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what is the best version of you & how can we get her back?!?!

October 3, 2017 by Edie Wadsworth 3 Comments

The year was 2005 and I was burning the candle at all ends. But not in a good way. I was practicing medicine, trying to keep up with the Joneses, shopping too much and spending more than I made, missing out on creating a family culture I loved, and living from a very superficial version of myself. I had not yet come back to the faith and was pretty miserable on the inside, despite the lovely veneer of a [not so] perfect house, marriage, and lifestyle.

Today, I’m still burning the candle at both ends [I think it’s how He made me:)))] but I’m living much more from a place of love and service instead of from a place of competition and performance.

I’m finally living from the best version of me—a way less glamorous version for sure (just check out my instastories from yesterday) but the version that He created, the version that lives from His fullness and abundance and seeks to be an agent for healing and light and life for others.

You may find yourself in a bad spot in life right now and there’s no shame in that. We are all the same and life can make it hard to keep ourselves above water, let alone thriving.

Honestly, we find a million ways to deal with this dilemma. We numb, distract, run, hide, pretend, and find ourselves stuck in patterns we hate.

And that life leads to misery—for us and the people who love us. We stay in those patterns because at first it’s easier— easier to numb, to live from ego, from a false version of ourselves, a version that’s safer for sure, but a version that is not life-giving. And as women if we are created for anything, we are born to give life—sometimes to our own children but always to God’s children.

And when we shirk our God-given calling, when we live small and from a place of comparison and judgement and negativity and pettiness and pretension, we lose the privilege of seeing grace and love born in those around us. We have not yet learned to allow HER to do what she was created to do and so we settle for living from ego, from the smallest, most fragile version of who we are.

We are afraid that SHE is too much, too little, too wild, too boring, too strong, too weak.

But let me give you one good reason why you should keep fighting for her.

Because we need her. I need her. Your husband needs her, your children need her, and your next door neighbor needs her.

You know who I’m talking about. The you is that is wide awake. The you whose belly is full of fire and passion. The you that is playful and lighthearted. The YOU that cries and laughs easily, that is strong and tender, the you that is living her life fully from a place of authenticity and vulnerability and love. The you who so nurtures and mothers others that she is constantly calling forth life from dry and desolate places.

That’s the YOU we are craving, the YOU the world needs. That’s the you that God created.

So, if she’s lost today, if she’s hiding and pretending, if she’s exhausted and emotionally bankrupt—we are calling for her. WE are cheering for her. We are fighting for her.

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Here are a few ways I found HER again in my own life.

—I told the truth about myself and began to live from my weakness instead of my pretend, made up strength. My whole life I assumed that people loved me for what I was good at, so I tried to be good at everything. It sent me into a tailspin of emotional and physical collapse. I finally found healing when I stopped performing and started BEING who I really am. I stopped running from my past and slowed down enough to let God heal me. I confessed and He forgave and that cycle of daily repentance is what we are made for. I don’t have to pretend I’m something I’m not. I just confess that I’m NOT and He forgives.

And now I can spend my time and my days giving myself away to others instead of performing for them.

—I found a bridge to true wellness that helped me feel better enough that I finally had the power to change the things in my life that were making me sick, that were keeping me stuck. I couldn’t be the BEST version of me because I was falling apart physically and emotionally.

I can’t tell you how amazing God is at creating things that were meant to work in our bodies. Everything in my life turned around when I stopped filling my body with fake, toxic things and started filling it with what it needs.

Everybody knows WHAT they should do but sometimes when you’re stuck, it feels like you don’t have the power to do it. I promise you there’s hope— natural substances from plants that are designed to give us what we need and can use—things our body won’t reject, substances our bodies can easily assimilate and metabolize. My journey to WHOLE has been a long one, but it’s been a fight worth fighting. If you are stuck in a pattern of poor health, I would love to help you get started on a path to holistic healing. It’s way easier than you think. You will only regret that you waited.

I finally feel good enough that I can stop worrying about me and focus on others. It’s so very freeing.

—I created a community of like-minded women so I wouldn’t have to go it alone. We need each other. We were made for each other. And the fact that our world is designed to keep us apart and to keep us at odds doesn’t help us. Join me on Tuesdays for livestream at NOON (eastern) as we grow and learn together to be who we were created to be. WE are inspiring each other and holding each other accountable. And if you decide to join us for the health & wellness part, we have private FB groups that will become your favorite place to hang out on the internet. You need community. Don’t go it alone.

p.s. Want a fast track to getting unstuck, sign up for my Overflow Life cheat sheet and get a one time offer for my Overflow course for less than you can take a friend out to lunch!

What if we just jumped?

September 20, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 8 Comments

Two (three?)(four?) summers ago, I stood on the edge of a cliff that overlooks the lake we live on with my daughters, my cousin, my nieces, my sister, and our guys. It’s probably 25 feet high at most but it felt like jumping off the Empire State Building to me.

All the kids took a look over the edge, didn’t think too long about it, then jumped. After a few minutes, I was only left at the top. Everybody else was laughing and swimming in the deep end, waiting for me to find my courage. My daughters kept yelling, “It’s not as bad as you think, Mom, just jump.” And on and on for a good ten minutes, while I hemmed and hawed and yelled over to Stevie about what I wanted at my funeral in case I didn’t make it.

(In case you’re wondering, I asked them to have a church funeral followed by a square dance. If they could bury me in a dress and cowboy boots, with Tammy Wynette and George Jones twanging away in the background, then all the better.)

This was all part of my procrastination scheme so I wouldn’t have to jump. I thought about hiking back down the rocks and swimming back over to the boat and maybe that would have been just fine too. But they’d all stayed in the water waiting for me. I knew I had to jump but I was scared.

I finally realized that the fear was only getting stronger the longer I stood on the edge. While they were all talking amongst themselves and not even really looking up at me, I finally jumped.

Today with my memoir releasing, the feeling is eerily similar.

Here’s what I wrote in the introduction to All the Pretty Things:

On January 4, 2016, my forty-sixth birthday, I am standing on the precipice of Cherokee Bluff, staring down into the cold waters of the Tennessee River. My sister, my cousin, and I, accompanied by our girls, have hiked (in not-so-appropriate shoes) a mile out to see the bluff, as a sort of memorial to Daddy, the man who gave us a life of equal parts blessing and curse.

With the winter wind howling, we cinch up our coats, laughing most of the way, and keep climbing until we reach the infamous spot a relative recently told us about—the place where Daddy pushed a blue Malibu right off the cliff nearly forty years ago. It says so much about our family that this story has just surfaced, not considered even remotely bizarre enough to count of as one of the “greatest hits” we’ve been recounting to each other over the years.

While the bare branches of the dogwoods flail in the frigid gust, I sit down on a rock and dangle my feet over the edge, imagining all the stories that lay cold and swallowed up by the river below, all the pretty things that lay rusted and buried beneath silt and debris.

I think about the book I am writing, the book about Daddy and me.

It’s the story I never wanted to tell.It’s the story I’ve been trying to run from for forty years and the story I’ve been skirting around for nearly three as I wrote. The words in these pages are all raw and fresh and hard-fought. What I don’t want to write about is the thing that scares me to death. What I don’t want you to know is that fatherlessness is my deepest ache, and being untethered and unspoken for is my suffocating fear. These are the memories that have wrecked me for far too long.

Above all, this is the story of my homecoming; the demons that are always holding me back and the legions of angels that keep me safe along the way; the way everything was always falling apart and the beautiful ways God has been piecing it back together; the dark and lonely parts and the parts where God dazzled me with His light shining deep into my heart; the way I was always trying to hide and the way He never stopped finding me.

A sliver of sun is now warming the edge of my face. I stand back up, peering down over the edge of the rocky outcroppings. The view is stunningly beautiful, but fierce and dangerous, too, as the wind whips the river into swirling motion. Standing there, at the top of that drop-off, I think of you, my reader. I imagine that you and I and a multitude of our sisters are huddled together at the edge of the bluff, wondering what it’d be like to jump, to live our lives from the deep end, unafraid to be jolted awake from the sleepy lies we’ve believed about who we are and what we were created to do. I look around and see courage on your face, bravery in your eyes.

In my mind, I take a running start and leap wild off the edge, arms and legs flailing against the free fall, splashing into the deep blue river. For what seems like a long time, I am underwater and everything is in slow motion. But then I spring up toward the light—that same light that is always calling me home.

Breaking the surface, I gasp and choke, and then I cry—sob, even—surprised and thankful that I am still alive, that I have breath. Tears turn to laughter as I yell back up to you who are still poised on the edge of the precipice, “Come on, my sister. Don’t wait until you’re not afraid—jump scared.”

This book is my cliff jump.

I pray it will lead you to your deepest bravery, your most vulnerable self, knowing that your Father who has baptized you with water and blood and fire will turn your sorrow to joy, your suffering to gifts of grace, your terrifying deep waters into soul- quenching cisterns that refresh us all as we walk through fire, together toward home.

See you soon, dear sister.

I’ll be waiting for you in the deep end.

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If you’ve lived too long with shame and guilt about your past, this book is for you.

If you’ve been paralyzed by the parts of your life that have been swimming in pain and loss and chaos, this book is for you.

If you’ve wondered how God could possibly forgive you and love you and make you His own, this book is for you.

If you’ve struggled with doubt and fear and insecurity about who you are and what you were made to do, this book is for you.

This book is for those whose hearts are broken with loneliness, abandonment, and mind-numbing grief and those who just want to feel some sliver of hope.

This book is my song, my strained anthem, my broken hallelujah and it for the mama who fears she’s messed up too much and the daughter who feels she never measures up and the sister who wonders if God has forsaken her.

It is for you and me and for all of us who need healing and hope and resurrection.

It’s me climbing back up the rocks to walk you down because sometimes jumping is not an option. It’s all of us huddled together, promising to give our sisters a lifeline, a much needed measure of compassion, the ever fading benefit of the doubt in a world hell bent on destroying us and seeing us silenced.

Jesus stands arms outstretched as a signpost to us that ALL IS WELL, no matter what our circumstances might say to the contrary. Not because we jump or don’t, but because He loves us no matter what.

He cross is the only way to make sense of this world. The cross is the Father shouting to us that it is FINISHED. His love covers us. He is for us. There is nothing left to do. The forgiveness and peace and hope we long for can only be found in Him.

I pray, if anything, my book turns our eyes toward the One who has promised to get us all home safe.

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As Daddy would say, IT’S HOWDY DOODY TIME!!! Today, All the Pretty Things is available in bookstores and online!! It feels like a long time coming. To celebrate, I’m doing weeklong giveaways on Instagram (cowhide rug, and other pretty things!) and if you use the hashtag #alltheprettythingsbook and take a picture of yourself holding the book and share on any social media channel, we’ll be picking multiple winners on Friday to receive Amazon gift cards, leather earrings, tea towels, and more!

Two more things:

In case you missed it, I did an interview on Friday with my favorite radio show Issues etc. You can listen to the replay.
I’m guest posting over at Melanie Shankle’s blog!

When Comparison is Paralyzing You

June 6, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 3 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

You will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will find it. ~C.S. Lewis

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

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

And none of us are exempt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wide awake and overflowing

June 3, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 6 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This bootcamp will;

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

Click here to read about what’s included.

Mwahhhh!

edie