Edie Wadsworth

……and just like that, he was gone.

March 4, 2009 by Edie Wadsworth 1 Comment

My time is running out. I feel the pressure of the days swiftly being hurled at me like an oncoming freight train. He graduates in 86 days. And I’m not ready. Not by a long shot. But as I gather the pictures and cards and awards and songs to try and make some memories live for him, I find comfort in his ‘things’…..the things that remind me so vividly of his impact on my life. I’m letting you peak in on my work before I’m done, but I thought I’d share a few things I found and a few things I’m creating.

This picture was taken when Taylor was six so that makes this little ‘letter’ I wrote to him 12 years old. I don’t think I’d change a thing.

Dear Taylor,
The joy you have brought to my life and to this family is immeasurable. I am so blessed to be your mother and to have the privilege to teach and nurture you. You tug at my heartstrings with your smile and your adorable sense of humor. Thank you for being so teachable.

-so eager to learn and eager to please. I love your sensitivity to others and how you place others before yourself.

I pray that as you grow and learn, we will have the wisdom to love you unconditionally, to praise your many wonderful attributes and to carefully help you recognize and correct your shortcomings.

Because I know we are human and will fail, I pray mostly that God in His wisdom, will make up the difference and give you what we, in our frailty, could not.

I love you, Mom.

I then flipped through the pages of the senior scrapbook I’m making…..where I printed out one of my blog posts……

…..and made a 2 page spread of one of his concerts.

And then I got a few of the Cd’s ready to mail.

and put some of his pictures to music….his own music…..a song he wrote called ‘I’m Not a King’.

So, I hope you enjoy a little sampling of Taylor’s music and his life. I know I’m trying to savor every last moment. For just like that, he’ll be gone.

And then like a good strong southern mama, I dried my tears and made biscuits and gravy (at Caiti’s request) because we’re making memories here.

comments closed for Lent

Greek Goddess Frittata

March 3, 2009 by Edie Wadsworth 1 Comment

As my faithful readers know, the girls and I are studying the golden age of Greece. I have renamed myself Hestia, the goddess of hearth and home. We’re painting grecian urns, memorizing lists of the gods and goddesses, learning about Odysseus and the parthenon, and making salt maps of Crete. And now I give you my take on a meatless (in honor of those who give up meat for Lent) greek frittata….which I have renamed Greek Goddess Frittata, because I am a smidge melodramatic. And I like eggs.

You will need:

12 eggs

1 jar roasted red peppers

1 red onion

1 box frozen spinach

4 T. half and half

1 cup cheddar cheese

1 container feta cheese

1/2 small container mushrooms

1/2 container grape tomatoes sliced in half

2 T. garlic and herb seasoning

few shakes of balsamic vinegar

1 T. honey

salt and pepper to taste

your supreme goddess kitchen skillz

If you’re from the south and not Catholic, start with a tablespoon of bacon grease, which you keep stored in your cupboard. If you’re not southern, ignore that part. We don’t really have bacon grease that months old stored in our cupboards for cooking purposes. *wink* Do we girls? You can just start with a tablespoon of butter and we’ll let bygones be bygones . Then everyone add a few swirls of olive oil to a large nonstick saute pan. Then add 1/2 of a chopped red onion, the mushroom and grape tomatoes and then salt and pepper to taste. Also, take 2 peppers from the RRP container and chop and add them to the onion mixture. Saute until onions begin to carmelize.

Meanwhile, combine the eggs, the cheddar cheese, the garlic seasoning, the vinegar and honey. Mix well. Cook the frozen spinach in the microwave for 4-5 min and then drain it very well. Very well, I said, and then add that to the egg mixture.

Demeter, the goddess of grain, will try to persuade you to add this beloved mixture into a crust of some kind. Resist her please. Please. This a frittata, not a quiche little Ms. Demeter.

Now continue to cook this on the stove and stir it as you would an omelette.

Then add 1/2 container of feta cheese. (the small container and whatever ‘flavor’ you like…I used tomato-basil feta). Stir this around and cook for a couple of minutes. Then add to the top rack of the oven on BROIL. It will take about 8-9 minutes to cook. I make mine early in the day and then reheat in the oven on 350 for 5-10 minutes before dinner.

I give you

Greek Goddess Frittata

Sure to appease your meatless cravings, your spartan children and your handsome Apollo!

For other Tasty Tuesday recipes, visit Kim at ForeverWherever!

comments closed for Lent

Thoughts on the Proper distinction between Law and Gospel

March 1, 2009 by Edie Wadsworth 24 Comments

Do you have a visceral reaction when you see the Ten Commandments posted in public? Are you an advocate for having them posted in public places, with the thought that it somehow constitutes a sort of victory for christianity? Maybe I’m just a particularly sinful example of a christian, but my visceral reaction to seeing the commandments posted is guilt and shame. I look at the list and don’t get very far down until the ‘law’ accuses me. I have been a very poor keeper of God’s law and I don’t particularly like the visual reminder of my failure. What’s more, I often wonder how the average Joe walking into the courthouse feels about the public display of this law of God? Does it move him any closer to God’s love and redemption? And why have we chosen this particular ‘word’ of God to hold up for the world to see and ponder?

Only since I’ve become Lutheran have I been able to admit my ‘disdain’ for the public display of the commandments. Lutherans teach that the only way to properly interpret the holy scriptures is to properly distinguish between law and gospel. In brief, the law is God’s moral law that has been written onto our hearts and that is summarized by the commands that we are to love the Lord with all our heart and love our neighbor as ourselves. The gospel is the good news of Christ’s all availing sacrifice for us by His death on the cross. The law demands perfection and brings death. The gospel proclaims forgiveness and gives life. The law accuses us of our complete failure to please God while the gospel announces that Christ has pleased God perfectly for us. The law tells me what I must do; the gospel tells me what Christ has done. The law, when properly preached and taught, pins me to the ground….leaves me no way of escape and forces me to see the reality of my complete depravity and wickedness before a holy God. The law has done it’s job when it has crucified me and left me for dead. The gospel of Christ then breathes new life into me with the sweet taste of forgiveness and absolution. Another has paid the price for my sin and He alone, because of His own death and resurrection, has become my atonement. But there can be no life until we have first been killed by the law. It’s a theme throughout scripture. Death brings life. The first shall be last. Scripture is nothing if not a paradox.

And lest I haven’t convinced you yet of the death that the law brings, read over the commandments. Have you broken them today? I, for one, have broken most of them. I have envied and lusted and coveted and according to Jesus’ definition, I’ve even committed murder. Most of us probably rarely make it through breakfast without butchering 8 out of 10 of the commandments, if we were honest with ourselves. So, why then, would God give us a list of rules to follow that He knew we couldn’t follow? Would He ask us to do something which He knew full well we could never do? Yes, in fact, He would. He would give us a list of laws to show us beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are incapable of keeping them. Any of them. Let alone keep them perfectly, as Jesus so eloquently insisted.

So when I see christians demanding that the 10 commandments be posted in public places, I wonder why. If we were going to post something about our faith, wouldn’t we want it to be the good news of Christ’s forgiveness? And do we want them posted because we wrongly believe that we are actually keeping them? The law of God alone, stripped of the gospel, does not produce faith. If we feel we are keeping the law, we become prideful like the pharisees. And those of us who know we’re not living up to God’s standards begin to despair. The law can never bring life even if it serves temporarily to control behavior. Only the gospel of Jesus can bring life. But we won’t know that we need Him so desperately without a harsh presentation of how miserably we’ve failed to measure up to God’s standards.

In a perfect sermon, these two go hand in hand; held in paradoxical tension. In most sermons I’ve heard over thirty years of being a Christian, the law was usually watered down to a more ‘keepable’ level and the gospel was presented as somewhat conditional upon my sincerity. Or even worse, after the gospel was presented, an altar call was given where I now need to come forward and pledge to do X,Y, and Z. The good news that was given to me was then partially taken away. God wants to gospel to have the last word. For ‘the gospel is the power of God unto salvation’.

So I say, memorize the commandments, teach them to your children, but take them down from the public square. And put up a cross or better yet, a crucifix. At least there’s hope in the cross.

Ironically enough, these very Lutherans who claim that God’s law properly interpreted cannot bring life, are also very serious about learning and memorizing God’s law. His laws are the perfect recipe for harmony and peace in this life….if we could only keep them. And despite the fact that we cannot, one can only get to that complete realization by trying. So the more I know and attempt to practice God’s law, the more it convicts me and shows me my sin. Also of note, is that Moses, who brought God’s law to the people of Isreal, was never allowed to enter the promised land, while Joshua, whose name means Jesus, led God’s people into Canaan. I say all that to say that we’re teaching our girls Luther’s small catechism. They’re still working on it, but I thought you’d enjoy hearing their recitation of the first five commandments and their meanings.

I also have very good news for you……Taylor’s CD’s are in. If you left a comment on this post, email with your address and I’ll send you a CD. If you did not leave a comment on that post, well shame on you. But I’ll gladly you send you one for $7 including shipping. Just send me an email with your address.

Have a blessed Lord’s day on this first Sunday of Lent.

Love and hugs and showers of blessings! Also go to my tumblr site and check out some fun craft room ideas. I see painting in my future.

February 28, 2009 by Edie Wadsworth Leave a Comment

This post has no other purpose but to show you this cute red bird that Lyndsay designed for me…which Steve has informed me is a tree swallow, the best he can tell. I’m working on a post on the subject ‘God’s Law and God’s Gospel’….which I hope to have ready this weekend. Comments will be open for that post so get your typing hands ready. Hope you’re having a fantastical Friday.

Your friend and the goddess of hearth and home,

Hestia

https://www.lifeingraceblog.com/2009/02/219/

Hestia, the goddess of hearth and home

February 25, 2009 by Edie Wadsworth Leave a Comment

Just call me Hestia–the Homeschooler

1. My winter ‘funk/blues’ (you know, the one I’ve been in for about a year and a half) is almost over. I’ve been practicing my hitch kicks and have planned to make a small chocolate cake with buttercream icing to celebrate. (after Lent of course)

2. I’m working on a guest post about homeschooling (yes the same one I’ve been working on for a month) and I was hoping my ‘funk’ would be over before I needed to submit the post. As fate would have it, the funk will still be in place…..which means I’ll need extra special audio-visuals to ensure the ‘readers’ what a wonderful homeschooler I am. Any ideas? Oh wait, dummy me turned the comments off.

3. Never ask a homeschooler to do a guest post anywhere near February…..when most of us are looking for the nearest school that serves lunch…..and hasn’t had a shooting….in a while.

4. I cannot bear to tell anyone of my lenten discipline (other than closing my comments) …..because that would ensure me ‘breaking’ it within the hour. I’ve already considered opening comments back up. I’m just that disciplined.

5. I have renamed myself Hestia-the greek goddess of hearth and home. I’m having new cards printed with my new name and am working on new monograms. Cindy, who made my beef stew, assures me that I qualify. And I’ve always been jealous of “H” monograms.

6. I can’t decide if I want Stevie to be Apollo (god of light) or Helios (god of the son) or Zeus (king of the gods). I could be speaking out of turn, but I think he would also nominate me for Demeter (goddess of grain) because I bake so much bread.

7. There is something ‘to’ this classical education thing. The girls and I are reading about Odysseus, Greek mythology, the Trojan War, Alexander the Great, and even Plato. We’re listening to Bach’s Mass in B minor and memorizing EVERYTHING…..lately we’ve memorized a list of the greek gods, Deut. 6:4-9, the Ten commandments, and the poem Foreign Lands by Robert Louis Stevenson. We’ve read great books like Eight Cousins and The Railway Children. We’ve done some fun art projects including making an Olympic wreath and a cardboard version of The Wooden Horse. We’re studying the life of Christ for lenten devotions and have adopted ‘kneeling’ for our morning prayers. (which Emme was enraged by…..and with a big sigh said, “My knee hurts, mom”. ) My struggles over the past month with homeschooling have been real and grueling. And yet, when I look at some of the wonderful things we’ve done, I can only cry out, “Lord give me strength”. I say all that to say……..pray that I will make the right decisions regarding my childrens’ future.

8. I’m checking out a new program called Classical Conversations. It’s an adjunct for homeschoolers (like a co-op of sorts) and meets once a week in Knoxville. Email me if you have any advice or experience with this program.

9. To take a small break from the Greeks and to help me with my bookclub book for March which is the autobiography of Ben Franklin, I started a book called Founding Brothers. Very interesting, so far. I also plan to read a C.S. Lewis book a month. March-The Great Divorce. Read it with me. You’ll love it. This will be my 3rd time reading it. And I just placed an Amazon order today that will secure for me every last book that Lewis wrote. Oh yes I did.

10. My prayer life reminds me of that of a 4 year old. I start out with the best intentions:

Dear Lord, I confess to you that I am a sinner through and through. I’ve sinned against you in so many large and small ways already today. I’m a beggar in need of repentance and I pray that you will have mercy on me……..(wonder how that gargantuan ball of dog hair/dust got way over there……and I really should take that dog to get him groomed…he’s so cute…that Hank……)

Oh and yes Lord, please forgive me for my lack of attention….where was I? Oh yeah, a poor miserable sinner…..I haven’t even written my thank you note to Aunt Rosemary. (It was so nice of them to have us there last weekend. I don’t know how Uncle Troy made those pepper mills.) And on and on until I almost laugh at how…..childish I must seem to God. I’m like my 6 year old who starts to tell me about what she wants for her birthday and twenty minutes later is asking if I remember that time that she had a bad dream about a monkey driving a big car? This my friends, is why I need Lent. I need discipline and practice and a timeframe.

10. I’m planning a small Greek Festival for the girls and I to ‘showcase’ our favorite Greek projects. We’re gonna make Greek food and wear flowing simple gowns. Okay the girls refuse to wear gowns and will likely not enjoy the food. But I am gonna enjoy it. And very soon I will re-emerge from my ‘funk or whathaveyou’ a new, lighter, and able to breath easier mama. I just know I will.

11. Marcus moves out this Friday. We are sad for us and happy for him. He’s moving to live very near campus which will save a lot of driving time for him. To ease the pain of the transition for the little girls, I told them they could move upstairs to ‘his’ room sometime after he moves out. Which I already regret….’cause they seem too young still (6,8) to not be right beside us. This would however open up their room to me for an office/craft room/lock myself in and cry room. This means I’ve got work to do. Things to paint. Redecorranging galore. Any fresh ideas? My mind is whirling. My heart rate is 180. And I haven’t even had an energy drink yet. And Marcus, we miss you already, despite the fact that the girls keep coming upstairs to ‘scout out the place’.

12. I need a teacher’s aide. Or a cleaning lady. Or a year’s supply of energy drinks. Or all of the above.

13. If you have never heard a 6 and an 8 year old sittin’ around talkin’ about what they’re gonna *do* for Lent, then you should try it sometime. Oh.my.word. Funny stuff. Very funny stuff. And let’s just say that Elea is oiling up her bicycle chain.

14. Maybe I should start a blog carnival called ‘Hooray for Hestia’ or ‘I am a Goddess’ where we women could post random stuff about our home and hearth and share it with others. And then again maybe I need sleep. Or chocolate.

The Season of Lent and learning from my Father………

February 24, 2009 by Edie Wadsworth 23 Comments

“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 that 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 give 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.

Among other lofty and likely unattainable goals, I have decided to close comments on most posts during Lent. I got the idea from Jen at Conversion Diary and am already regretting the decision, even as I type it. I love your comments and feedback. You have been such a source of inspiration and blessing to me. Closing comments seems a little scary. How will I know you’re still there? How will I know if you loved the cookie recipe? Well, because I’ve learned that Lent is not an invitation to legalism, I thought I’d give myself permission to open comments when they would likely be helpful to others (and not just a much needed pat on the back for me). So posts such as this one…..where the discussion is often more informative than the post, I’ll leave them open. And when I show you my latest find at the thrift store…..or you need to know what paint color I used, well I guess you’ll have to email or facebook or twitter me. (Right, Jess?) Now, comment while you can! That’s assuming I can figure out how to close and open them!