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I recently finished Edie Wadsworth’s new book “All the Pretty Things” as a part of her launch team.  While I had hoped to be feeding you snippets along the way via social media to entice you to be ready to order this book, it turns out that Amazon released it early and now you don’t have to wait to order your copy.  Wait!  Read on my friends so you will know why you need to order this

I have followed Edie’s blog Life{in}Grace off and on for years, first finding her through a Pinterest picture, I think.  She has an eye for design that is fascinating to me, even if it isn’t my own personal style.  She has amazing soup recipes and a desire to promote homemaking following a career as a physician.  I have to admit that I have not read all of her posts through the years, and while I knew there had a been house fire, I never knew how much fire was a part of her entire life.

 “That afternoon fell into a dark Appalachian night–the kind of night that carried with it a strange sort of loneliness that mountain people knew all too well.  Alone with the night.  Alone with the poverty. Alone with a low-grade hunger that was impossible to fill.”                                                                                              –Edie Wadsworth

Edie has been in the fire and emerged from it, smoky but with a smoke that isn’t awful like burning weeds but rather a pleasant one like what I smell when my husband is smoking a brisket.  She has the “aroma of Christ” from her battles with living in the fire, choosing her own “fires” and walking away from others.  Her smoky smell leaves me with a hunger, not unlike the brisket smoke, only this hunger is to be more like my Savior.  A hunger to be more compassionate and understanding and to continue to look for ways to care for the innocent children in this world who have broken families, and these days, who doesn’t have some form of a broken family?

Edie’s book begins when she is just a youngster growing up in Appalachia in Eastern Tennessee.  It ends with her current station in life.  The story takes on a journey of heartache, neglect, love, family, abuse, redemption, perfection, failure, and grace.  It gives us a view of an extended, dysfunctional family from the eyes of a young girl whose heart cannot do anything more but love them despite their failings.  It also gives us a view into the heart and mind of a child victim and what both motivates and sabotages them throughout their life.

Having just finished three years being “mom” to two teenage boys who have similar stories, (only theirs involves water, not fire), my prayer was for forgiveness for when I didn’t understand and failed to give them the appropriate response or help to meet their deep needs.  I don’t think being given the opportunity to be on the launch team was accidental.

I finished the book this weekend.  The same weekend as the younger “son” left for college.  He had left our home earlier this summer due to his choices, and while we have no longer been helping with his daily care, we still have had an active part in his transition to independence.  This weekend his “village” of the church family who has helped him for years moved him away to another city where he will try and be the first in his immediate family to finish college.  While we have been more than frustrated this past year by his repeated “forgetting” and failures to achieve benchmarks, I read Edie’s book and realize that many of his issues have to be tied to the “demons” in his mind.  All the negativity, all the heartaches, all the abuse, all the hungry nights, all the water trying to drown out his dreams.

What I also was reminded is, that no matter how great your childhood was, as children of God, we all do things we know God does not like, and then we do them again, and then we do them again.  We are human.  HE is perfect.  We don’t have to be, we just need to keep reaching out to him, seeking him, striving to help the children he has placed in our paths, no matter their age.  Read the book, then read your favorite passages of redemption, grace, and hope (if you don’t have any Edie does) and then praise your Father through prayer and afterward through your life.

“May the Friend of sinners, the Father to the Fatherless, the Fourth Man in the fire, and the Finder of lost sons and daughters be our constant joy and peace.  He who became one of us to experience the depth of our struggle is right there in the dirty midst of it all–making all things new and raising what’s dead to new life.”                           –Edie Wadsworth

It is raining here, again.  I think I will go make some soup.  If you read the book, let us all know what you thought of it.