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
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
I jumped off a cliff the summer I was 16. It seemed like a good idea at the time… until I was hurtling toward the water below. Let me tell you, water isn’t always a great cushion. Flailing like Wiley E. Coyote trying to run on thin air, I tilted back just enough that the
We’re in a season of some pretty big change in our house. Our oldest is leaping from childhood into the strange new world of college classes, car insurance, and grown-up decisions and responsibilities. And for the first time in his ministry career, my husband is serving primarily adults instead of teens. He’s upgraded his goatee
The bigness of life has surprised me. When I was young I expected life to become simpler as I grew older. I thought my days would get easier because I would be more equipped to handle the things that would come along. What I didn’t understand then was the sheer size and complexity of the
One of the hardest things for me during our years in family ministry was unfinished stories. More often than not, we watched our students blossom and their families flourish, but there were times we could do very little to help move a struggling family towards healing. It’s a special kind of hard to see a
The anxious thoughts rolled in the morning after we got the big news. We finally had enough financial partnership to cover our budget, and we could start our next season of ministry. We’ve served with a large missions organization since 2004, and my new role in our org combines two of my greatest passions –