Putting Down Roots {+ A Giveaway from Red Letter Words}

I was the fifth generation to live on Quarry Rd. A quiet country road right outside of a one stoplight town in the Eastern Piedmont of North Carolina. Tobacco growing country that my family had farmed as long as anyone could remember.

I lived across from my grandparents and my great-grandmother and I don't know of anyone in my ancestry that didn't live in North Carolina. My roots in the old North State go deep.

It was quite the boat rocking moment when I decided to move to Georgia for my freshmen year of college. I then moved to the North Carolina hills and that is where I've chosen to dig my roots as an adult, even if they are somewhat superficial because of our travels. 

I've traveled tons, lived on African red clay and like to fancy what it would be like to be a West Coast gal, but I always come home to the land of the long leaf pine. Though we come back to North Carolina as home we are always poised on the edge of going to a new place or pursuing an open door for service that could take us anywhere.

I didn't worry about it a whole lot until we had our first child. Then I began to think about the short walk across the road to my great-grandmother's house and Herbert's flea market full of ancient treasures at the crossroads of our town. Herbert was a picker before being a picker was cool. I thought about stopping at Bob's store for a SunDrop and a honeybun with my dad on the way to the trash dump on Saturday mornings.

I have wondered and wrestled with this lack of real roots and how it will affect our daughter. I worry that she won't feel connected or have a sense of place and that at some point that will breed resentment toward myself and her daddy.

There. I said it. 

My daughter is a unique child and I am certain that God placed her and made her in a way to fit our family's very different way of living. I'm confident that God has done the same for your family if He has called you to life overseas. But that doesn't mean that I'm not conscientious about the way that all of the back and forth and up and down of our life affects her. Because it does.

I'm sharing my fears and the rest of the story over at Velvet Ashes. Join me over there and enter to win this gorgeous "She Knew" canvas from Red Letter Words!