I Need To Be More Grounded

What rootedness looks like to me right now

Lately, I’ve been paying attention to something in myself: I’m tired. My desire to write about faith or continue digging into topics of discussion I’ve opened on this blog has waned. I’ve had zero drive to podcast. It hasn’t felt like depression, and it doesn’t feel like burnout either. If anything, I feel more alive in other areas of my life than I have in a long time. I feel settled and at peace, and that has left me unsure of what to do with the apathy I’ve felt toward the things I’ve always counted as part of my Christian vocation.

But, I’ve been carrying a lot of complexity in my faith for a long time I’ve spent years holding tension in conversations about faith, trying to honor every angle, aware of every nuance, and careful about how I say what I mean. It takes work to live that way. It pulls on something inside of you, even when you’re glad to do it.

There are days when I find myself wanting something simpler. I think about times when faith felt easier, when I belonged to a community that spoke the same language. We shared assumptions, rhythms, and a way of reading the Bible that didn’t need constant explanation. There was a comfort in that kind of familiarity, and I notice myself remembering it more often.

Life has moved on, and so have I. My faith has changed, and I’ve changed with it. Even so, the longing underneath those memories is real. I feel a desire for steadiness, or some kind of rootedness. A way of being that doesn’t require constant rethinking or reexplaining. A place where I can rest for a moment without feeling like everything depends on my ability to hold the tension together.

Serendipitously, I recently fell down an internet rabbit hole learning about roots. As it turns out, not all roots are the same, not even roots that are planted by the water, as a Psalm declares.

I learned a lot about how roots work. How they hold. How they adapt. I used to imagine rootedness as something simple, like one taproot driven deep into the ground. Something fixed. Something certain. But nature shows us something very different. Roots behave in all kinds of ways, depending on the environment they inhabit.

Some dig straight down into the earth.
Some spread out wide beneath the surface.
Some send up little breathing roots to take in oxygen.
Some run sideways.
Some travel underground for great distances.
Some hold on.
Some release.
Some die so new ones can take their place.

Rootedness isn’t one thing.

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

Consider the mangrove tree. Mangroves grow in places where land and water meet, the shifting edges where the shoreline is never quite the same from one season to the next. They live in tides and storms, in brackish water and soft soil, in the constant give-and-take between erosion and new ground forming. If they had only one kind of root, they wouldn’t survive. They would topple as soon as the shoreline changed.

Instead, they do something remarkable.

A mangrove sends out long stilt-like roots that brace it where it stands.
But it doesn’t assume that the ground will stay put.
It pays attention to the tides, to the soil, to the subtle shifts beneath it.
And as the shoreline moves, the mangrove grows new roots in the direction the world is changing. These new roots reach toward the places where life can still support them. Meanwhile, some of the older roots—ones that once held the tree—begin to rot or settle deeper into the water. The tree doesn’t cling to them. It simply grows in a new direction, staying rooted by staying responsive.

Over time, a mangrove becomes a portrait of stability and flexibility at the same time.
Anchored, but not fixed.
Present, but not frozen.
Rooted, but always growing.

I think that’s the kind of rootedness I’m longing for now.

Not the kind that depends on everything staying the same.
Not the kind that needs familiar answers to feel secure.
Not the kind that resists the tides.

A rootedness that grows with me.
A rootedness that pays attention to where life is shifting.
A rootedness that allows new growth and lets old roots rest.
A rootedness that doesn’t lose itself, even as it adapts.

That’s its own kind of peace. Not the peace of certainty, or of going back to how things used to be, but the peace of being connected enough to stand and flexible enough to grow.

And maybe this kind of rootedness also shapes how I think about community. I’m realizing I may never belong to a group that shares every value or reads Scripture exactly the way I do. But shared rootedness doesn’t always look like shared beliefs. Sometimes it looks like growing alongside people who are also just doing all they can to remain connected to the ground beneath them while the shoreline shifts.

I don’t have everything figured out.
I don’t know exactly what this longing will become.
But I’m starting to trust that I don’t need a faith that never moves.
I need a faith that knows how to root itself right at the edge—
where the tides keep changing—
and still remains a living tree.