faith

When You Do What You Were Made To Do

May 12, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 18 Comments

Last October, I found that unbeknownst to me, I was in the running for a free trip to Hawaii with Young Living. At the time, I didn’t even know what the rules to the contest were. I was just doing my thing—teaching people about more natural, safer options for their health related issues. By day, when I wasn’t working on my book, I studied a lot—relearning much of what I had been taught in medical school about health—retraining myself that there was much more to this life than sickness and pharmaceuticals. It was one of the most eye opening seasons of my life and I think I learned more in those months than I learned in any stretch of months in medical school. Epiphanies can be painful, whether your finally see yourself differently or the world around you.

(After you read about what this amazing sister and I have been through together, you’ll understand how precious it was to be able to take her to Hawaii with me.)

By night, I taught sometimes 10-12 classes a month, watching people find help and healing almost right before my eyes—without drugs or hospitals and often in the simplest ways. I was mostly listening a lot and offering suggestions when I felt like I had answers. Without doing very much to grow my business, my business grew, a lot. When I found out about the contest, I didn’t do anything different. I just kept my nose to the grind, offering my gifts and expertise where I could. And I found out in January that I won a free trip the big island. It was amazing and I am so thankful. I took my sister and our oldest daughters and the whole thing was dreamy.

But the best gift has been this—I’m doing exactly what I was made to do.

I wondered several years ago when I gave up my medical practice if I’d ever be able to use those gifts again, in the way that I wanted to, in a way that made sense to me and was congruent with my beliefs and passions. And now I can. Plus, along the way I’ve been able to submit to the fact that God made me a writer and no matter how hard it is sometimes to tell the truth—to NOT write is to squander the gifts He’s given.

Now, you might be tempted to say that those years of writing in journals or those endless hours of medical training were wasted, but I don’t think they were. What might be disheartening to some (and me if I’m honest) is that it took me 45 years and a lot of twists and turns along the road to find my sweet spot, my calling—the place where my passion meets the world’s need. But nothing has been wasted in getting me here. I made a million mistakes, sure. But I wouldn’t change a thing, not even the awful and devastating parts.

The point is this—when you do your work, when you submit to what you were placed here to do, giving away those gifts that only you can give, God will take care of the rest. Sometimes that looks like a wonderful trip to Hawaii and sometimes it looks like giving up your dream job. Either way, he’ll use it all to mold you into the servant He wants you to be.

Your best offerings come from a place of humility and growth and more often than not, pain.

I reread The War of Art while I was gone and I’ll leave you with this amazing passage:

Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end, the question can only be answered by action.

Do it or don’t do it.

It may help to think of this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.

You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God.

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got. (Steven Pressfield)

What were you put here to do and what has gotten in the way of you doing it? I’d love to know and I’d love to encourage you to take the smallest steps toward starting.

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On that note, I’ll be speaking next Friday, May 20st at my sister’s church in Maryville, my home town. I’ll be sharing parts of my story and the one sentence that will make every relationship in your life better. I’d love to see you there! Text a girlfriend and make a date for a night of food and fun and fellowship! I’m trying to convince the powers that be that they should have some lip syncing too, because, well, I’ve pretty much mastered NO! by Meghan Trainor.

You can get tickets here!

How I Finally Found Peace in My Marriage

April 1, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 35 Comments

My adorable almost 26 year old medical student was home for a few days this week and we did a lot of catching up. He’s been so busy studying and trying to prepare for his board exam this summer that it felt like a special treat to have him to myself for a day or two.

We talked about everything under the sun and can I just say that I’m so proud to be his mama. He’s one of my favorite people to spend an afternoon with and for good reason. He’s smart, funny, passionate, and really interested in our advice on important things.

The subject of marriage came up and we all tossed around our ideas of what is the ideal time to get married these days. Is early marriage better? Should you wait until you have a more stable income? Until you’re done with all your schooling? And a million other considerations.

Then my winsome Stevie pipes up, “Well, you just need to decide when you want the real suffering to start, that’s all.”

Yep, that’s what he said. We all started laughing. Me, especially.

BECAUSE IT’S TRUE. And it’s so rare that someone will just say it.

I even added, “Yeah, you just have to decide when you’re ready to take up your cross, Tay.” And coming off Easter weekend, the metaphors were easy to see.

Yes, of course, there’s the really wonderful side of marriage, too—the sheer joy and love you feel when everything is right and there’s no tension and no misunderstanding and no disappointment. But the part nobody talks about is how hard it all is. The part you’re not ready for is the fact that’s it’s by far the most daunting thing you’ll ever do. Nobody tells you how much sacrifice and forgiveness and dying to yourself there will be. Nobody warns you that the feelings will come and go, that the fire in your belly will peter out and you’ll be left with a gnawing sense that it maybe it’s supposed to be better than this.

AND NOBODY TELLS YOU THAT ALL OF THAT IS NORMAL.

I know the sting of it all too well, because I wasn’t able to make my first marriage work.

But I’ve learned a lot in twenty years. And I’ve learned that this relationship has been given to us primarily as an instrument of our sanctification, and only secondarily as a way for us to find contentment and fulfillment. But we have it all backwards. We chase after some elusive dream of superficial happiness, when no such thing has ever been promised us.

Every Sunday, Stevie and I sit together and publicly confess our sins to each other and to our congregation—that we have not loved God with our whole heart and that we have failed to love our neighbor as ourselves. The neighbor I fail the most? Him, always. Every single week. Why? Because he’s the one I can’t hide from, the one who sees both the best and the worst of me, the one who really knows me.

Then? We walk together and kneel at the communion rail, holding out hands like beggars, believing that this meal will do what Jesus said it would do—bring life and forgiveness and salvation, His very body joining to mine and uniting mine to my both to His and his.

And this is how we finally have peace—when we begin to submit to the sanctifying, dare I say, crucifying work of Christ in our hearts.

The very fact that it feels hard doesn’t mean you’re failing, it means you’re trying and when you take a closer look, you’ll see that this very person and this difficult circumstance may in fact be the exact thing God is using to remake you into who He created you to be.

It’s hard because it’s suppose to be hard. Hold still. Stay in the murky mess of it and watch for the miracle. More likely than not, it’ll be the miracle in your own heart that will surprise you the most.

He is the skillful potter, chipping away at our rough edges—our bitterness and hard heartedness and self-righteousness and sin. This is work that hurts us and breaks us and puts the death our ego so that Christ can raise us (and our often flailing marriages) to new life.

CS Lewis said it this way:

Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”

Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Not even your hopes for a some polished and perfect, fairy-tale version of marriage. Sometimes marriage fails or maybe just our idea of it, but Christ never does. Take hope that the real, raw, and gritty version that most of us struggle through everyday is exactly how it is supposed to be because it keeps us humble and repentant and all the more thankful when joy sneaks into our everyday mess and overwhelms us out of nowhere.

I finally found peace in my marriage when I quit looking for peace with him and starting looking for peace with Him.

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p.s. Check out the book trailer for my spiritual memoir, All the Pretty Things and don’t miss the preorder bonuses by getting a copy today!

All the Pretty Things by Edie Wadsworth from Genesis One Productions on Vimeo.

When Easter Feels a World Away

March 23, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 10 Comments

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Most years, I can’t wait to set my Easter table and I google and fret and fuss over just the right menu items for brunch and the perfect chosen Spring delight for the Easter baskets. And then there are the years that I scramble up from the sofa at 11pm on the Saturday night before the big day to pull tangled Easter grass out of the attic only to learn I’m one basket and five gifts short. So, I improvise and use the basket that’s been holding my make-up as the stand in for the real thing and put left over Christmas candy in the eggs. If they’re lucky, one of us has cash and stuffs a few plastic eggs with money.

Life is hard and also wonderful, especially those jam-packed holiday weeks.

This year feels heavier and more burdened than most. There’s hurt and tragedy and worry in every direction.

But at the same time, I see the true joy in it more than I ever have—evil is strong but good is stronger, fear is paralyzing but love still frees. Easter may feel like it’s a world away, but it isn’t. It’s here now, even on Wednesday of Holy Week and on the darkness of Good Friday and on the days when you feel that the hopelessness of life will swallow you up.

The Easter feast is here and it is for you. The table is set and the One serving this meal never forgets the details. This meal is not an afterthought. It is not what He cobbled together from a stash of leftovers.

This meal is why He came. And this table is your Easter promise—the feast He’s been planning before the foundation of the world.

The Easter feast is here and it is for you.

For those who fear their sin has been too great and their pride too blinding,

For those crushed under doubt and shame and unbelief,

For those whose hearts are broken with loneliness, abandonment, and mind-numbing grief,

For those who’ve spent years in a dark and dreary wilderness, without the tiniest shimmer of hope,

For those whose souls ache for the joy of homecoming,

For those who are ravaged by addiction and longing and worry,

For those who don’t remember a day when love didn’t threaten to leave,

For those who’ve been battered and bruised by the Church, by the religious ones who said you didn’t measure up,

This table is for you.

Come to this Supper.

I don’t know what your wounds are, but I imagine they are deep and wide. Mine can still choke off my breath and leave me with nothing but heartache and confusion.

This table is for us.

Come to this table—where you will finally be known, where you will be welcomed and cherished, where you will drink the elixir of life and Life will be yours forever.

Make no mistake, weary soul. Your Father in heaven loves you. He comes to you with peace and forgiveness and it’s His love that makes you whole and worthy and beautiful. He invites you to His beautiful, spacious table, where He offers His own body and blood for your life and salvation.

He accepts you just as you are, meets you right in your need. There is nothing you could do to make Him change His mind. He loves you and He has given everything to get you here. He has always done His greatest work at life-changing meals and today is no different.

He has a place ready just for you. Your name is written down. Your hurts will be healed. Your objections will all be answered.

This is where He feeds you life-giving food that will never perish or spoil.

This is where He makes you whole.

This is where Mystery and Sacred dance, where Wine is forgiveness and Bread is life.

This meal will change everything.

Taste and see that the Lord is good!

(If you need some Holy Week encouragement, download my Prodigal Son devotional here.)

A True Confession

March 7, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 38 Comments

Lenten Devotional Day 23
Texts: Psalm 26:1-7, Gen. 44:1-18, 32-34, Mark 12:28-44, Luke 15:21

“And his son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.’”

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He came home for lunch like he does everyday; and from the look on his face, it must have been a long morning.

It was a Monday, and usually that’s injury enough. After his sandwich and a brief chat about what we had going on that evening, he said (with the slightest irritation in his voice), “So what’s going on with all the spray paint in the garage?” ALL the spray paint, I thought? You mean those one or two bottles right beside the bust I’m painting? But it took me a minute to get my words out because I was thinking maybe the girls had their own spray painting project going on that was adding to the spray paint extravaganza.

“Um, well, I was just painting a bust, that’s all. I’ll be done this afternoon.” “Yeah, well, I was just wondering because it’s a mess.”

I could hardly wait until he drove away so I could go investigate this spray painting “mess” as he called it. And besides, I’m a creative. Mess is what I do on the way to making something beautiful. He for one, should know this by now.

I walked out to the garage and saw my little bust of Aphrodite with two cans of spray paint lying empty on their sides and one can still standing at attention. I was baffled. This man has lived with me for 15 years and has seen more than his fair share of painting messes—WAY BIGGER messes than the one currently littering his garage.

Twenty minutes later, I got a text, “Please forgive me for my sorry attitude at lunch. Love you.”

Confession and forgiveness is the only way to survive marriage—the only way to truly survive life. And one thing I know about Stevie is that he’s quick to confess. I love that about him. Confession is about trusting the other person to receive you with grace, trusting them with the hardest parts of yourself.

Confession is not hard with God. He knows it all already. He forgives before we ask. He knows that our confession is feeble and fumbling and so like everything else in life. We borrow even that from Jesus, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

The prodigal’s confession is short and is marked more by what he doesn’t say than what he says. He doesn’t make excuses. He doesn’t plead his case. He doesn’t make one concession for himself. He just confesses, with full trust in his father’s forgiveness. Confession is not actually about us, it’s about Him and His love— love that bids us lay all our sins at His feet.

Confess to your Father, without fear and without excuse. He forgives, every time, without fail. No matter how big the mess.

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From my Lenten study—Click Here to Download

Why I Struggle With Belief

February 29, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 6 Comments

From the Lenten devotional, which is still available. Click Here to Download

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Texts: Psalm 38:13-15, Gen. 29:1-30, Mark 9:14-32, Luke 15:18-19

“I will arise and go to my father and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.’”

Well, the snow finally gave way to warm sunshine this weekend, and not ten minutes after we ate our brunch of broiled salmon, soft scrambled eggs, & cowboy potatoes, a tree swallow swooped in outside the glass doors trying to get our attention. Being the good bird man he is, Stevie jumped up from his feast to watch our friend dive and hover and search around the homestead for his gourd. This is our first tree swallow sighting of the season, and since they usually return to the same nest year after year, we feel a warm familiarity with the guy. Before he had even finished his coffee, Stevie was on the lake bank lowering the gourd to clean it out and make sure everything was ready for spring nesting. It’s probably too early for them to be back for good but it was fun to see the first real live sign of spring.

The prodigal is not quite home yet either, which seems evident by the fact that he wants to earn his way back into the family by becoming one of his father’s hired servants.

He realizes he has sinned against heaven and against his father. That’s an important start. But like us, he figures the solution for that is something he is capable of doing—if he tries hard enough and is earnest enough—if he joins enough Bible studies and goes on enough mission trips.

Ken Bailey in The Cross and the Prodigal says,

Sadly, the prodigal does not yet understand the nature of his sin. He thinks the issue is the lost money. It isn’t! It is the father’s broken heart. The problem is not the broken law but the broken relationship. If he is a servant, he can get a job, earn the money back, and pay his debts. But if he is a son of the house, such a solution will not satisfy his father.

And such a solution will not satisfy our Father either.

The grace that He freely gives us as His children is a stumbling block to us. We don’t fathom it, and we don’t really believe it. In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus heals a boy with an unclean spirit, and then he tells the father of the boy, “Anything is possible for those who believe.”

The father speaks the most honest answer ever spoken when he says, “Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief.” And the kicker is that the belief we need is itself a gift from Him—one that we must receive by faith. And we trust in our abilities more often than we trust in His grace.

We have come to God looking for a transaction. But our father is not looking for day laborers. He is looking for sons and daughters to whom He can lavish the gifts and mysteries of His kingdom. We want to show Him our skills and talents, and He wants to show us His Son. We want to tidy up our outsides, and He wants to raise us from the dead. We want glory. He chose suffering. We have been wrong at every turn, and He has met us at every turn with love and forgiveness.

We want to flitter around the edges of our Father’s abundance, and He wants to kill the fatted calf and make merry in a feast that never ends.

Lord, we believe. Help our stubborn unbelief.

What’s Keeping You Stuck

February 24, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 5 Comments

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I think the path to living the life you were created to live often looks like being willing to suffer the pain of exposure, being willing to admit, at least to yourself, that things are not as they should be—that you often fail to measure up to the standards that you or society or your church has set for you. That you’re still a mess of epic proportions.

Often what we do instead is hide away. Hide our emotions, hide our sins, hide our stories, hide somewhere safe behind the thin veil of religion, pride, status, wealth, a job, a degree, an addiction, or the self-obsesssion that often comes with trying to so hard to be what we think the world wants.

And we all do it.

This week I had my own bout with it.

I’m down the final edits to my book, as in dotting the last i’s and writing the dedication page. In the past two weeks, I’ve had a complete melt down and actually tried to calculate how much money it would cost per month for me to pay the publisher back the money they gave me as an advance.

I couldn’t sleep for night’s on end. My editor talked me down off the ledge all week. Why all the internal drama? I’m scared about telling my story. I’m worried that I won’t be able handle the exposure and the vulnerability it will inevitably bring. Over and over, I said to myself, “You have a great life, why would purposely inflict this kind of stress and angst on yourself.”

My best self answered, trying to remember the verse about giving an account of the hope that is within you. (1 Peter 3:15). Then I looked that verse up and it says at the end that when you speak of the hope that is within you, do it with fear and humility.

He knew we’d be afraid. He’s knew we’d fear ridicule and misunderstanding. He knew it would be humbling, maybe even at times humiliating.

Then I read this quote:

“What shames us, what we fear most to tell, does not set us apart from others; it binds us together, if only we take the risk to speak it.” Starhawk

The subtitle for my book, maybe my life is: The story of a girl who walked through fire to find her way home.

It’s so true. I have the scars to prove it. And the hardest truth? I was sometimes the one holding the match. Those are the chapters that are so very difficult to share.

I’ve hidden behind so many things in my life, but I’m here to tell you that what awaits on the other side of that thin scary veil is the freedom and abundance and life that only Christ can give, when we’re willing to make ourselves completely vulnerable to His loving fire.

He didn’t come to make us comfortable, He came to make us holy and he’ll have a lot of chaff to burn off in order to do that. We submit ourselves to Him, trusting in His mercy that comforts, His grace that sustains, His righteousness that covers, His cross that saves.

All that to say, you’ve been given work to do, a story to tell, and people to serve.

Don’t let fear keep you from doing in the world what only you can do. Yes, there will be fire and yes, there will be pain.

The alternative is to stay closed and stuck.

BUT. If you open yourself, your mouth, your heart up—in the process, you will learn to live fully alive in your giftings, free from what has shamed you and caused you to hide yourself, free to finally love and serve the people God has put right in front of you with everything that is in you, free to walk through fire to find your way home.

I’m so thankful to walk this stretch of road with you— fear, fire and all.

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My spiritual memoir, All the Pretty Things, is now available for preorder. Keep your receipt number to claim your preorder bonuses once they are released!

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