Rooted & Rising: Growth from the Greenhouse
Welcome to the Greenhouse! Join Denise each week as she has conversations with women who have experienced God’s power in their lives. We'll cover everything from relationships and parenting to running a business and building up our communities. We hope these stories inspire and enable you to make an impact in your world.
We at E's Greenhouse equip, encourage, and enable God’s Daughters to embrace their true identity as mighty women in the earth. We offer a variety of resources to help you achieve your goals, including online courses, videos, training manuals, blog posts, live video chats, podcasts & coaching groups. Our team of experienced mentors are here to guide you every step of the way, and we're committed to helping you achieve your full potential. Join us today and take your story to the next level!
Rooted & Rising: Growth from the Greenhouse
About A Hike, A Helicopter Ride & A Life Lesson
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 into a conversation about purpose, identity, and the surprising ways God meets us on the trail and at the kitchen table.
We talk about being God’s handiwork—his poem—and how that reshapes everything from worship to work. Denise shares how releasing offense changed her relationships, and why praying Scripture out loud became a daily practice that cut through worry and conflict. Jo brings hard-won insight from years of prison ministry, showing how listening first can unlock healing, and why writing your story helps God lift the weight you’ve carried. Together we trace the arc from survival to service, emphasizing that God doesn’t waste pain; he weaves it into calling.
Parents will find practical encouragement here too: navigating school decisions without the budget to match, trusting small open doors, and praying for the right friends to shape your kids. We reflect on missions that reframe what matters, church communities that hold us up, and the truth that our children must choose faith for themselves. Through it all, friendship acts as a training ground for grace. Pushing us up the hill, waiting when we’re winded, and celebrating at the overlook.
If you need courage to reach out, language to pray, or proof that later-life seasons can be the most fruitful, press play. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review with the one insight you’re taking into your week. Your story might be the rescue someone else is waiting for.
And today, my guest is one of my dear friends, Jo Wilson. I am so excited to have her on my show. And uh I know y'all are going to be really blessed to listen to her stories, how God has been mighty in her life. So, Joe, tell us a little bit about you.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, I've lived in Wimberley here for 25 years now. Uh, love Wimberly and uh met Denise early on, and she has been a life changer for me because of her enthusiasm.
SPEAKER_00:We we we iron sharpens iron for women too. And Joe does sharpen me.
SPEAKER_01:In ways you may not want to be sharpened sometimes, but uh both both are good, right?
SPEAKER_00:One side on the other side. We may not always when God sharpens us, we don't always like that.
SPEAKER_01:Was the hiking, and because of Denise, she opened doorways for our friends' group to be able to hike in places I would never have been able to go. So that's such such wonderful memories with Denise.
SPEAKER_00:We uh well, and one of the things that I really thought was Joe likes us to pose for pictures, and she would have us pose for pictures wherever we were. We could be on the top of a mountain in the middle of the river. But the thing that, and I really would fight it. I was like, come on, but I did it because Joe was pushing me into it, and now, like on the dates and those hikes, guess what? I have all these great pictures of our girlfriends together. So good work, girl. So there's a perfect example of how, like in friendships, you don't want a friendship that is always agreeing with you, always going where you're going. We need friendships that push us, that challenge us. And, you know, hiking, I mean, I wouldn't have hiked except for Bonnie and Joe. Yeah. And Videll, not I mean, Videll was like, she got this grip and was like, we're going. And because of that, I started hiking and then got to gather more of my girlfriends together, which was such a blessing over the last few years. Some days trying to climb a mountain, like all of us, except maybe one or two, would want to give up. And then those one or two would just continue to say, No, we're going. Yeah, we chose this, we're going. I was the one that always wanted to quit. I've weeped on the trail, but I love it so much. And I had to be rescued, you know. That one time. I remember thinking, how in the world could Joe need to be rescued? Because she's usually like the front. She's like this on the trail. She leads the way, you know.
SPEAKER_01:I got washed down the river though, and uh and an angel appeared.
SPEAKER_00:That's the one at Hanasu Pie. We went to Hanasu Pai Hall, which I mean, if you haven't heard of it, you should look it up because it was like, wow. Yeah. Uh but it's waterfall after waterfall, and they are those currents are super current.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I almost got uh sucked into one of them in the one that you and I were um resting in. And it wasn't messed, it was crazy. Um, but Joe actually got washed over a waterfall. It was horrifying. It was horrifying. And we were screaming and trying to go down there, and she was under the water and couldn't stay, couldn't she get a breath and then go back under? And then this hero guy just showed up out of, I don't even know where he came from. And he swooped in and picked her up and got her out. He was an angel. He was. He was a doctor, and his girlfriend, her wife was a nurse, right? Yeah, they really rescued her. Yeah. Oh, but the best part of that trip was because she and I I had a broken ankle going in and hadn't healed. And so that was my excuse. And then she had heart or shoulder. That was her excuse. But because of that, she and I got to take the helicopter out of the Grand Canyon at the end of the trip. And wow.
SPEAKER_01:That's a service that the village provides. You pay a kind of a nominal fee. Uh, it's not like I was rescued by a helicopter, which would have been a big fee, but this nominal fee. So when you helicopter died, I've never ridden in a helicopter. Me neither. And we almost hit the canyon wall, but that was okay.
SPEAKER_00:It felt like that because you know it rise is straight up. Uh, the benefit for Joe and I, too, was we got to just sit there from dawn until the helicopter took us. And we ended up getting up at the top about the time that our friends had just hiked out. So it was fun. And I will always remember that you and I got to do that and we got the right to go because that was our first.
SPEAKER_01:One more thrill for us. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So God really, even in the times when we got um had issues, He has ordered our steps. Remember your shoe fell apart.
SPEAKER_01:I lost my soul in the in the soul of her shoe. The soul of the, yeah, it pulled off my my shoe. And I had just read about putting a sock. I was gonna say that was so creative. She you happen to have a sock in your backpack. So I took her sock, put it over my shoe, and happily hiked all over the Havasu again. And the Indian children were so they laughed so hard seeing my socking over my shoes. They couldn't get over that.
SPEAKER_00:You know, even those little things we take for granted are really God. We're in our steps. And because we had joy that whole time, even when you were freaking out. We did.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah. Not a complaint one. We we've bonded through those experiences and and uh other life experiences. So um, Denise is a true friend and I love her dearly.
SPEAKER_00:I feel the same way. I you know, I want you if you're lonely out there, I just want you to know, like, reach out, find somebody that needs a friend and be a friend. And uh because God's gonna use it um not just in your life, but in their life, and and we aren't supposed to be walking by ourselves. That's true. The hardest times in my life were when I was lonely and when I was alone. I when I was first married, you know, 16 pregnant in Huntsville, Texas. Lee had a group of friends because he was going to college there, and there were all these guys, and I knew nobody, and nobody really wanted to be friends with a 16-year-old pregnant teenager, you know. I just didn't fit in, which you know makes sense, but it was a such a terribly lonely time. And um, you know, I remember when we first moved to Jacksonville, again, no friends, and it it took a while to make a friend. But when I came to Wimberley uh and was actually in Wimberly, I opened the Whimsy store. That's true. And when I did that, I was downtown and very quickly, because I said every time somebody walked in, oh, do you know everybody in town? Because I really want to know everything. I wasn't gonna hold back anymore. I I had had it with lonely beginnings, and so very quickly God provided a lot of y'all uh to come and hang out with me. Even in that loneliness, God was already preparing my heart to learn how to reach out so that I could be a friend of somebody else. And what he was doing was for them, but also so much for me, because otherwise he knew my heart couldn't take loneliness for that.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. You know, I grew up in kind of a sad family situation, addiction, and I'd always had close friends. Even my friends from when I first moved to Texas, which I was seven years old, and immediately found this group of friends. And again, we're kind of like Denise, we we could get in trouble being too adventurous. But uh looking back, especially and looking at my life now, my daughter especially will remind me, she said, Mom, God did that for you. God gave you these friends and been a common thread throughout my life is is my friendships and and how much they mean to me. I um don't take them for granted. We nurture them, right?
SPEAKER_00:We you know, we'll go for times where we're not talking, and then both of us, it almost seems like both of us will say, Oh, I need to call Jeff, I need to call Denise. And so we reconnect because our lives are busy.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:But one of the things that's so impressed to me about you is this group of girls that you were friends with in college, and you guys, I mean, that's a big group of women, yeah. And y'all consistently, you made the plan to consistently be together, and you're still having fun.
SPEAKER_01:I know, it's like we're still college kids when we get together. Yeah, make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, one is gold. So Joe is a poet and a writer, but a poet. She's a poetry. I was thinking about the scripture in Ephesians that talks about we are God's handiwork. In fact, the Hebrew, I think the Hebrew word for it is we are his poem. And we were made to do, you know, certain specific work here on earth. The minute I heard that I I was God's poem, it just really spoke to my heart.
SPEAKER_00:So that's in Ephesians 2 9, I think. But look it up. Like if you want to see that you're God's handiwork, get Google will show you where it is in the Bible. And you know, lots of times I will write, and and my words and your words are God's words because He's pointing into our heart. But when I don't write the verse and you want to know it, look it up because then you're actively getting involved in learning the word of God, and it's gonna quicken itself in your spirit so that when you go through a hard time, or when you're thinking about our gifts, you're gonna that's gonna pop up in your mouth and come out. So I love that you said that and that I learned it today.
SPEAKER_02:That's so good.
SPEAKER_00:So I love praise and worship, I love it, and I really get immersed in it and I sink and hold up my hands and I dance before him, and I really have to kind of manage myself in public settings because my husband will say, But one day in Zephaniah 3, I read that he it says he rejoices over us with joy, but I read a translation that said he dances over us with joy. And when you read these translations like that, I we're his poem and that he dances over us with joy. I don't know, that just makes me feel so amazing. I know that he loves us so much. And you know, when we go through hard things in our life, you went through hard things I did too, knowing that that he sent us realizing that we were coming into the world filled with sin. And we would go through some things because we would have to choose to follow him. Right. And we we would carry with us all of those things that until we really saw him working in our lives, we'd have to carry those things the rest of our lives. Right. I love that that he didn't waste any of it. Like we use that every day. Do you feel like there's a time that now, currently, that because of the lessons you learned when you were younger, that that those things recently or in the past really applied because you already knew what that felt like?
SPEAKER_01:An example is uh getting involved in prison ministry. But I did that because I knew my parents were good people who struggled with addiction and and lived somewhat tragic lives. But I knew they were good people always. Through that, I I was motivated to go into the prison through bridges to life and um listen to the women share their stories and assure them that there's no judgment from me, that that God loves them. I if we could only drive that home enough, how much God loves us, each of us. Even I've been I've made many mistakes, many, many mistakes, even through all that, God has loved me. Uh and so that is the message that I like to uh reinforce in in the prison ministry, and it's just a way to maybe use the gifts, maybe um maybe that's what God created me.
SPEAKER_00:He doesn't waste anything, right? Yeah, yeah. And I I've been privileged, I don't do the prison ministry, I haven't felt that calling, but I have gone because of Jo. She's invited me to the graduations, and every time I go, I I'm so touched. I know. Uh, because these women that you are praying for, that you're teaching uh these skills to be able to stand when they get out, they are God's creation. They are great women who have been sucked into a world that I can't even imagine. And for me to judge would be crazy because in their situation, I might have done more.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly, exactly uh than they have done.
SPEAKER_00:We we don't know, but because Joe is willing to get in there and partner with them and so many other people that work with Bridges to many of the prison ministers.
SPEAKER_01:I feel like my biggest role is just to listen. So in in doing that, they they're telling their story, they're getting rid of all that they've held in, and my it's a lesson for me, and these is uh for all of us to to tell our story if if nothing else, write it down. Doesn't have to be poetry, yeah. Just write it, write your whole story down, and God takes the burden. Uh if it is a miracle to see these ladies that have suffered through uh lots of situations in their life getting rid of it, yeah, just uh yielding that to the Lord, purging themselves of of carrying that burden.
SPEAKER_00:That's and then he makes a new creation, and he starts their their journey in a fresh new way, our journey too. So I hope that you aren't in prison. But if you are in prison, I'm gonna tell you that you can be set free from the law of sin and death to righteousness in Christ. And once you do that, then other freedoms come because of that huge step in your life. And if you're in prison because of just your life right now, if you're feeling abused or neglected or you're addicted, or you just feel weighed down, again, God sets us free when we turn to him. We have to turn because he's a very uh he's a God that is very patient with us. He lets us go our own way, we're the prodigals, but then when we turn back, it's just like he wraps us and leads us in his path so that we could be okay again. And there's no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. Our sins, thank you, Lord. He pulled me out of a pit of destruction and he sent all my sins behind me and he healed all of these diseases in my mind, my heart, and my body. Yeah, and I trust that.
SPEAKER_01:Knowing that we are loved by God is the most important thing. Uh, and because of Jesus Christ's sacrifice. So I love going into the prison every every week, and uh yeah, I learn along with them. So yeah, that's true.
SPEAKER_00:And we learn along with our friends, yes, yeah. We have to share those experiences and then we grow. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, uh, we're always gonna be learning, we're never gonna be perfect. Yeah, we're always gonna make mistakes, and I think that as we grow in the Lord, we get more willing to give grace to each other. Exactly. Right. Because He's given so much grace that we can forgive and we can let go. You know, offense is one of the things that uh, especially younger, I really struggled with that. Like I I I owned it. I was uh from an Irish family on both sides, my mother and my father, Protestant and Catholic. And I'm telling you, I had that like whole identity clothed on me. So I would fight about everything, and I would say, Well, I'm Irish, what do you expect? You know, I am that's who I am. Fought with my husband, I fought about stuff, I would just rise up. That's one of the things that uh really I don't even have, I feel like anymore. It's like he lifted that burden of feeling like I had to defend, that I had to be offended, and just let me rest in his love. And when I see something that frustrates me now, I go to my knees because I really know. Like some people will say, Oh, yeah, you pray. No, if we really pray, the word of God coming out of our mouth is a two-edged sword that cuts us under the work of the enemy. And when we do that, lives change. So don't say you're gonna pray if you're not gonna pray. But if you say you're gonna pray, you pray God's word and expect things to happen. And the weight and the burden of carrying the worries is gonna lift off your shoulders, you're gonna be set free, but your life is gonna have such an impact. Okay, so I want you to remember Jodgings by Joe, okay, uh, which is on uh Facebook. I expect books to come out in the near future. She's written before for tell me what you wrote.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I wrote for open windows, uh, devotionals for open windows, and they're great, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:They're great. So you can go back and read some of those. Look for Joe Wilson. Um really encouraging and uh edifying. And um so you know, we all have our parts. That's that's true. And she has a big part. Yeah, and really her later days are even becoming greater than our former days. The more uh God has set you free from other things, he has freed you to really become this writer that he always had in there, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I think so. When you quit looking at yourself thinking you should be somebody else or or have the gifts of that somebody else has, but then you realize that you have God-given gifts that unique that that uh are unique to you and and uh strive to to use those to glorify the Lord. That's that's a freedom. I mean, uh yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I feel like these later dates really, like I was thinking that the other day, just like doing this with you guys, talking, uh writing. Um all of this stuff. I feel like, Lord, why didn't I do this sooner? And then he just really spoke to me and said, Well, you didn't know enough to have so I've been teaching you all along the way. And so don't forget that girl says she'll watch. These paths that um maybe you get frustrated at 19. I thought I could do everything for God, and I didn't know one thing. I hardly knew the word, but I just thought I could do everything. And I now I'm 67, and sometimes I'm getting to be used. So much joy in our hearts when we get to be used by the Lord. Um, I I wanted I want more of it. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:But through through going to the word, like you were saying, reading the Bible, uh, even when you don't know how to pray, maybe when you're in a place that you're um frustrated or overwhelmed, just reading the scripture and speaking it out loud. And speaking it, yes. And that that in itself is a prayer. Yes. Um, just focusing on the Lord's word, God's word.
SPEAKER_00:So okay. Well, um, I would like to ask you uh about like maybe a time uh when you were raising your kids where you just felt totally overwhelmed because we got young moms out here and I know I felt that way.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, right. Um and but you you did know God. I am a retired school teacher for 31 years, so I taught the whole time my kids were growing up, which was always you know a hard decision to make, you know. Uh, but my husband and I both agreed that uh teaching was uh was where I should be. The kids were you know well provided for. Um they grew up in the church. Um in fact my husband was a recreation minister, so my son literally grew up in the gym at the church. Lee's work was a lot of times at night, so I felt like uh, you know, raising the kids was a lot on my shoulders, but fortunately um, especially looking back, my kids were pretty easy to raise. Thank goodness. No social media back then, I think it does make it harder to raise kids with with that going on. They uh fell in love with the Lord in a in such a real authentic way, in ways that uh spurred my faith.
SPEAKER_00:So was there a verse or or uh or something that you held on to that the Lord just kept reminding you of through that period when you raise God?
SPEAKER_01:There's so many in in all your ways, acknowledge him and he will give you peace. I taught Sunday school, and so sometimes the kids would see me preparing for Sunday school that left an impact on them. I didn't know at the time. Praying for good friends, you know, we worry about who our kids are running around. Oh, it's a big deal, yeah. Uh and so that that took a lot of prayer and some consultation.
SPEAKER_00:And you know, we we you were right down the road from me, which is funny. We didn't know each other. She was in Tyler, I was in Jacksonville 30 minutes away, and I was in Tyler all the time. Uh so I think it's funny how our past were so close, but we weren't friends then. But uh, I remember uh school being a big thing throughout our four children's lives, um, and us moving them out of public school when there was so many influences, but we didn't have any money. So the way that we moved them into a Christian school at one point, because I was worried about our oldest, she was really starting to follow the crowd and go in her own way with us at a very early age, and we just knew that wasn't really what she needed to do. Uh so we wanted her in Christian school, but the way we did that was I became the secretary for the school. And it was that was an open door. God opened, he knew our heart's desire was to raise them up in the way of the Lord, so when they were old, they wouldn't depart from it. And miraculously, he opened the door. Um, and so we stepped into that. And uh I had gotten I just graduated with a degree in accounting, so I'm sure Lee was hoping I would go uh to work and add to the income of the family. Um, but oh my gosh, he was so supportive about when as we saw the kids going through these things, he just was like, No, this is more important right now. And I I want you to know that because like you're making hard decisions daily for your children too, and the season is so fast. Like it is how many years I my youngest is 41? 9 or 50. I mean, my oldest is uh in her 50s, 40 and 51, I think is right. Um of the two bookends, the girls, it it's been years, you know, more than 20 years since my kids were my whole life, every day. Oh, yeah. And so, you know, I just like to encourage you, young moms and moms in the middle where your teenagers are starting to show their little faces. Um don't grow weary of well doing because in due time you're gonna reap what you sow. Um, you know, God's got it, no matter what, no matter what, God's got it. But um yeah, it's a difficult time. It was a difficult time for me going through that.
SPEAKER_01:And I'm sure you had questions and um in Tyler, there's such a social structure, and Jana ran with the people that had Rose Queen money. Yeah, and and you know, we we we were uh poor in contrast to that. But um, but she always had her identity. That that girl, I mean, God. Well, she still does.
SPEAKER_00:I know she's still in life way ministries and Jana goes.
SPEAKER_01:So uh anyway, God and going on a mission trip to Belize, she came home knowing, you know, here people that had nothing in Belize and and were loving the Lord and praising the Lord. And I think that that just that spoke so much into her life, um, so that she she knew that uh you know living a life with the Lord is your focus and uh priority that and you can still enjoy your friends that might not see things.
SPEAKER_00:And like you know, Jana has raised her own kids, almost raised her own kids, and there's been struggles. Yeah. Uh and just because we have faith, just because we trust God doesn't mean everything's easy. Uh we're raising uh human beings with their own freedom to choose and to walk. And they have to figure out if they're gonna lean into God's love so that they can make it. And it's always a challenge. It's always a challenge, you know. Uh, but thankfully, um, a lot of prayers for our children when we were raising them, uh, not just from us, other people joined into those prayers in our churches. And uh thankfully they uh are are loving the Lord, but not perfectly, and not us either, but still not perfect. Well, uh girls, I'm so glad you joined us for this conversation. This is one that I've been saying, please do, come on, let's do this with uh and she's a little worried about it, but it's been fun, right? Yeah, it's just been great.
SPEAKER_01:And knowing the women out there, that uh some of the struggles that you're going through and that we shared with you, agree to pray.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, and and we understand because we've walked through them. And when you see us, now that we're older, um you will make it, you will make it, your children will make it, uh, your life will be a might. Um, God will use you mightily. If that's a desire of your heart, he's gonna use you. Okay, so we're gonna pray for you right now and then let you go. So, Father, I just thank you for these women that are watching today. We know that you've appointed each one, each one to watch or listen because you had something for them. And we just ask that that would be planted in their hearts and produce a harvest that can't be contained for them, a harvest of joy and peace and hope. And whatever, wherever else you plan to use them in the earth, that they would be strong and courageous in all they do. Father, we know that these hurts happen to us as we're growing up, and we just ask that you would heal every hurt and use it for your glory in the lives of many. In the name of Jesus.
