faith

Fishing with Daddy

March 3, 2014 by Edie Wadsworth 29 Comments

I must have been about 7 years old when I rode in Daddy’s red Ford truck over to the Little River to fish off the train tracks. He used corn right out of the can for bait. I mostly ate the corn and asked a lot of questions. Daddy shushed me and showed me over and over how to hold the pole and how to reel the line, the Daffy Duck tattoo on his forearm moving funny when he pulled back on the rod . I kept casting into the mess of brush over on the river banks. He kept having to stop and untangle me. He never complained and he didn’t talk much. He was bringing me into his world, not making a false world that centered on me. The gift was time with him. Yet, it was so ordinary and unassuming. It didn’t look like much of a gift at the time. It seemed a little boring, hot, and pointless. That is until we finally caught a fish. Then, I remembered why we were there. The goal was to catch fish, despite the fact that I always wanted to somehow make the day about me and how much progress I was making at becoming a fisherman.

There are so many lessons there, for Lent and for everyday.

The Father wants to give us the gift of Himself, if we would but sit quiet and listen and learn. This is not about us. This is about Him and how much He loves us and how willing He is to share His life with us. And the goal? To make us fishers of men. To help us focus on something besides ourselves, which is a most monumental task because our self-importance does not die easy. Not without a fight to the very death. But even as our death to sin is a pretend death—because tomorrow it will rear its ugly in our lives again, in Christ there is real death to, and for sin –His death for us and His life for us. That’s Lent. (via Todd Wilken)

The season of Lent comes around every year to discipline us, to sharpen us, to make us warriors, to make us fishermen—but mostly to remind us that Christ’s cry from the cross, “It is finished,” has never been more true. It is finished. Real death has been conquered, salvation has been won. You have been made his child and there’s is nothing left to work for, nothing left to do. He’s done everything to bring you home. Your needs have all been met in Him.

So, if Lent is about Him and his perfect sacrifice, then why are we fishing again?

Because Lent points us away from ourselves toward Christ and toward our neighbor.

Lent is not about you, it’s about Him and him.

Your neighbor has needs like you can’t imagine. His life is falling apart just like yours, but without the lifeboat of Christ. He’s hungry, hopeless, sick, dying, or maybe just as self-obsessed as the rest of us. He has never felt so desperate. He has never been so alone. But, you and I have failed to see him because we are so entangled in our own appetites. We are so worried about our own bank accounts, our own stomachs, or even our own spirituality. We are busy chasing our own noble dreams, perhaps even doing things for God. But, we’ve forgotten that God doesn’t need anything from us—that all we bring to the table is sin and greed and selfishness. Lent reminds us that He doesn’t need us, but he has placed a plethora of people in our lives who do.

And maybe when the fog of our appetites and our obsessions slowly starts to fade, we can see more clearly why we are here what we’ve been placed here to do. We can take baby steps to start living our lives in service of those whose needs are more pressing than ever—the people in your life like your husband, your children, your boss, and the widow that sits next to you at church.

It’s easy for Lent to become an exercise in how disciplined we’re becoming or how contrite we are for our sin. We will twist anything into a self-fest, or at least I will.

The reason we want to practice self-discipline is actually not for ourselves—it’s for our neighbor, so that all of the things that keep us in bondage, the things that keep us from rightly serving our people can be stripped away.

May this Lenten season turn our eyes outward—to a Father who loves us so much that He will freely give us all things and teach us, however slowly and however painfully, to be fishers of men.

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A big thank you to Jennifer, from the Old Painted Cottage, for featuring our lake house as her cottage of the month!

And a shout out to my friends, Heather and Angela, on their newly launched blog, called Sports Mom Survival Guide! They’re giving away an Amazon gift card today for $100. Happy Launch ladies!

When God Showed Up Wanting Waffles

March 1, 2014 by Edie Wadsworth 48 Comments

I did a radio interview with Issues, Etc yesterday on the dignity of vocation. I was nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof, but after the brilliant editing of Jeff Schwarz and the genius interviewing skills of Todd Wilken, I survived and it turned out okay.

Todd said something during our interview that makes the interview worth listening to, even if hearing me yammering on in my Southern drawl isn’t that appealing.

He admitted that part of the reason he went into the ministry was to have an inside track to God. He wanted to serve God in some kind of direct way, so it seemed the ministry would be the perfect venue for that. I’ve had a similar hankering my whole life. I’ve wanted to know God intimately. I’ve craved an experience with God that would give me some kind of assurance that He is for me and with me. Most Christians are the same way. We want God to “show up.” I hear that phrase a lot and I think I know what people mean, but it gives me pause. I get it, though. We are desperate for God to show up. But how do we know when He has?

Many would say that when God shows up you can just feel it. The “Spirit is moving,” we like to say. If the music is just right or the emotions are just right or if the a certain number of people walk the aisle—then we’re pretty sure God has been with us. I think most would agree that our measure of God showing up is flawed, though. There’s no way to know for sure. Or is there? The Old Testament saints might warn us not to ask for an unmediated encounter with God. Those didn’t usually go over so well. Just ask Lot’s wife or one of the pharaohs of Egypt.

But, when Jesus comes, in the New Testament, we know that God is here, in the flesh. He comes forgiving people, teaching them, feeding them and then in the ultimate act of love—dying for them on a cross. There God is—in the flesh, showing up in all the ways that matter. He rises on the third day and manifests himself to His disciples as the risen Lord. Jesus is how God has decided to show up.

But what about today? Where does He predictably comes to us in modern times?

+First, He has promised to be where His word is preached. What is His word? Jesus, the incarnate God is the Word made flesh, so when Jesus is preached, God shows up—just like He promised.

+Two, He has promised to be in the Supper. “Take eat, this is my body, given for you, for the forgiveness of sins.” When communion is rightly administered, Jesus is unmistakably present. He shows up every time—just like He promised.

+And then, in a strange twist of crazy, like only Jesus would do, He shows up in your life wearing the skin of your neighbor.

“Whatever you do for one of the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you do it for me.”

Jesus shows up everyday for you, looking like your husband and your children and all the rest of the difficult people that populate your life. And just like Todd said, God doesn’t need anything you have to offer. He’s come to give you everything in Himself. But your neighbor is swimming in need. So, He comes disguised as the guy who served you breakfast this morning or the child who woke you up at 3am, or the little girl from Nicaragua staring at you on the other side of your computer. And He wonders if you’ll recognize Him. He hopes you’ll see right through to Him. Because you’ve been wanting to serve Him so much, you’ve been waiting for Him to “show up” in a big way in your life. Or at least I have.

And here He is, right in front of you, dressed like a ten year old and wanting breakfast.

It’s not as glamorous or emotional or as life-changing as you had hoped.

But you start making waffles, because Jesus showed up in your kitchen and He’s hungry.

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You can listen to the interview segment here.

And if you’d like to join my four week course on calling, vocation, and living with more purpose and passion, we’re beginning a new session in August! Click here to read more about it and watch a sample video!

The Fruits of Our Labor

February 3, 2014 by Edie Wadsworth 26 Comments

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“All the ancient wisdom tells us that work is necessary to us, as much a part of our condition as mortality; that good work is our salvation and our joy; that shoddy or dishonest or self-serving work is our curse and our doom. We have tried to escape the sweat and sorrow promised in Genesis – only to find that, in order to do so, we must forswear love and excellence, health and joy” ~Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America.

This weekend, I revisited the first draft of a writing project I started last year. I hadn’t taken it out in months, so I was exited to work on it again. I was SO disappointed in what I read. It was bad. Really bad. After reading a dozen books in the past year on writing, reading countless blogs on becoming a better writer, and working hard to improve my craft, I was surprised that what I would have considered to be some of my best writing a year ago doesn’t pass my test. I was so disheartened that my first thought was to chuck the idea all together. Maybe the concept was ill conceived. Maybe I’m not smart enough. Maybe I should stick to writing blog posts and making soup. But then I remembered the 10,000 rule from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers: The Story of Success. You have to do something for 10,000 hours before you achieve any level of mastery.

10,000 hours.

That’s 20 hours a week for ten years. That’s a long time and if I’m counting in hours, I’m probably only 60% there.

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So. I have a choice. I can throw in the towel and say maybe I’m not cut for this. Or I can dig in, hustle, get up early, read the best books, write and rewrite and rewrite again. I can do the work. I can put in the hours. I can quit worrying so much about how the work will be received—which I can never control—and instead put my time and energy into being the best writer I can be. It’s the work itself that is “our salvation and our joy.”

The only part of the process we can control is the sweat of our brow. The rest was never up to us. Almost no matter what we do in life, we don’t have control of the final outcome. We can teach our kids the faith but we can’t make them believe. We can write great books, but we can’t make folks read them. We can sew seeds in the ground, but we can’t make them grow.

We can enjoy the fruits of our labor when they come, but we can’t demand that there be fruit. We can only do our work everyday.

So, in humility, we come to this one big, wild life and ask for job to do. Work that serves someone else. Work that matters because it meets my neighbor’s needs. Work that’s hard because it’s important. Work that will break us, but will in the process teach us things about life and about ourselves that we can’t learn any other way.

Maybe we should stop trying to find ways around our work. Maybe we should stop asking for so many results from our work and start looking for ways to do our work better. Instead of a bigger blog, let’s work to make a better blog. Instead of hoping for perfect kids, let’s practice being wiser moms. Instead of always trying to measure the results, let’s learn to count the hours.

Today, we come to our work with thankful hearts—that we’ve been given a job to do.

Even if it takes 10,000 hours to learn to do it well.

And even if it goes largely unseen by the world.

There are no shortcuts. Only the work of our hands for the sake of our brother.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have 20,000 words to delete and rewrite.

“Good human work honors God’s work. It honors nature as a great mystery and power, as an indispensable teacher, and as the inescapable judge of all work of human hands. It does not dissociate life and work, or pleasure and work, or love and work, or usefulness and beauty. To work without pleasure or affection, to make a product that is not both useful and beautiful, is to dishonor God, nature, the thing that is made, and whomever it is made for. This is blasphemy: to make shoddy work of the work of God. But such blasphemy is not possible when the entire Creation is understood as holy and when the works of God are understood as embodying and thus revealing His spirit.” ~Wendell Berry

Why Marriage is So Hard

January 22, 2014 by Edie Wadsworth 134 Comments

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“Now, I see, my most constant mistake, is I don’t know what I love till its gone.”

You’re sitting smack dab in the middle of the hardest thing in your life—your marriage. How do I know? Because I am too and I know how the days can seem dark.

You’re probably not gonna like my answer, but I think I know why being married is so hard. It’s not because women are from Venus and men are from Mars. It’s not because Scripture is old-fashioned and marriage is passe. I don’t even think it’s because modern times are so much more volatile to marriage than previous ages, though they may be.

The reason marriage is so hard is because you’re more sinful than you think you are.

You don’t yet grasp the depths of your own depravity. You want your own way. You think your faults are less offensive than his. You justify yourself in a thousand ways and give yourself every benefit of the doubt. But, his faults and sins are magnified to you. You’re convinced that you give more in the relationship. You are always the hero in your mind. Or maybe it’s just me.

I’ve stayed mad for 3 days because he fails to acknowledge all that I do around here, only to realize that I never once told him thank you for going to work so faithfully all these years—for shouldering the financial responsibility of this gang of kids like a rock. For coming home every single night. For staying when staying seemed so very difficult. Never complaining. Never asking to win an award or be noticed. Just steady and sure and strong.

You are not yet what you ought to be and so God has been gracious to place you in this very relationship, because He means to sanctify you and bring you to repentance. This relationship is hard because it’s life and death. What you do here means everything. And you can grumble about the myriad of things that are wrong in this union or you can start to see it how God sees it—as a sacred picture of what He is doing to redeem the world. Christ is the bridegroom and we are the bride. And we will finally be lovely because He has so loved us, not the other way around.

God knew what He was doing when He gave you this particular person. He knew the flaws in your character and personality that this person could sharpen. He knew that this person could expose the sins you try to cover and hide. He knows better than you what you need and the sooner you submit to Christ and His purposes in your life, the sooner you will see what He is up to in your marriage. This relationship is not for your happiness, it is for your redemption. He is not trying to make your comfortable, He is desperate to make you holy.

He will go to any lengths to transform you because He loves you so much.

So, what about all his sins, you say? Oh, I know. He is not what he should be either. He has been a failure at being Christ for you. He is selfish and unkind. He’s been untrue and weak and childish. He doesn’t cherish you the way he should. His love has so seldom been sacrificial.

That’s why I’m so glad that we begin every Sunday morning service with confession and absolution. We stand shoulder to shoulder, he and I, and say what has been so hard to say all week long. And we say it together.

“Most merciful God, we confess that we are by nature sinful and unclean. We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart and we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.”

I stand there holding the weight of the world—my most grievous sins always against the ones with which I share the pew. I barely make it through those words most weeks because I know what I am and I know how I fail. This is not some “generic” neighbor I’ve sinned against. And his have torn me apart too. We are faltering and crumbling every day, until these beautiful words restore what we keep trying to tear down.

“Almighty God in His mercy has given His Son to die for you, and for His sake, forgives you all your sins.”

God doesn’t overlook what you done. He sees it all and yet calls you forgiven and redeemed. Every week—this gift, of restoration, healing and grace, that astounds us and brings such peace. Words that He paid dearly to speak to us. Words that have power to do what they say. Words that reach back into the mess we’ve made of so many strings of days.

In the briefest of moments, I glimpse eternity. I see that this day is not just another block of 24 hours, but a day that always has been and always will be. Maybe, a day marred by my tired rebellion and refusal to give up my ground. Or just maybe, a day staked with my broken confession and the Blessed Absolution that comes from knowing He has redeemed every single hour for His glory. This day will come and go and then DAY will be gone. Eternity is breaking through, shouting from beyond—that all this matters and that in the end, only Love will be left standing, as He holds us both in His glorious Light, darkness falling away around us like a dream.

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Press play to listen to Day is Gone by Noah Gundersen

Day is Gone

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Light It Up

January 20, 2014 by Edie Wadsworth 29 Comments

My girls were scheduled to do a few clogging numbers yesterday at a car show in our small town. Yes, you read that right. Trust me. When you live in the foothills of Appalachia and your town is named Bean Station, you’re bound to find yourself at a car show some Sunday clog dancing. I wouldn’t have it any other way. And despite the fact that the our hearts were broken this year when the girl’s dance school closed, we’ve managed to pick up the pieces as best we could and keep dancing here and there. (Thank you Tessa and Heather!) The love, discipline, hard work ethic and overall high standards of Lakeway School of Dance still lives on in my girls. We will be forever grateful.

Before heading out to church, we packed the green t-shirts, the tap shoes, and the cooler full of retro sandwiches. (I was in state of Sunday morning emergency and had to buy the sandwich fixins at the gas station, which meant white bread, somewhat sketchy sandwich meat and Kraft slices. My girls were thrilled at the softness of the bread, but I couldn’t get to the grocery store fast enough this morning to get some respectable meat. The six pack of Oreos, which cost more than a whole pack at the grocery store, totally made up for what was lacking in the throw-back sandwiches.)

We had to scoot out of the service a little early to make it on time to the car show.

When we got there, the sound system was blasting with sixties tunes. The souped up cars and the old men who love them reminded me that there’s something kinda quaint about both. My adorable nephew and my very talented brother in law restore old cars and I know the endless hours of meticulous work that goes into making a car look like that. I scouted the place for a car that might parallel Corey’s beautiful black Camaro, but I didn’t find one quite as stunning and perfect. Or anybody as cute him either!

The girls looked around with wide eyes. They murmured about the difficulty of dancing on that make shift stage to a handful of old men who’d rather be looking at cars.

They did great. They danced like it was a sold out crowd of their peers. They did as they’ve been taught so well by the best of teachers—don’t leave anything on the stage but sweat.

I wander how often we wish our work was for more than just our children, a few blog readers, or an ungrateful boss. How often we wish our time to shine would come—that someone would notice the hard work, the long hours, the faithfulness?

Be sure of this. Someone very important notices. And we’re not here to keep tally or to demand results from the work we do.

We’re just here to do good work, thankful that we have a job to do and someone to do it for—be it one tiny 3 month who can’t say thank you or a handful of men in Carhartt jackets who’d rather be talking carburetors.

Don’t wait until someone important shows up before you do your work well.

Just keep your nose to the grind and do good work.

Don’t do it halfheartedly. Go all out. Bring your A game.

The excellence and integrity with which you do your work will light a fire under those around you.

You will kindle something special in your circle of influence, not just by what you do, but by how you choose to do it.

So, Light it up.

Like it’s dynamite.

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And speaking of doing good work and not squandering our gifts away, did you remember that tomorrow, we’re gonna meet here at my place and share our {UN} words of the year? Whatever word you want to {UN}do in your life, declare it on your blog, or FB, or IG, and share it with us tomorrow, where we’ll link up our posts and share our stories, using the hashtag #unword2014. Hope you’ll join me, Nester, Darlene, and Angela as we kick some words to the curb!

On Giftedness and Calling {5 Clues to Your Calling}

January 13, 2014 by Edie Wadsworth 70 Comments

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This is where I do my work everyday. I love my desk. I love my computer, my journal, my favorite pens. I love my books. I am in my element when I sit down here to write. But it took me most of my life to settle in to what I was made to do. I hope this post will encourage you to wrestle with your calling and finally, to answer yes.

I was in my first year of residency on surgical rotation. Think vintage Grey’s Anatomy and I’m Izzy. I loved my surgical rotation and convinced myself during those two months that I should be a surgeon. Never mind that I had already decided that year that I wanted to be a family doctor, but had changed my mind on every rotation, because I loved them all so much. In other words, I’ve never met a vocation I didn’t like.

I was scrubbed and gowned and ready to assist in a pancreatic resection. The chief resident was doing the case and my favorite third year resident was first assist. I was probably somewhere down by the foot of the bed, after the all the scrub nurses and other residents took their place. I knew this patient better than anyone in the room. He was my first *real* patient. He was a veteran of the Korean war and he felt like one of my relatives. I had spent long hours with him and his family, during his month long stay at the VA to figure out what was causing his pain and weight loss. The day I told him about his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, I promptly left his room and began sobbing. Maybe that was my first clue I wasn’t surgeon material.

“You’ve got potential as a surgeon, but you get too attached to the patients,” my attending told me. “We’re here to cut out the bad stuff, that’s all. They’ve got family doctors and psychiatrists to deal with all the other problems. Here, we just do our job and don’t worry about the rest.”

I went home that night and wrote in my journal something like this.

“I don’t think I’m cut out to be a surgeon. I don’t think I can ever just do my job. And I’m hopelessly attached to people. This is true.”

Early on in my life, there were two important clues to my calling. The first clue I should have picked up on is that I need to write to process things. Writing and a love for words has been a constant theme in life, but I only see that now that I have enough distance and perspective. The second is, I get too attached to people. So, I should have known that my calling would have something to do with writing and people. Many years later, here I am, sitting in my sweet spot, using my love and gift of writing in hopes of encouraging and inspiring others. I didn’t see the clues then, but I see them clearly now.

We’ve talked about Finding God’s Will for Your Life, and we’ve even defined Who The Neighbor Is and How Vocation Frees Us to serve our neighbor. It’s easy to see that I’m a mom and need to serve my family, or that I’m a accountant and need to figure my client’s taxes. But, what about those things that you’re passionate about, that you do when you finally have free time? Could those actually be part of our calling as well? If so, what are the clues that will help you to discern what you were created to do?

Here are 5 practical clues that might help you find your calling.

1. You’ve actually been called to do it.

A calling implies a caller. Ultimately, God has called us to Himself as believers in Christ and He is our first and most important Caller. But, there are secondary callings. True callings choose us, more than we choose them. What I mean by that is that someone has actually called on you to do something. The word call comes from the latin word vocatio, which means a verbal call or a summons. When I started practicing my hobby of writing, people asked me to do more of it. They don’t ask me for help with their taxes or legal problems or web design. Do people ask or call on you to photograph their family or help them decorate their house or teach them to cook or bake them a cake? Those are clues to what your calling is—people actually call on you do to it. They see your gifts and talents and they summons you to do more of that thing that you’re good at doing.

What do people ask you to do for them on a fairly consistent basis? I love to sing karaoke, but no one is beating my door down to have me come entertain at their parties. As much as I love singing Coal Miner’s Daughter at full throttle and think I’m good at it, it’s probably not my calling in life. (And that’s a hard pill to swallow for a girl who loves karaoke night!) But,writing has been different. The more I write and practice my craft, the more opportunities I get to write. I work hard at improving my craft, and people take notice and ask me to keep doing what I’m doing. That’s when you know you are close to your calling.

2. You are passionate about it to the point that time stands still when you do it.

When I was actually calculating the hours that I spend writing and blogging, for the post I wrote on The Nitty Gritty of Running a Blog, it astounded me. I would have guessed that I spent about 15 hours a week doing it—which is about half the time I actually spend. But, when you’re doing what you love, you lose track of time. What is the thing you do, that when you do it, time stands still?

3. You’d do it for free.

Your calling in life often begins as a hobby. You do it because you love it. How else do we find out what we love, other than trying things that interest us? So, we pursue our passions and often for a long time, and often without ever making any money from them, before we finally realize that this is what we were made to do. And maybe be never get the chance to do that thing for a living, maybe it’s always our hobby. That’s okay too. But the difference in hobby and calling is that your calling is done in service to your neighbor. Your hobby is usually done for you.

4. You are in your element when you do it.

I first heard this from a talk Tsh gave at Allume when she quoted Eric Liddell.

I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.

What is it, that when you do it, you feel God’s pleasure? What is that one thing that, when you’re doing it, you know you’re in your element? Now, is there a way to do that and also to serve your neighbor? You may have found your calling.

5. You have been gifted in this area.

You probably know what you’re gifted at. People have been telling you for years about how talented you are at suchandsuch. But, here’s where calling is different from giftedness. In our modern world, giftedness is a kind of buzz word, and when we follow our giftedness alone, it can lead us down a path of selfishness. Calling is different. Calling asks you to lay your giftedness down on the altar in service of your neighbor. And when you use your gifts in service of others, you’ve found your calling. I love this quote from Os Guiness’ book The Call. He says,

“God normally calls us along the line of our giftedness, but the purpose of giftedness is stewardship and service, not selfishness.”

Having a plethora of gifts and talents is great, but they are not something you dreamed up yourself, and they are not even really yours. They are given to you by God so that you can use them to bless others. Yes, you have been gifted, but more importantly, you have been called. And your calling is the means by which God works in the world to strengthen and bless His flock in every imaginable way.

A job is a vocation only if someone else calls you to do it for them rather than for yourself. And so our work can be a calling only if it is reimagined as a mission of service to something beyond merely our own interests. Thinking of work mainly as a means of self-fulfillment and self-realization slowly crushes a person. ~Tim Keller

Helpful Resources on Vocation

God at Work, Gene Edward Veith—by far, my favorite book on vocation, very practical and easy to read
The Call, Os Guiness—looks at the historical aspect of vocation and is a little more philosophical
The War of Art, Steven Pressfield—not a christian and not even really about vocation, but more about overcoming the barriers to doing what you’re called to do, offensive language at times, but short and brilliant
Listen! God is Calling—a book of Luther’s writing on vocation
A host of wonderful podcasts on the topic. Just keep listening and scrolling!