All The Pretty Things

When you wish you could take it back….

September 27, 2017 by Edie Wadsworth 5 Comments

Have you ever shared something with someone and then later regretted it—wondering what he/she/they might do with that little piece of your heart you just gave away?!?

I tend to err on the side of sharing and connection so sometimes I get a vulnerability hangover.

Like exactly one year ago when my very broken story landed in hands and Amazon carts around the country. The story of Daddy and me and of my journey through what felt like hell at times.

I was literally sick about it. Mad at myself for putting my story so out there. Wishing for all the world I could take it back.

“What if nobody really understands? What if I lose the relationships I’ve spent so long building? What will happen when they all find out the real truth about who I am, what I’ve been through, and what I’ve done?”

Well, sister, maybe you’re saying that to yourself, even without a memoir coming out. I actually bet you are. I bet it’s one of your deepest fears—that you’ll be found out, that people will see through the veil and facade, that you will be rejection and unlovely.

Here’s the truth.

The most important person, the ONE who really matters, already knows ALL OF IT. And He has already made His judgement.

And He made it against Jesus, so that He could declare you forgiven and ENOUGH and beautiful and WHOLE and FREE.

Because of the unfathomable sacrificial love of our Father, we can now stop worrying about ourselves and whether or not everyone will find out that we aren’t what we pretend to be. We aren’t. The end. And that, dear heart, is SO FREEING.

You are now free to love Him with all your heart and soul and mind. NOT so that He will love you but BECAUSE He loves you.

You are now free to share your wounded, messy heart and life with your sisters because SHE IS THE SAME AS YOU. And if you will go first and be real and raw and vulnerable, you will set her free to do the same.

You are now free to love your neighbor as yourself because you lack nothing and the abundance that flows from your life of faith in Christ will sustain you and will nourish everyone who meets you.

YOU ARE FREE to give and love and serve, with complete and reckless abandon for the sake of seeing the grace of God born in another human heart.

Don’t hold back.

Don’t count the cost.

Tell your story with everything that is in you and God will use it to feed hungry and hurting souls.

It took me until sometime in the middle of October last year to finally realize what God was up to in my journey.

He was stripping me of everything I was hiding so that He could give me everything I was missing.

I’m so thankful for His love and care.

And I’m so thankful for yours too.

Thank you for buying the book, for sharing it, for writing me love notes, and encouraging me when I felt like I couldn’t stand.

Thank you for meeting me in this online space for nearly 10 years.

Let’s keep doing what we’re called to do with everything that is in us.

I adore and just wanted to say thank you for all the ways you’ve been His grace to me.

All my love,
edie

You can grab the book here, if you haven’t read it yet!

p.s. LIVESTREAM was last week at my lifeingrace page but here’s the replay in case you missed it!

Where your power lies…

December 5, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 9 Comments

I did everything I was supposed to do.

Three years. Three complete rewrites. Countless sleepless nights. Many editors.

Finally, one hard truth given to the world as a gift—the spoils of my adventures into the far and dark country of my past.

I wrote my story, I did the hard work of telling the world about it, I did speaking engagements and videos and blog posts and all of it, and now I was finally done.

I felt so relieved when the last t was crossed—relieved to not talk about it, at least for a while.

Writing my truth and sharing it it had at times reduced me to a little girl still waiting for her Daddy. I began to feel bare and alone and vulnerable. I cried most of the month of September.

I was thankful and relieved and even healed by the telling but I also wanted to stop reliving it all in my head every time someone would ask about the book.

Two days after I fulfilled my last scheduled obligation, I was waiting for my lunch at a cafe and a friend told me she’d read my story.

My heart sank. I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted to the be the person who taught about essential oils or the person who made really good beef stew or the person who blogged about decorating. Anything but the girl who was fatherless and unspoken for, I wanted to be anybody but her.

A few days later, I got this email that went something like this,

Your book wrecked me. I read it one day and couldn’t stop crying. For the first time in my life, I don’t feel alone. I have hope that God can heal me too, for the first time ever. The bitterness I’ve carried is melting away. I could feel it leaving as I read. Please, please never regret writing your story. It has been a lifeline for me. Please pray for me, that God will work the same miracle in my heart.

That email was like a punch in the gut to me.

I had fallen so easily back into victim mentality. Hadn’t I known completely that God would use my story to minister healing to others? Hadn’t I believed Him for that? But here I was, wallowing in weird self-pity. Poor me, everyone knows my story now, wonder what they think….All those dumb thoughts that can so often keep me too focused on my own self.

You probably have a catalogue of them in your head too. And they keep you from really sharing your whole self with us.

I publicly want to say thank you to everyone who has written me about this book because your words have kept me honest and reminded me why we all need each other. You’ve kept me open and vulnerable and willing to keep sharing.

I’m imagining you struggle too, with being okay with who you really are. Maybe you’re ashamed of your story or fearful of sharing it because you so want to fit in or be liked or be anonymous.

I don’t think that’s what you really want though.

But your Father made you to be alive and free SO THAT you can spend yourself for the sake of others.

You want to tap into real power in your life? The power to really help another human being? It’s in your story. Your struggle, your pain, your weakness.

Your story doesn’t steal your power, it is your power.

It’s the reason you’re here.

And none of it is by accident, it is by design—the design of a God who loves you and is for you and wants to see you live in full passion and freedom. But you can’t do that when you deny so much of who you really are.

Share yourself with us. Be generous with us. Trust us.

Stop hiding behind your job and your status and your wealth. Or stop hiding behind your doubt and insecurity and victim mentality.

You are not a victim. You are an amazing child of God with incredible resilience and a Father who wants to use every piece of your life as a sacrificial offering to others.

Your struggle and your hurt and your past are where the magic and the power lie.

Don’t hold back the gift of your life, of the real you, of the you that has known untold heartache.

Share her with us. We need her so desperately. She makes us know we’re not alone. She gives us courage and hope. She makes us brave. She makes us feel safe.

Because a woman fully alive bearing witness to the grace and mercy of the God in her life is a power this world seldom sees and it is a power that serves and heals and blesses and shares and comforts and leads and surrenders.

Bring us your gift. It’s what you were made for.

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

All the Pretty Things is available for purchase here. It would make a great gift for someone with a painful past.

The Place That Helped Me Tell the Truth

September 15, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 214 Comments

The Winner of the giveaway is the 5th commenter, Heather!!!!
If you’ll send me your email address, we can chat about claiming your winnings!!!

Fifteen years ago, when my husband drove me over the Clinch mountains to see the property he wanted to buy where this cabin now sits, there were briars and thickets and wetlands as far as the eye could see. Forty acres of ridges and wetlands and a broken down shack with a still standing outhouse. Every step I took on this “dreamland” of his filled my shoes with water.

He had a vision that this would be the place where we would get away for some good clean country air, where we’d escape when the stresses of life became too much.

The only going through my mind was, “If he thinks I’m spending my precious weekends getting carsick to pitch a tent in this Target-forsaken place, he’s got another thing coming.”

But I was wise enough to smile and pretend like I saw some kind of vision too.

He drove back and forth across the mountain for years to clear the thickets and find a to build a working pond where the wetlands had been, slowly building his dream—a little cabin for us in the woods.

Of course, now it’s my favorite place on earth despite the fact that it’s in the middle of nowhere and the cell phones and computers don’t work too well there.

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Last year, when I was writing the hardest chapters of my book, I took off to the cabin to find my courage. I wanted to tell the truth but it felt like a mountain I couldn’t climb. Maybe if I was alone when I typed the hardest sentence, nobody would feel the earth shake but me.

Or maybe I just needed clear, cool mountain mornings, or less stuff to distract me, or a safe place to say what needed to be said—to somehow settle in with the things that had haunted me for way too long.

My sister cousin, who lived through most of the same hell as me, sent me the following quote that from Augusten Burroughs, “My childhood was hijacked by drunks, pedophiles, and lunatics.” I nodded my head yes but finding a way to write that sentence into a book, with courage and with grace would prove way harder than I thought.

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I sat on the front porch staring out at the tall sycamores that lined the creek just beyond the pond. I starting writing and didn’t stop until I wrote the hardest things. I found my courage in these same hills that had too easily taken my words from me so many years ago.

I faced down the demons that had wrecked me for far too long.

And when I drifted off to sleep under the same black Appalachian night that had so often filled me with the deepest loneliness, I knew I would be okay—that the truth had somehow finally set me free; that the secrets the hills had kept for me would lose their power in the light.

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The truth really does set us free.

Despite the months and years of doubt and worry and shame, I’m glad I told my story.

I hope it will help you tell yours too.

****

Leave a comment below, share this post on social media and tomorrow morning, I’ll give away a signed copy of All the Pretty Things, a pair of my leather earrings, along with a free weekend at our cabin this fall (I’ll make you a pot of soup for your first night!) AND a Young Living Starter kit!

Check out the VRBO site for our cabin here!

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Also, FIVE more days left until launch day which means you can still get our preorder bonuses!! Find out more here!

All the Pretty Things, is now available for preorder. It is a story of fatherlessness, of being untethered and unspoken for; the story of how Edie’s life burned down around her in a million little ways and how she sometimes set fire to it herself. It’s the story of how she finally found redemption among life’s ruins in the love of a Father who never lets go.

19 years ago today…

September 1, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 9 Comments

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I remember it like it was yesterday.

After a two hour drive, I walked into the house where Daddy was fighting for breath.

The smell of death and cigarette smoke covered the house like a fog.

Meandering my way through to the back room, I peeked through the door and saw his open mouth, drawn up at the corners like he had just finished the last line of some George Jones anthem. Daddy was in and out of consciousness, and his breathing was erratic. He sounded like he was trying to gargle salt water in slow motion. The only thing I had learned during my rotation as a medical student at the VA hospital was the death rattle, and Daddy had it, of that I was sure.

He was leaving us—and soon.

Sister and I stood on either side of his bed.

I put my hand on Daddy’s damp, stringy hair and smiled at how much he and Taylor reminded me of each other—those blue eyes, wide foreheads, and smiles that lit up a room. His hands were cold, so I wrapped them up in mine and told him to squeeze if he could hear me. A few sec- onds passed and he pried his eyes almost open like it took all the strength he had in the world, the corners of his mouth quaking toward a smile.

“Daddy, we’re right here with you; me and Sister and Aunt Glenda. I know you know how much we love you,” I said.

I thought of a hundred things I wanted to say. I wanted to joke with him and tell him to dance one off with St. Peter when he got to the pearly gates. I wanted to tell him not to leave me like this, with all this life yet to live, so much school left to finish, and two kids yet to raise.

I wanted to tell him to at least stay until I made doctor, for heaven sakes. But I didn’t say any of that. I looked over at Sister, who was wearing more sadness on her face than I’d ever seen, and at her hands mingled in with mine and Daddy’s.

The pauses in his breathing seemed to last forever, all of us holding ours, too, until he eked out another thready exhalation. We strained out a tinny verse of “Amazing Grace” when the gaps felt too uncomfortable to bear. Then I put my cheek to his and told him how much I would miss him and how life would never be the same without him. In the stillness of my breath on his face, I felt the life leave him. I looked up to catch the last light in his eyes, but they were already closed, his head tilted over in surrender.

I fell to his chest and sobbed until somebody unclenched my hand from his and made me walk outside for air.

Daddy was finally at peace.

No more labored breathing.

No more cancer or liver failure.

No more junker cars that wouldn’t start or wayward couches to thrash around on, trying to get comfortable.

No more trying with all his might to stay sober.

No more yearning for a quart of beer or asking for a light for his cigarette. No more hurt, no more loss, no more tears.

Only peace.

Probably for the first time in his fifty-six years.
Waiting for me to be there with him as he crossed life’s last threshold was perhaps his greatest gift to me. The sacred mystery that surrounds death is like nothing else in life, and it is a privilege to walk the last miles home with someone.

It would make me a better mother and woman and a better doctor, and it is my most cherished memory with him.

I knew there would never be anyone else quite like him. I also knew that my complicated relationship with him was far from over.

For as long as I could after Daddy’s death, I clawed at the edges of everything, trying to find a way to stay above water, but nothing seemed to be able to stop my sure and certain unraveling. After twenty-seven years of pretending to be fine, something in me broke—like a dam too cracked and fragile to fight the constant beating rains.

It felt like there was nothing I could do but stand like a spectator and watch the water rise around me, as if every- thing that had buoyed me to the surface of things was gone, even the faith that had once seemed unshakable.

Over the next few months, my life became so unmanageable that it felt like I was trying to survive an ocean storm on a flimsy piece of driftwood.

***

Taken from my memoir, All the Pretty Things, a broken song I wrote for Daddy and me. And for anyone who needs to find some hope to cling to on the hard days.

Preorder now and then claim your preorder bonuses here.

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All the Pretty Things, My Broken Hallelujah

August 19, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 37 Comments

I should probably be more happy or even more psychologically and emotionally stable right now. But, alas, I’m more terrified than anything.

I finally told my story.

I wrote it in an actual book.

It took three years and three complete rewrites.

It’s finally coming out.

I should be thrilled, that’s what they all say.

But instead, I spent most of last week wiping away the leftover mascara I kept crying off, wading through sleepless nights like I did that summer twenty years ago when I burned my life to the ground.

Too many days of waking up after too little sleep, splashing water on my face, reminding myself that it’s all okay now, that those impossible days are over.

Except they aren’t, for any of us, ever, this side of heaven.

Tears are good, I keep telling myself.

I’ve never really been able to tie my life or my past up in a pretty bow so that it all perfectly makes sense, even to me. The last chapter of my book takes place in the cemetery where Daddy is buried, a place I run to more often than I care to admit, even now.

The truth is, life is messier than ever (I think that’s normal) and the place where I was hoping I would have ARRIVED to in my ripe old middle age keeps moving, always just beyond where I am, always an illusion that keeps me thinking some day I’ll have all this figured out.

I’ve written in this space for eight years and almost none of the stories in my book have been shared. You might have found me because I like to post pretty pictures of my house or because I LOVE to make soup. But the real story of who I am I am is a story I never thought I’d tell.

It’s a story of fatherlessness, of being untethered and unspoken for, of spending a lifetime looking for love in every wrong place.

Of watching my life burn down around me in a million ways and sometimes setting fire to it myself.

So many times both literally and figuratively, I have sat in ash heap of my own life wondering how I got there and why there was always so much loss.

But maybe I was asking the wrong question.

Maybe a better question is who?

Who is all this for?

I think I finally know the answer.

This song says it better than I can.

But the short answer is, I wrote this book for us.

For my own healing and hopefully yours too.

I wrote it because I lived too long with hurts that kept me paralyzed.

I wrote because I was tired of running. I wrote it because I finally saw that the path to peace was back through the rubble, back to the people and the places that I call home.

And for you.

I wrote it because I see that look in your eyes. I hear all the things you can’t say. I see the hurt and the questions and the years of heartache. In so many ways, I know how your suffering has bankrupted you because I’ve lived it too.

I know because you’ve told me so, in your emails and messages and texts. Our heartbreak has made us sisters— like people who know some kind of secret language.

I know I don’t have all the answers for you, but God has given me words— a song to sing, a strained anthem, a broken hallelujah.

It’s called All the Pretty Things and it’s the only thing I know to bring to your fire.

Most of time all any of us can do for one another when life is crashing down around us is show up—with a casserole or maybe some cake with buttercream icing (that’s my preferred token of love, in case you ever need to know) and hopefully some words.

But my question is, what kind of words will we show up with when our sister gets cancer or her child dies or the money runs out, along with the hope and the fathers and all the American dreams?

What will we bring to her suffering?

Will we secretly wonder what she’s done to deserve this pit she’s in?

Will we wait for something to be revealed that helps explain the mess and chaos?

Will we be too scared to say the wrong thing and end up saying nothing at all.

(That’s what I’ve done too many times to count.)

Or will we sit with her and sing a song of blessed redemption—while the roof topples over and the side walls crack.

Will we carry her cross when she’s too weak to walk, will we sit with her in the heat and the pain?

This book is a flimsy gift in way, but it’s the one I’ve been given.

It’s me showing up to your fire with a few words, a lot of tears, and a hope that the gates of Hell haven’t been able to smother.

If I’ve learned anything from living my story, I’ve learned that nothing eternal burns so we might as well brave the heat and sit with each other. It’s all I know to do.

Speaking from experience, this fire probably won’t be the last and none of us will ever be the same.

God will use it to burn the scales from our eyes that keep us from seeing Him and all the gifts He keeps lavishing on us while the world blazes.

Nothing is impossible for our Father. Nothing is beyond His repair and forgiveness and restoration. Nothing is beyond His wild and ravishing love.

Let it burn and in the end, we’ll watch for promise of His resurrection.

****

I hope my story will lead you to tell your own.

Tell your story, change your life.

I believe it with all my heart.

And a million thank yous for all your love and support over the years. I could not have written this without you.

Love you forever,

xoxo,

edie

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!