Rooted & Rising: Growth from the Greenhouse

Trying to hold everything together on your own can look like strength from the outside and feel like panic on the inside. Rylee Jackson returns to talk with us as she approaches her last year at Sam Houston State, studies criminal justice, and starts mapping out what law school could look like. Along the way, we get real about the financial and emotional weight of working while earning a degree an...

A business can be your dream, your plan to provide, and the place you expect God to “bless” in obvious ways, until it doesn’t work. We sit down with Annie Ward to talk about what happens when you do the right things, pray, spend the money, put in the work, and the business still closes. Instead of treating that moment like proof you failed or missed God, we unpack how a closed season can actually...

A tire shop bench and a few words of Spanish turn into a friendship that feels planned, and from there the conversation goes straight into the kind of faith questions most of us carry quietly: How do you know God is leading you? Why does obedience sometimes land you in a harder place? Hannah Croft, a wife and mom of three (four, two, and one), shares what it looked like to move states, live throug...

God sees you. Not just your plans and prayers, but the season you’re in right now: the messy living room, the tired mornings, the doubts you don’t say out loud. I’m joined by my granddaughter Peyton and our social media teammate Victoria for an honest, faith-filled conversation about what it looks like to trust God when life feels loud and uncertain. We talk about the vision behind E's Greenh...

A poem can carry what a person couldn’t say out loud for years. Mercy joins us from Uganda and shares how she went from fear, silence, and a painful childhood marked by hunger, abuse, and child labor to finding safety at Luluanda Children’s Home and building a life shaped by faith and purpose. Her journey is honest about trauma, but it’s even more honest about what steady love can do over time. We...

Prayer can feel like the smallest thing we do, right up until you realize it’s the biggest. We sit down with Annie Ward, a worship leader and missions-minded mom of four, to talk honestly about what it looks like to pray first, serve second, and trust God when your plans keep getting rewritten. From organizing church missions to seeing God move through ordinary acts of support, we keep coming back...

A doctor looks at Irene’s scans and says the baby has no space to grow. Irene looks at God and says she’s ready anyway. From Luanda Children’s Home in Uganda, Irene Nasike joins us across the distance to share a story that is both brutally honest and deeply hopeful: a life built in service, tested by pain, and held together by prayer.  We talk about her calling as a Christian teacher, how she star...

A canceled plan can feel like rejection, but sometimes it is the exact turn that gets you where you’re meant to be. We’re talking about godly friendship and the surprising way God orchestrates relationships that bless us, steady us, and help us become brave again. From a tiny house on wheels to an unexpected move to Texas, we share how provision often arrives through ordinary people saying yes and...

Six sand dollars on a quiet walk became the turning point Alejandra Aguilar needed when fear was loud and the next step felt impossible. She joined me to tell the story of becoming a full-time caregiver after her dad’s stroke, while raising two boys as a single mom and helping her mom as dementia began to show up. We talk honestly about what happens when love requires logistics: leaving a steady j...

A headstone in an old San Antonio cemetery stopped Donna Lint-Russell in her tracks, and it never really let her go. Years later, that single epitaph collides with a 3 am wake-up, a Max Lucado book, and a painting she could not finish because the woman had no face. We talk with Donna about what it means to hear God’s voice, how grief can silence creativity, and why obedience sometimes looks like p...

What if your strength wasn’t the point—and surrender was? We sit down with our friend Lauren Lowry, a pastor, designer, wife, and mom, to trace the messy, beautiful path from self-reliance to a lived partnership with God. From learning to worship through dance to planting Sozo Church without a permanent building for ten years, Lauren opens up about healing from seizures, a miracle pregnancy after...

What if the thing that once broke you became the very tool you used to help others heal? That’s the heart of our conversation with Tiffany Bedford, who moved from Texas foster care to entrepreneurship and, now, to law school with a clear mission: advocate for children who aren’t being heard. Tiffany’s search for God began with childlike honesty. She rode a go-kart to churches, hoping to bring Jesu...

What if your calendar became a doorway to peace instead of a source of pressure? We sit down with our dear friend and counselor Nancy Williams to reimagine the new year through a single, weighty idea: intentionality. Not vague intentions or rigid resolutions, but the daily practice of making choices on purpose—choices that honor God, care for our bodies, and create space for the right work at the...

What happens when a quiet, detail-loving mom raises an extroverted sparkplug who can’t sit still, and then finds herself called to special education? We open up about parenting an ADHD daughter, learning to release control, and discovering how grace and truth can live side by side without watering each other down. Betsy Brown-Mosley walks us through her unexpected path from dance teacher to banker...

What if the love story you’re clinging to only grows when you let it go? We sit down with Abbie Fly, oldest of four, marketer by day, fitness coach by sunrise, and high school girls’ mentor every week, to trace a path from campfire faith to a resilient marriage forged by surrender. The conversation begins with a counselor at Camp Tejas who saw Abbie, told the truth, and stood close enough for cour...

What does it take to turn staggering need into steady hope? We sit down with Mary Thrasher to trace a twenty-year arc of faithful work in Uganda: from a pastor’s vision to cottages with house moms, from impromptu classes to a school that welcomes village children, from a single shelf of books to libraries that unlock language, learning, and lift. Along the way, 8,000-plus children have been fed, t...

Purpose doesn’t always arrive with clarity; sometimes it looks like a detour. After moving to Wimberley and feeling unmoored, Dixie opened a yoga studio for breathing room and found a community she didn’t know she needed. A sermon about gifts and calling quietly redirected her back to law—specifically wills, trusts, and probate—where her skill set could carry people through their hardest days. Wha...

When the platform is booming and your heart still feels heavy, what do you do next? Denise sits down with Katie to unpack a brave pivot: laying down a wildly successful “Good Patriot” brand to reclaim a truer identity as a daughter of the King. The result isn’t less influence; it’s deeper alignment, quiet courage, and the kind of peace that numbers can’t buy. We trace the slow inches of growth tha...

A waterfall, a stranger’s rescue, and a helicopter ride weren’t on our itinerary, but they became the stories that knit our friendship and deepened our faith. Denise and Jo open up about the hikes that tested their grit, the photos they didn’t want to take but now treasure, and the quiet choices that turned seasons of loneliness into a life-giving community. What starts as an adventure tale widens...

What happens when two ordinary moms say yes to an extraordinary call? We open our lives to you—our blended family, our co-grandmother bond, the garage sale that turned into a launchpad, and the fragile moments in hospital hallways that redefined our courage. Shannon’s journey through Cushing’s disease and a grim brain diagnosis pushed us to pray when answers ran dry. Doctors set limits. We learned...

A broken heart, a midnight prayer, and a phone call that changed everything—this conversation with singer-songwriter Janie Balderas is a map through the valley and back into the light. We open with her roots as a preacher’s daughter in Austin and Georgetown, where faith was real, messy, and often miraculous. Then the ground gives way: a sudden divorce, graveyard shifts, and the brutal whisper that...

A quiet fire, a gray sky, and a heart full of gratitude, Denise opens up about a year that stretched faith and sparked a movement of stories. What began as a dream became a growing podcast rooted in Scripture and real-life testimony, designed to help women trade anxiety for a sound mind and cultivate courage for the road ahead. You’ll hear why a simple “book of remembrance” can be a lifeline: when...

The year stretched long with chemo chairs, late-night worries, and decisions that felt impossible—and yet something shifted when we stopped trying to earn our worth and started living from it. We open up about caregiving through a husband’s lymphoma, losing two fathers days apart, and later facing the wrenching calls that come with an aging, angry parent. What changed us most wasn’t a perfect plan...

What if prayer isn’t a to-do list but an act of love you step into right where you stand? We pick up a heartfelt question on petitionary prayer and follow Tracy’s journey from atheism to a living relationship with God, where asking felt illogical until one grocery-store moment changed everything. A spontaneous prayer over a stranger’s dream revealed a simple, transformative truth: prayer is love....

What if the cross actually worked—and shame is no longer your script? That audacious claim sits at the center of our talk with author and speaker Tracy Levinson as we unpack love, dating, sexuality, and the kind of grace that doesn’t just forgive but changes you from the inside out. Tracy shares her path from atheism to a deep trust in the finished work of Jesus, explaining why she says she has “o...