up. My favorite non-hiking, non-muffintop jeans are these Dojo jeans from 7 For All Mankind. These are the best jeans ever made. Ever. I ordered my last pair from Zappos (I also had these before the fire) and couldn’t live without them. I also LOVE these gray skinny jeans called the Bree jean— from the Blogger collection!! —-(which I wear rolled up as capri jeans) from CAbi. If you don’t have a CAbi consultant, you need one because their stuff is awesome and I can get you in touch with my friend Susan who will meet all your fashion needs. CAbi has been sending me boxes of free clothes as part of the ‘Heart of CAbi’ program for people who’ve gone through tragedy. I love this company. They also have a blog called Cabi Canary, which you will love.

Last week, I found this pair of trouser/sailor looking jeans from American Eagle, called the daydreamer, that I love. These fit like butt-ah!

See what I mean? I could talk all day.

2. Fad-Driven Christianity

Shannan and Robyn and Bev ask about my take on the plethora of fads that now dominate American Christianity. Have you noticed this propensity in christianity for the next big thing? The next new book or program? We wait with bated breath for something new, better, more spiritual that will somehow take us to that next level in our christian life. But like all fads, even my current favorite the Dolman shirt, they will come and go and soon enough there will be something brighter, shinier, better to grab our attention. From my own fad-frenzied past, here’s what I think. I think we’re prone to follow fads because we’re so starved for the real thing—-which is the gospel. Most of our churches don’t faithfully preach the gospel every single Sunday. Most of the books we read are full of how-to’s and laundry lists of things we should be doing—instead of focused on the finished work of Christ on the cross. Most of our friends are doing the next big fad and we feel left out if we don’t know about it. But what have we forsaken in our quest for relevancy? Most of these fads are quazi self-help without any clear delineation of God’s law and His gospel. It’s the gospel that’s at stake.

“Pray this prayer and you’ll be rich. Do these things and you’ll get rewards in heaven. Wear this bracelet and you’ll know what to do in certain situations. Wear this ring and stay pure.”

There is no need for the gospel in these scenarios. The gospel plays second fiddle to the program. Christ plays second fiddle to the christian’s self improvement.

A distorted gospel is no gospel at all.

In an article I’ve linked to below, written by Pastor Todd Wilken, he quotes Os Guiness from the book Prophetic Untimeliness, who says that

Relevance without truth encourages what Nietzsche called the “herd” mentality and Kierkegaard “the age of the crowd.” Further compounded by accelerated change, which itself is compounded by the fashion-driven dictates of consumerism, relevance becomes overheated and vaporizes into trendiness.

Feverishness is the condition of an institution that has ceased to be faithful to its origins. It is then caught up in “a restless, cosmopolitan hunting after new and ever newer things.

This article written by Lutheran pastor Todd Wilken says it all. If at possible, read it for yourself and keep an open mind because the first time I read it, I was still a little fad-frenzied and it shook me to the core.
You will find a fair and intelligent discussion on the topic here that is based on this article by Terry Mattingly. Joe Carter, an evangelical himself, wrote this about the the most dangerous fads in and fixtures of American churches.

As for other trends, I’m as guilty as the next girl. I love chevron and ikat fabrics and I love starfish and antlers and I especially love the current trend of classical christian education. Trends are hard to resist. But when it comes to the “faith once delivered to the saints”, that in itself, will never be trendy. THe gospel is foolishness to the world. I’ll finish with this paragraph which is the final paragraph of Pastor Wilken’s article:

As I write this, my 12-year-old daughter is convinced that hip-hugger bell-bottoms are the greatest idea in fashion history. I don’t have the heart to tell her that I used to think so too. She thinks her father looks old-fashioned and lacks all sense of style. I don’t have the heart to tell her that I look back at pictures of my bell-bottom days and laugh. I don’t have the heart to tell her that someday she will do the same. The Church is an old man who has been wearing the same clothes in the same style his whole life. He refuses to change with the fashions. He simply lets the fads pass him by. Yes, he seems behind the times. But look again at what he is wearing. He is clothed in Christ.

Sheepishly stepping off soapbox now and hoping you don’t throw things at me.

3. Living your authentic self

Patty asked about living authentically despite the fads that sweep through culture. I love this quote by Lewis:

“Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)

Minutiae in March

March 1, 2011 by Edie Wadsworth 108 Comments

I can’t remember if I showed this to you yet. The first few times I looked through the rubble, I missed this little jewel. Pretty neat, huh?

Are you ever burdened by big issues and find comfort in the minutiae? Me too. Join me in my numbered list of minutiae.

1. I’m reading Abigail Adams and will soon start Edna Ferber’s novel So Big (for bookclub). I’ve been obsessed with Abigail before. She’s easy to admire. Reading about her life takes the complaining right out of me.

2. The girls and I are about 2/3’s through memorizing The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. I found this interactive map and kinda like it.

3. I made this for dinner on Friday and it was dee-lish-us. Best guacamole I’ve ever made and ever eaten, save the one from San Antone.

4. I made this for dinner last night, in case you wondered. Really good too.

5. I’m a little obsessed with house plans. It needs to be 60 ish x 40. I like this one and this one and this one. None of which are exactly 60 x 40.

6. We’re using hardy siding and will likely use white or off white with gray or green accents. Do you have a favorite house with hardy siding you could share with me?

7. My files of house inspiration are growing quite rapidly. I wish I could define my style. I need Emily Henderson’s help with that. Or yours.

8. What’s your style in 3 phrases? Texas chic, eclectic British, southern vintage, quirky colonial, whimsical cottage? I just made all those up but my Domino decorating book tells me to define my style. It’s not as easy as it sounds. I love the book though. Now, tell me your style in three phrases and maybe I can just copy you.

9. I want my new house to have a exterior that has *depth* and demands respect with interesting layered rooms that are fun and quirky and don’t take themselves too seriously. Is this too much to ask?

10. I like this color palette for my bedroom. I just ordered some fabric swatches from Lewis and Sharon. I’m thinking dark charcoal walls that create a cozy little nest, since everything else in the house will probably be light. With the exception of a few dark doors and window frames and floors.

And this equestrian influenced room. Persimmon is my new favorite accent color because every room needs a pop of red.

11. Since the fire, I find myself in ‘hunker down’ mode. Survival mode. I even considered sending my girls to school because I was sure that I wouldn’t be able to pull myself together enough to function properly. That could still be debated 🙂 Turns out, schooling them and being with them everyday has been my salvation. After a tragedy like that, it’s hard to know what to do with yourself and your emotions. Doing school everyday has given us a structure and foundation for life. I know what I’m supposed to do everyday. One foot in front of the other. Memory work then spelling then writing then math……

It also gives us plenty of opportunities to talk through the issues that arise in the grieving process. I’m so glad I’ve kept my nose to grind. We’ve been working hard the last few weeks and we’re on track to be finished in time to take a little summer break despite the fact that we were *off* for about a month. You should hear these girls do their reciting of “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”. It’s really long and they gave their dad a preview last night. So cool, even with all the giggling! We’re spending the next few weeks on the American Revolution so if you have any favorite resources for this period, we’d love to hear. I’m listening to a series of Stanford lectures on this period (from iTunes university) and listening to an Issues, etc podcast featuring Dr. John Warwick Montgomery on, “Is America a Christian Nation?” Very good listening and I think you’d enjoy it. “How Christian is America?” is good too.

12. Well, I think I better get busy this morning. Before I go, check out this section of comfort food on the Food Network. {Note to self: Never blog when you’re hungry.} Hope you have a great day:)

xo,

edie

p.s. I recently discovered this gem of a song by the Avett Brothers. All My Mistakes.