Edie Wadsworth

When Your Sisters Are Your Lifeline {& a special invitation}

August 2, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 10 Comments

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When my sister Gina and I were little, we stayed at my Mamaw’s trailer a lot while Mama worked two jobs trying to put food on the table. Daddy and Mama were divorced and Daddy had a hard time staying sober. Looking back, though we were loved, chaos wrapped around us like summer vines slithering up the sides of everything.

The only bright spot on that hot summer mountain were the gerber daisies that Mamaw helped us plant from the benevolence Easter basket the country church brought us on good Friday. We watched those flowers for weeks, inching up little by little, declaring that hope could thrive in the most unlikely places, if given half a chance. Finally, Sister had had enough of me bragging about my pretty yellow daisy and how much taller it was growing than hers. One sticky July afternoon, she broke it off at its root.

Mamaw came unglued and I knew that the sins Sister paid for that day were not just her own. At first, I tried to protect my little sister and get between her and the switch but after my arm got grazed, I lost my courage and cried and begged Mamaw not to do it.

From the last part of Chapter 8:

That night, I lay in the twin bed beside Sister and felt the heat coming off the welts on her little legs. Despair came over me, and I wanted to ease this pain for her but was unable even to articulate the pain I felt myself. I hoped Aunt Glenda would come and get us the next day so we could play with my cousin Jamie and get out of this place. I wanted to go home, even if Mama had to leave us by ourselves all day and night. I wanted to be anywhere but here. If only it could be my legs that were hot with stripes, and not Sister’s.

We just lay there, both of us staring down a hard reality—that so little in our lives could be rightly accounted for.

I wanted to hug Sister and tell her that we all do bad things and that Mamaw had whipped her too hard. Or tell her I wish’t that I had the nerve to break a daisy off at its root, which was the kind of outright rebellion I would never have the stomach for.

But I didn’t do or say anything. I lay awake, alone with my regret and emptiness, mad at myself for not protecting her, inching over to the edge of the bed to give her plenty of room to sleep, careful not to rub up against her legs.

***

My sister is the strongest and yet kindest woman I know and today is her birthday. I thought it’d be the perfect time to tell her how much I love her and to thank her for taking such good care of me all these years, gerber daisy notwithstanding.

(I’d actually love to try to recreate this picture but I’m gonna need a nice velvet shirt and a good Shawn Cassidy shag. My sister still makes that same face, by the way.)

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This is what I wrote about her in the acknowledgements section of my book:

To my sister: Nobody has walked with me through this fire like you have. Nobody else knows what our hearts know and nobody shares the same broken heart. Nobody else could have been my soul sister but you and I thank God everyday that he gave you to me. You have been the one constant in the chaos, the anchor in the storm, the fierce protector of my always-bleeding heart. You have guarded this family with your life and fought hard to see every silver lining. You are pure light, a dazzling reflection of our Father’s love.

I wrote it months ago and when I read it, I still get teary eyed, because I wouldn’t be who I am without her. She has been my rock for as long as I can remember. And I know you feel the same away about your sisters and your sister friends, who’ve walked with you through life’s worst and best. Maybe you should call her and tell her today, even if it’s not her birthday.

And with that, it seems like the perfect time to invite you to consider joining arms with me to on the launch team for All the Pretty Things!

If you are interested in a fun and loving sisterhood environment where we’ll read the book together over the next six weeks and have our own private bookclub, I think you’ll love being a part of this. We’re looking for about 300 sister friends. You don’t need a blog or a platform or a thousand Facebook friends. The only requirement is that you believe in God’s message of love and hope for the world despite the hard circumstances we often find ourselves in. We’ll use my story as a spring board to think about your stories and how sharing them can be a lifeline for others.

That’s it. So if you’re willing to link arms and help us get this message to people who need it, I’d be so honored.

What you’ll get:

a full digital copy of the book in the next day or so
access to a private Facebook group where I’ll use live video to host our bookclub and community
a printable book study to aid in discovery & discussion
300 new sister friends (that will be the BEST part, I promise!)

If you’re interested in joining us, click here!

Watch the video and fill out the form and then Tyndale will be in contact with you! Can’t wait to see you inside the group!

My First Love

June 24, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 5 Comments

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Father’s Day has always been a little hard and complicated for me. Not just because it’s father’s day but because my Daddy’s birthday always follows close behind.

But this year has been a little different.

After three years of wrestling words onto a page and my demons to the ground, I finally have peace.

I’m so blessed to have been Jim’s beloved daughter and the recipient of God’s grand and glorious redemption. I pray that when my book comes out, it will be a bridge of hope for those who’ve struggled with the wounds of fatherlessness.

From the last chapter of All the Pretty Things—

“Kneeling by Daddy’s grave, I could almost feel his five o’clock shadow tickling the edge of my face. Or maybe it was just the wind. I turned around to make sure.

Of course, he wasn’t there. I knew that, but this place was where I held his memory closest. The cemetery was less than a mile from every honky tonk he had taken me to as a child and only a few minutes from Mamaw’s trailer. The memory of that place was always catching up with me, no matter how far I had come in life. The grave hadn’t been able to right everything, but in our family’s economy I was Daddy’s person and he was mine, and seventeen years of separation by death hadn’t really changed that.

I guess it was only fitting that I’d be the one to keep him company here, too, although I suspect he’d been just as lonely in life. What a burden he must have carried in his last days—sober yet dying from the worst kind of cancer, slowly smothering to death as his lungs filled with fluid and his heart (I could only guess) with regret. It seemed to me that our relationships with those gone on before us don’t really end; they just change over the years. Apparently I had decided it was still my job to make sure Daddy was okay, to ease the hurt for him, to tell him that despite everything, he gave me the one thing I needed—a father who loved me and who always wanted me by his side.”

Happy Birthday Day to the most wonderful and heartbreaking man I ever knew—my first love and the kind spirit whose life marks my soul forever. The man who made me laugh (and cry) more than any other—whose life gave me life and whose death changed me forever.

And whose courageous choice to laugh when life constantly brought heartache is my teacher always.

Happy Birthday.
Your children miss you.
Your grandchildren would make you proud.
Your struggle was not in vain and I hope you don’t mind that I shared our story. Writing it made me realize you gave me a blessed gift.

I love you, Daddy and miss you every single day.

The Reason I Gave Up on Essential Oils

June 21, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 11 Comments

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As a family medicine physician who spent most of her twenties with sick people, I feel qualified to comment on state of modern medicine and how my submersion into the world of natural health and essential oils over the last few years has opened my eyes to so much that I never knew.

Very early in my career as a physician, I developed a love/hate relationship with pharmaceuticals. Sometimes they were life-savers. Most times, they caused more problems than they helped. Certainly, I realized pretty quick that someone who takes 10 (not uncommon in my neck of the woods in someone over 50) prescription drugs in a day does not usually feel very well. Not to mention how prescription drug abuse has devastated the county where I live in East Tennessee. So began my quest to stop or wean as many medications as I could from as many patients as I could. People felt better, often got their energy and their passion and their lives back. And since doctors are trained to prescribe medication above all else, by the time I quit, I was basically an anti-doctor, feeling very out of place in the profession I spent so much time training for.

And to be honest, from the beginning, I was the health care professional who never took antibiotics and tried to take as little of anything as I could. I can still count on one hand the number of times I’ve had my kids to a doctor’s office or on any type of pharmaceutical. Somewhere deep in my subconscious was a healthy skepticism toward the system—the system that is amazing at keeping us alive (and I’m very thankful for that) but not very good at keeping us healthy and thriving.

I wanted something different for myself and my own family than what I saw at work day in and day out.

After I quit my job, I continued to be fascinated with health and nutrition and natural ways to stay well. I was also saddened by the declining state of health care and the declining state of our overall health—despite our obsession with it, despite the fact that there’s a drug store on every corner, and despite the fact that though we spend more money than every other country on health care, we don’t seem to be thriving in the wellness arena. We seem to be getting sicker and sicker and more dependent on the system.

Honestly, when I got my first set of essential oils, I did it mostly to prove to myself (and to my friend who convinced me to buy the kit!) that it was just another fad. I kept the box of oils in my china hutch, stored away under lock and key like you would store Grannie’s heart medication. Occasionally I’d go to the trouble to drag the box out, open up a few bottles, rub some lavender on my skin and then put the whole thing away, all the while saying to myself. “It’s all hype, just like I thought.”

I basically gave up on them after having that box in my house for almost a year, thinking it was just a box of things that smelled good.

Then. Something changed. I went to a conference where I saw some of my friends carrying little bags in their purses full of small cute bottles, and applying them multiple times a day, all the while giggling and happy and sharing them freely with others. I did a double take and realized that I had those same oils back home in my china hutch, standing on the ready for the next yard sale.

The problem with essential oils is that we view them like medicine, which they are not. We’re afraid of them, not sure what to do with them, and sure that we’ll do something dangerous like overdose on them or use them in the wrong combination.

Here’s the honest truth. After two years of finally using them as they’re intended to be used, (more like food than medicine) I can tell you that I could never go back to life before oils and I could never practice medicine in the same way either. Why? Because I’ve had life changing results and now I know too much. I know that for 90% (or more) of what ails us, there’s a much easier and way safer answer than pharmaceuticals, beginning with nutrition and removing the worst toxins from our daily life. I also know that essential oils will balance everything from hormones to mood to skin to immunity to digestion and on and on and on. I’m so thankful for my medical training but I’m even more thankful that I didn’t stop being willing to keep learning, even if that has meant relearning much of what I was taught.

The reason most people fail to have the same results as I eventually did when they start using oils is because they’re scared of actually using them.

And perhaps rightly so. All oils are not created equal and I wouldn’t trust my health or that of my family’s to any company but Young Living.

But, using oils is more like eating fruits and vegetables than taking a medicine. Can you eat grapes with apples and oranges at the same sitting? Sure. Can you eat cauliflower in the same day or at the same meal that you eat broccoli and swiss chard. Of course. Will everything be okay if you have twelve different fruits and vegetables in one day? Absolutely. Things will be better in fact!

Those nutrients were made by God for our benefit and because He made them, they know what to do in our bodies. You don’t have to understand the chemistry of how Vitamin B works to get the benefits of it. But you do have to eat foods rich in it and eat them often.

The same with oils. There’s very little you can do wrong with pure grade oils and SO MUCH you can do right.

Once you try therapeutic grade oils and once you know how to use them, you will never go back to not using them. I promise.

You just need a guide to help you.

Which is why I’ve spent the last two years teaching people how to use them.

And why I created a course to get you started with more confidence.

The best news is— this week only, my essential oils course is part of an amazing natural health bundle where you get $400 worth of educational products and courses for $29, which is $10 cheaper than my course alone. It’s almost too good to be true! AND. If you purchase the bundle through my link, you’ll get a pdf and a (slightly dorky) video of me showing you exactly how I use essential oils everyday to feel better and more energized than I have in years. I think you’ll find it fascinating if you’ve always wondered what people do with those little colorful bottles.

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Maybe you’re like I was? Too paralyzed and full of questions to really use the oils you bought. I created this course with us in mind.

Or maybe you feel guilty about the box of oils that’s been sitting in your house that you’ve been afraid to really use? This bundle is for you and will give your the knowledge and confidence to finally make the purchase worthwhile.

Have you been on the fence, wondering if the oils would work for you and your specific situation? They will. And there has never been a better time to arm yourself with a library of resources.

Do you see the writing on the wall and realize that we must do something to start taking charge of our own health? This course will give you the confidence you need to take the first steps. You are going to LOVE the way these natural oils balance everything in your life. They are by far the best investment I’ve ever made for my health.

A sample of other things you get in the bundle:

101 Essential Oil Blends for Topical & Aromatic Use by Rachel Zupke of Mason Jar Values ($7.99)
Best Herbs & Essential Oils For Labor & Delivery-Audio Class & Transcript by Jenni Wilson of Natural Oil Mom ($19.95)
Handbook of Home Remedies by Wellness Mama ($24.00)
Herbs & Oils: Beyond the Basics by Jessie Hawkins of Vintage Remedies ($165.00)
Homegrown Healing, from Seed to Apothecary by Chris Dalziel of Joybilee Farm ($9.97
Wholistic Vitality: Healing Foods for the Whole Family by Dr. Karen Lee of DrKarenSLee.com ($9.99)

If you click this link or the yellow box below, you can see a short video I made about the bundle!

(The bundle sale starts today and will only be available for one week and likely never again, so snatch it up before it’s too late!)

Also, if you happen to click before then, you will submit your email and then they’ll notify you when the sale starts. OR. You can just come back and click the link after 9:30.)

(And if you haven’t yet used essential oils and would like to begin using them AS you learn, I’d be honored to have you in my group! Click here to get your oils purchased. We have lots of fun, learning together and sharing our answers with each other.)

If you purchase the bundle sale, come back and add your email address to the form below so we can send you your bonuses next wee!

When Comparison is Paralyzing You

June 6, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 3 Comments

When I started blogging, I found the Nester in the first two days and I was mesmerized. She was funny and quirky and we shared a common love for our homes and how to make them better. I was convinced I wanted to be a home blogger like her. I documented my house projects and tried to figure out how to be the Nester when I grew up.

Then I found Melanie. And I loved the way she wrote about nothing—like the Seinfeld show of blogging. She was hilarious and so comfortable in her blogging skin, which was (and is) mostly about going to the grocery store and dealing with dogs and meals and life, with some awesome fashion thrown in. Maybe I could be like her.

Then I found faith bloggers. And style bloggers. And food bloggers. I compared myself to all of them, to their writing styles and their photos and their social media presence. I wanted to be everything they were. Then, I wanted to quit. Because it felt too hard and I wasn’t sure where or if I could fit in with my very different background and my very different outlook on life.

After years of trying to figure it all out, I quit trying to be like everybody else and ventured into the scary waters of trying to be myself.

I’m what happens when the Nester and Melanie and Ann and Christy have a Lutheran, cowboy boot wearing, karaoke singing, Southern appalachian love child with an weird enthusiasm for food and natural health and theology and decorating. I’m a quirky mix of all of them and yet nothing like them whatsoever. In other words, I finally learned to be me. And I do me much better than I do them. And when I settled into doing the best version of me, I found my sweet spot.

C.S. Lewis is a dangerous man to read and confirmed my suspicions when he wrote this:

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 find it. ~C.S. Lewis

We’re all guilty of it, let’s just be honest. We look around and see people who seem to have it all. We wonder why we struggle in certain areas, why we’ve been given this particular set of circumstances, why we aren’t more gifted or beautiful, or why everyone else seems to be gliding by so effortlessly, with perfect passion and energy and joy. And if we’re not careful, we start to develop bitterness toward the people we’re comparing ourselves to.

Find comfort in this: think of the most wonderful, successful, kind, blessed person you can think of and know that she is comparing herself to someone too—and she’s not measuring up. It’s a pitiful cycle that we can all get caught up in and it steals our joy and contentment.

And none of us are exempt.

Actually, the women we most compare ourselves to—the ones that seem to have it all—are often the ones who struggle most with insecurity and self-doubt.

Lean in, pretty momma, because I have something important to tell you.

You are beautiful. You are enough. You are just who God made you to be, in every way.

And once you let that sink in, it will slowly begin to change your view of yourself and your interaction with others.

Our tendency to compare ourselves to others makes us more self-centered than we ought to be. And once we settle into our own skin—comfortable with who we were made to be—we can finally stop focusing on ourselves and start spending that valuable energy on how we can best serve and love those around us.

The truth is, comparing ourselves to others doesn’t just steal our joy, it robs those around us of the rare gift of a woman who has learned to give her uniqueness to the world.

Lay down the comparison, the self doubt, the insecurity, and start offering your gifts to the world. We need you. And to butcher my favorite song lyric from Bob Dylan, the world ain’t seen nothing like you yet.

***

If you’re struggling with self-doubt, comparison, insecurity, maybe even going through a grown up identity crisis, I think I can help. All those years of struggling to be myself? I took some good notes and learned a few priceless gems along the way. I rediscovered my passion and learned to live with a more purpose and creativity. Most of all, I learned the joy (and the heartache) of offering myself to those who need me most. And I’m still figuring it all out. But I decided to share my cliff notes in a 4 week mentoring/accountability group called O V E R F L O W.

You can find out all about it here. I can’t wait to meet you there.

Wide awake and overflowing

June 3, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 6 Comments

I remember well the first month at home after I quit my family medicine job. It was awful. I felt lost, alone, untethered, uninspired, undone, un-everything. It was like staring at an empty page with no idea what I should write. I finally bought a book on how to bake bread and something about the hands in the dough and tangible offering of warm bread to hungry people brought me out of the funk.

I’ve been in a similar weird place a dozen times or more in my life. Maybe a life transition or an epiphany or just a long dry spell where nothing even tasted right.

What I discovered every time is that if I would stay open to learning, discovering, loving, serving— I always found my way and usually with the help of a friend or mentor or someone a little farther along in the process.

If we open ourselves up—in the process, we learn to live fully alive in our giftings, free from what has shamed us and caused us to hide, free to finally love and serve the people God has put right in front of us with everything that is in us, free and inspired to be everything we were created to be.

In the past two years, one of things that has helped me so much in the dry, apathetic spells have been mentoring/coaching groups. I’ve learned so much and have found wonderful, supportive relationships in the process.

That’s why I’m so excited about O V E R F L O W—my brand new 4-week mentorship program for the woman who feels stuck or apathetic or overflowing in all the wrong ways. I’ve been there so many times.

We’re all busy, with full lives and we often see things overflow—the laundry, the toilet, the dishes, the anger, the stress. But how do we overflow with the all the right things? How do we overflow with love and joy and compassion and creativity? This session will be a mini boot camp to get us headed in the right direction, with amazingly simple but practical steps, lots of inspiration, and some well worn advice from someone who knows how hard it can be to live wide awake to your life.

This bootcamp will;

ignite a fire in you as to who (and whose) you really are and what you were made to do
help you rediscover the best parts of you that have often been hiding or wounded or covered up by the stresses of life
help you discover practical strategies to develop your gifts & strengths, even in the midst of the busy mom life
wake up to your unique vocation and shake the pesky bad habits that creep in when we dismiss our calling
nurture you toward the purpose and passion and creativity that is uniquely yours
give you a safe place and plenty of encouragement to daydream about the full and abundant life you were made to live

Click here to read about what’s included.

Mwahhhh!

edie

Because the world has enough critics…

May 23, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 2 Comments

(I gave this talk at my sister’s church on Friday night and I wanted to share some of it with you, too. At the end, there’ll be a way to download the pdf of the talk, in case you’re interested.)

There is a message that burns in my heart. I call it the Jesus way of hospitality. Thinking about it and writing about it has caused a radical shift in the way I think about the people I encounter everyday, especially those who are closest to me.

The reason I’m obsessed with this kind of hospitality is because I’m not naturally very good at it and I see so little of it in our world. We are SO easy to be critical and judgemental and full of gossip about the people in our lives, but not so willing to lay down our lives for them. And since the world has enough critics, I hope this message will light a fire in you like it has in me, to show the world a better way.

The trouble is—I’m just like the next girl. I want to sit and work and live RIGHT inside my comfort zone, with people who are just like me. I want to fit in and be part of the in crowd. I want to sit with the important people, whoever they are, at the head of the table. I’m the disciple who asked Jesus if he could sit on his right or left. I’m usually way more concerned about the Pinterest way of hospitality—the kind that wants to impress people instead of carrying their burdens. I’m guessing that’s your default too. That’s why we need to take a new look at what Jesus had to say about being in this world with other people.

The Jesus way of hospitality was radical and uncomfortable and difficult.

The Jesus way of hospitality was always taking the disciples by surprise and questioning their motives and their methods. Why are you feeding people when there’s no food? Why are you inviting children and the blind and lame, and worse yet, why are you always in the company of prostitutes and tax collectors and why are you always eating with sinners?

The Jesus way of hospitality looks a lot like being your sister’s keeper and forgiving her sins and seeing her need and feeding her. It is a hospitality of the spirit AND the flesh, it is a hospitality of inconvenience and ultimately of suffering. There were no pretty tablescapes and no Pinterest worthy meals in the New Testament—just a little broken bread and a some words of forgiveness and healing.

And nobody loves the Pinterest idea of Hospitality more than me. Have you SEEN my Pinterest boards lately?

I look around at all those pretty meals and tablescapes and I drool. I’ve been blogging for eight years and hospitality has always been my thing. If you visit my blog, you’ll find all kinds of resources for meals and decorating and hospitality. I ADORE holidays and tablescapes and all the pretty things. And I’m Southern so I’m supposed to be good at this, right? I LOVE finding new ideas on Pinterest for how to get supper on the table and how to make a bed out of duct tape.

But often, you know who is blessed when I’m setting beautiful tables and making lavish meals and keeping up with the Jones’s? I am. I’m proud of myself that it seems like I’ve thought of everything. I make handmade place cards and homemade pie crust and put flesh flowers into carved out pumpkins and it looks beautiful. But if I’m not careful, the people who have been with me leave my presence feeling shallowly impressed with me and not really cared for and loved on at all.

Often, My hospitality has been impressive but it has not been life-giving.

My hospitality has been pinnable but it has not been sacrificial.

My hospitality has so often been for me and not for my neighbor.

With Jesus, there is a better way. He is Hospitality incarnate.

(To read the rest, download the whole talk below as a pdf and share with your friends who might be looking for a better way than the way of the critic. If you’re already subscribed to my email list, you’ll get a message that says Already Subscribed, but it will send you the pdf anyway. If you aren’t subscribed, it will add you and you’ll get an email from me about once a week. Unsubscribe after you get the download if you don’t wish to get my weekly emails! No hard feelings, I promise.)

Edie Wadsworth

And with that, it seems like the perfect time to invite you to consider joining arms with me to on the launch team for All the Pretty Things!

If you’re interested in joining us, click here!

The problem with essential oils is that we view them like medicine, which they are not. We’re afraid of them, not sure what to do with them, and sure that we’ll do something dangerous like overdose on them or use them in the wrong combination.

Click Here to Download!