Thank you for following Roots Down Deep. This website has been a great place to share my writing for the past 13 years, but as I’m launching a new season of writing I’ll be releasing my new, regular content on Substack, a platform used by most current writers. Many of you have been receiving an […]
I can still feel the day I realized what real thirst meant. Not just the parch-lipped, sticky-tongued kind of thirst of breathing hard on a hot day or even the wobbly buzz of sweaty dehydration. This was something else entirely. When my youngest was a toddler, I had to fast for a while before a
A solemn little one-room church in Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains has stood empty for nearly a hundred years. The doors hang in open, welcoming silence, the pews and pulpit still in place like they’re waiting for familiar voices to echo off the plank walls. There have been stories in this place. Generations of worship and
Dear Charleston Lady whose bright eyes have seen nine decades, We saw you before you saw us. You leaned in heavy concentration on your walker, your face soft and lovely and your perfectly pink lips pursed as your gentle caregiver encouraged you forward. You turned our way when we paused to let you cross the
The tiny, tender leaves outside my window are dancing hard in an aggressive spring rain, whipping and twisting so much that I wonder how they’re holding to their stems. Rain brings life, I know, but this storm seems like a threat to new growth. Hold on, little leaves. The storm will roll by. You’ll be
There’s a little white hilltop church in an Ohio mill town where everything used to be right with the world. In that sanctuary, with wooden beams stretching overhead and stained glass light laying like a patchwork quilt across my lap, I was known. I was Jim’s granddaughter, Jo’s firstborn, a kid who sang solos in
Sawdust and fish. That’s what my grandfather’s shed smelled like. The memory was so strong that I escaped there from the reality of life in remote Papua New Guinea, where the days pressed in and my chest burned with anxiety. In my mind I could see Pappah’s workbench, his tools all in their places, his
Everybody needs to know someone like my cousin Matthew. A traumatic premature birth left Matt with catastrophic brain damage, and his doctors believed he wouldn’t live much past his teens. He turned 40 this year. As a quadriplegic, Matt can’t walk or even roll over in bed unassisted, he can’t care for any of his
Dear beloved American Church, We are beloved, it’s true. But not because we’re American. Don’t get me wrong — I’m grateful to be an American. I love this country and its freedoms and rhythms and beauty. God has worked in some amazing ways and impacted the world through His people here. But He’s also worked
Hevi. One word in Tok Pisin, the main trade language of Papua New Guinea, expresses a feeling no English word can quite capture. A hevi is a situation with shades of stress and anxiety, conflict and anger, trouble and heartache and grief. I don’t often struggle to find words to wrap around my thoughts, but