faith

5 Courageous Things You Can Do On the Darkest Days

November 24, 2015 by Edie Wadsworth 7 Comments

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We had our boy this weekend which meant it was legos and books and golf cart rides and running and screaming through the house all the live long day. The best kind of chaos in my humble opinion.

It also meant that I took a much needed weekend break from internet world.

Don’t worry, it was screaming at me when I woke up out of the blue at 3am. I was missing my boy. I couldn’t sleep so I scrolled through the newsfeed— more awful stories, the worst horrific tragedies, more terror, more death, so much hate.

It’s easy on mornings like today to become paralyzed by it all.

The world is dark. Sometimes it’s so hard to know what to do with this gift of today. Is it even a gift, after all?

I wanted to go back to bed but I fumbled around for my pen and paper and jotted down a list—a list of things that might help me through the day. Hope it helps you too.

1. Pray & Repent

The tendency for me is to think that ISIS is the root of all evil—that somehow the world be okay, safe even, without those monsters around. The violence and human suffering is unbearable.

Still, I know that the problem is much deeper. I know that the sin that so hopelessly corrupts them has strangled me too. Our pastor gave a wonderful sermon yesterday in which he asked us to think about all the things we had done in the past church year. I was stroking the hair of a fidgety toddler and thinking how amazing that we were able to bring the little to be baptized this year. Then the pride and the self pats on the back that always creep in when I think of my list of rights.

That’s not what Pastor was referring to. He started to list all the things I had done in the past year—he said I had gossiped and murdered and committed adultery and lied and cheated and slandered my neighbor and worshipped all sorts of false gods and looked down my nose at others in self righteousness and his list went on for longer than I was comfortable.

Then he reminded me of what Jesus had done in the past church year—how had had loved me and forgiven me and fed me and washed me and cherished me and given me every good thing.

Oh, the relief that came when I remembered that my list is not the one that counts.

There’s only one who is blameless. The rest of us need the life changing power of the blood of Jesus. You, me, them, the whole world.

2. Feast at God’s table & on his Word

You can’t do this on your own. You need God’s people and you need the food from His table. This is where He strengthens our doubting faith, this is where He makes disciples, this is where He has promised to be. We need to hear the Gospel every week because we don’t believe it. We are tormented by our sin and we need His word and His Shepherd to constantly reassure us that we are His.

3. Serve your neighbor

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I’d even say start with your husband. One of my favorite ways to do this is simply to make dinner. There’s nothing more comforting when the world is falling apart than to gather your people around the table to eat a hearty bowl of soup, pray for those whose days and nights are being torn apart, and give thanks for this one precious life we have to use our gifts in service of others. I can’t stop ISIS from killing people but I can pray and I can give and I can love the ones that God has put in my path everyday. It may not seem like much but it is.

And then there’s that “friend” you hate to see coming. Maybe you avoid her at the grocery store or avoid her like the plague at a party. Stop holding a grudge against her. Forgive her sin and move on. Because you’ve been so freely forgiven of yours, it will be possible and then you can actually see her and serve her like you’ve never served her before.

The antidote to all the hate in the world is love. The perfect love of Christ in whom we have forgiveness and the promise of heaven. For now, we live in His righteousness and go out into our lives wearing His love.

4. Do what you’ve been called to do

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If you’re a doctor, go to work and serve your patients. If you make jewelry and sell it on Etsy to help your family’s economy, make the best jewelry you can. If you wrangle toddlers all day, love on them and whisper Jesus’ name in their ears while you pick up the thousandth toy.

As for me, I’m gonna keep on making soup and raising teenagers and trying to keep up with the laundry and teaching people about wellness. I’m going to keep living out my calling to the best of my ability. And so should you. Keep on lashing out against the darkness by doing what only you can do for the people in your life. Against all odds.

5. Make Advent part of your family’s Christmas tradition this year

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I’ve posted about it before and to make it easier, I’ve compiled my Advent resources in a free pdf. We follow a wonderful advent reading schedule and do a wreath lighting every night. It’s simple but it adds so much to the anticipation of Christ coming to us incarnate to make all the ugly things in the world make sense.

I can hardly wait for this Advent season as we bear witness to the Light that shatters all darkness.

His incarnation gives us courage to live our lives in the Light of His glorious love no matter what crumbles all around us.

How I Finally Learned to Walk The Walk

November 10, 2015 by Edie Wadsworth 29 Comments

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A week or so ago, we were sitting at dinner, admiring a swarm of sunshine colored leaves that were dancing and twirling across the back deck down toward the water. We had the door slid open and the chilly breeze made dinner an affair that required a sweater. THE BEST ever, in my humble opinion.

On the menu was the best burger I have ever had in my adult life. This is not a word of a lie. Let me make your acquaintance and let me say that collard greens and chow chow have been sorely underestimated in the American diet. They rock, which means the South has been right all along. Skeptical? Your taste buds will convince you. You will LOVE me for this recipe. We will be forever bff’s.

Stevie and I joined hands and said grace, mumbling the words to hurry along the first bite.

We could barely focus on our conversation on account of how good the burgers were.

And also, did that mention that Stevie had this dinner ready when I got home? With HOMEMADE FRIES?!?!? You do not even know the delight in my heart.

This was just an ordinary night by anyone else’s standards, but a night of epic culinary proportions, which I why I remember the sparse conversation so well.

“I saw John yesterday morning and he said he ran into you the other day,” Stevie said as he scooped a perfect pile of chow chow onto his burger.

“Yeah, he had the kids at the grocery store so we chatted awhile.” I answered, while I copied him and was generous with the condiments.

“He said something I found to be pretty curious about you. He said you really walk the walk.” Then he looked up at me over his readers with those confessional/grace alone/Lutheran eyes and I knew right away what he was thinking.

He lives with me everyday. He’s sees the best and worst of me. Mostly the worst.

He knows all the ways that I’m not “walking the walk.” He knows them better than anyone. My mind rushed back through a hundred memories.

I spent most of my adult life worried that I wasn’t walking the walk, fretting at all the ways I was not measuring up to the standards of my church or my own preconceived notion of what it meant to be a committed Christian. I always knew I wasn’t pulling it off which is why I got saved every other week or rededicated my life every five minutes.

When I found the historic church I learned what walking the walk really means.

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It means to walk through the doors of the church and hear His Words of grace and mercy.

It means to walk down the aisle and receive his body and blood for forgiveness and life and salvation.

It means walking to the waters to be washed in the blessed flood of His baptismal grace.

It means to dress up in His righteousness and walk into your neighbor’s life wearing His love.

It means to walk and walk and walk and keep walking to the places where He has promised to be.

I’m not the only one who’s in a world of trouble if walking the walk means to be good or moral or upstanding or sacrificial, or if it means to always tithe and give all our money to the poor, or if it means to live up to all the impossible standards the Scriptures sets before us.

We fail miserably at all those things and we know it. Or even worse, we think we are walking the walk, which means the sin of pride has so swallowed up our good works that we are left holding all our thinning and torn and worn out filthy rags.

We must confess all the ways we are not walking the walk and then fall into the arms of the ONE who has walked the walk for us, all the way to a cross, who lived and died in our place—who brings us into His death and raises us to new life.

Then we crawl back to him in repentance of the overwhelming pride that has led us to think we could ever keep one iota of His law. We throw ourselves at His mercy and admit we’ve been wrong and prideful and lazy and arrogant and apathetic. We confess our utter inability to do anything to shiny ourselves up to Him or to the world.

Stevie and I finish dinner in the quiet, the wind slowly circling around us, tangy Southern relish spilling onto the plate with every bite. This meal, as good as it is, won’t hold a candle to the one we’ll share on Sunday when we will walk a familiar walk together toward a different kind of table. We will kneel and hold our hands out like beggars and God will feed us the eternal food that never perishes—the Spirit hovering, joining our flesh to Christ’s in this miracle feast we call communion.

Heaven will come down and we will be filled.

And onward we will walk.

What It Really Means to Bear My Brother’s Burdens

September 28, 2015 by Edie Wadsworth 21 Comments

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I like bringing people food.

I’m sure that surprises no one. I like to cook and I like to be helpful so cooking for people when they need a little encouragement is exactly my jam. It’s my preferred way of “bearing of my brother’s burden.”

I know how very much it blesses me when someone does it for me.

I read these somewhat paraphrased words from Bonhoeffer this morning and it reminded me of the underside of bearing my brother’s burdens, the side that’s less sexy and less fun and less creative—the side of burden bearing that no else can see or give me credit for.

“The Christian, however, must bear the burden of a brother. He must suffer and endure the brother. It is only when he is a burden that another person is really a brother and not merely an object to be manipulated. The burden of men was so heavy for God Himself that He had to endure the Cross. God verily bore the burden of men in the body of Jesus Christ. But He bore them as a mother carries her child, as a shepherd enfolds the lost lamb that has been found. God took men upon Himself and they weighted Him to the ground, but God remained with them and they with God.

In bearing with men God maintained fellowship with them. It was the law of Christ that was fulfilled in the Cross. While it is true that only the sufferings of Christ are the means of atonement, he shares with his disciples the fruits of his passion, so that the Christian must now also bear the sins of others. But he would certainly break down under this burden, but for the support of him who bore the sins of all.

The passion of Christ strengthens him to overcome the sins of others by FORGIVING them. Christ bears our burdens, so ought we to bear the burdens of our fellow men, which is quite literally his sin. And the only way to bear that sin is by forgiving it in the power of the cross of Christ in which I now share.

Forgiveness is the Christlike suffering which is now my duty to bear for my brother.”

I’ve been thinking about it all morning.

Bearing my brother’s burdens means quite literally bearing his ultimate burden, which is his sin. It’s not so easy to do that and it’s not so easy to show others that that’s what I’ve done. Not nearly as evident as when I bake someone a pie or make them some soup.

When Christ forgives us, He is giving us life’s greatest blessing and bearing our greatest burden, showing us what it really means to be our brother’s keeper. We take on the burden of our brother’s sin by forgiving him and we do so by the same Power and by the same Name that we have been forgiven.

I think I’ll be pondering that one for a long time to come.

And I’ll still make soup.

Have you ever read Bonhoeffer? This is paraphrased from his book Life Together.

Happy Monday, lovies!

What Inspires Me {Others & Baptism & Dying to Self}

September 3, 2015 by Edie Wadsworth 29 Comments

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We made a whirlwind trip to Bowling Green, Kentucky this past Sunday to see my niece and nephew get baptized. I don’t know about you but baptisms are my favorite. The tears, the joy, the name and life of Christ being imparted to another precious life. It was the kind of day you hold in your heart and cherish forever. Those kiddos are some kind of wonderful and so is their momma and so is their pastor and his wife. Awesome day all around. My sister, Gina, drove us because well, I’m sure she didn’t think it would be a very good idea to end up in Memphis. I’m older but she’s everything else. At least I know my place. #bless

We got back home and had two busy days of volleyball, dance, homework, and packing and my girls left yesterday for a 3 day camping/field trip with their school. On the way to drop them off, we had an extended version of the talk we have everyday before I drop them off to school.

“Don’t worry about yourselves. Worry about others. Don’t fret over where you’re going to sleep or who you’re going to sit with or who you’re going to ride with. Fret about her, who she’s going to sit with, who she’s going to ride with. Is she okay? Does she need a friend? If you take care of her, your needs will be met without you even noticing.”

They get so tired of hearing me I’m sure. What they may not know is that I’m preaching to myself. I was at an outing and walked into the building by myself the other day and my first thought was, “Will there be anybody here I know? Who will I talk to? WHO WILL I SIT WITH?”

And then my words snuck into the back door of my brain and I remembered all the talks I give my girls about focusing on others. It’s so easy to say and not very easy at all to do. But guess what I ALWAYS find? When you take care of her, everything else will be okay. When you focus on her and when you listen to her and when you make sure she has what she needs, your needs will be met without you even noticing.

I heard this at a talk one time and it burned itself into my brain—and I paraphrase, “There are two types of people – those who walk into a room and say: ‘Here I am!’ and those who walk into a room and say: ‘There you are.’”

Here’s the thing. In our Baptism, Jesus walks into our lives and destroys the darkness. He puts His very name on us, He puts His life in us, we are now HIS. We are buried with him into death and raised to walk in newness of life. We are people of the light, we are marked as Ones who have been redeemed. And now we can bring this hope to the world. There you are is finally possible.

If you’ve been down in the dumps or if you’ve lost the spring in your step or if you’ve lost your creativity and inspiration or if you’re just too darn focused on yourself (aren’t we all?), start walking into every situation with the thought on your heart, “There you are,” and you will be AMAZED at what happens. When you step into her life with interest and light and love, beautiful things will begin to unfold, both in her heart and in yours.

This is what it means to pick up our cross and die.

And this is the baptismal life we have in Christ—trusting in His forgiveness when we fail to love her as we love ourselves and new mercies and new chances every morning.

It’s Not the Critic Who Counts?

June 9, 2015 by Edie Wadsworth 40 Comments

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I sat at my desk for nearly 70 hours straight last weekend to finish the rewrite for my book.

I got up a few times for bathroom breaks and to eat, once to shower, and then to sleep. All total, I’m stunned how many hours of blood, sweat, and tears has gone into the writing of that book over the last year but I can tell you this— the most poorly written book in the world has my respect because what it takes to even begin, much less finish, is more than I ever imagined.

I was ashamed of myself for the times I’ve flippantly criticized someone else’s book or work or life, without really knowing the situation or the person at all.

Being a critic doesn’t require anything from us, we have no skin in the game.

But being in the ring, being the doer, the maker, requires that we face our humanity, that we own our sins and failures, that we get ourselves dirty in the vulnerable art of being a flesh and blood human who offers our work to the world. It’s easy to be a critic of someone’s parenting style but it’s not very easy being an actual parent. And so it goes with everything else in life.

The difference is love.

Like our Father who made us, the maker is marked by love—he loves his work and he loves those for whom the work is done. It’s love that keeps him fighting and making and working so that he can spend himself in service of his neighbor.

What the critic often lacks is love.

And love changes everything.

Most often, it leads to a cross—a place where suffering meets healing, where death meets life, where the whole of our humanity meets the depth of His love, where the one who mocks meets the One whose face is marred with blood.

A place where even we critics can be transformed.

The Cost of the Feast {Lenten Devotional Day 30}

March 25, 2015 by Edie Wadsworth Leave a Comment

Day 30 of the Lenten devotional series

Texts: Psalm 18, Ex. 4: 1-18, Mark 15: 1-15, Luke 15: 23

“Bring the fatted calf and kill it..”

When one or all of our older sons is coming home for a visit, there’s one thing you can be sure of—there will be a plethora of smoked meats prepared at our house. Stevie loves nothing more than a weekend with the kids home and his Big Green Egg grill full of ribs, brats, salmon, chicken, and any other meat you can think of. He even does the shopping for the meat smoking extravaganzas because he wants to make sure everything is just right. He makes his own tangy-vinegary-spicy barbeque sauce and he fiddles around outside with the grill FOR HOURS. It’s like man-nirvana. I don’t dare interfere except to make a few side dishes which themselves are totally irrelevant to the man cubs. There’s something about those boys coming home that inspires a feast—even for a man who couldn’t find the apple cider vinegar in our house to save his life.

When I read the Gospel lesson for today about Pilate handing over Jesus to be crucified, it all made sense. Our father has done everything to restore us to the table, where his only son will be the very food—the sacrifice and sustenance. The suffering of Jesus makes it all possible. The death of Christ is the price God paid in order to bring us home, to make merry and feast with us. And every Sunday when the Lord’s Supper is served, we partake of this life, this sacrifice. There Christ joins Himself to us in body and soul— his suffering redeeming our suffering, his life overcoming our death. The Old Testament is full of God feeding his people, of him finding a way to save them with food and same is true for us today.

Feasting is not an afterthought with God.

It is the point of his coming—to bring us back to the table and feed us with the life-giving food of the crucified Christ.

You cannot earn your spot at the table. It was paid for you by Jesus, the paschal victim and the paschal feast.*

Welcome to the table, dear one.

*From the hymn At the Lamb’s High Feast We Sing.