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 Yoga Mats & Probate Lawyers
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. What followed wasn’t just a career shift; it was a transformation of motive and method, turning legal practice into a mission of service.
We talk about how grief became a teacher when Dixie and her husband lost parents weeks apart, and how that season inspired a client-first process that lifts the burden of logistics. From organized “notebooks” that clarify accounts and directives to compassionate advocacy when decisions feel impossible, Dixie shows how sound estate planning protects families and makes space for real mourning. The conversation moves from systems to soul, exploring why prayer (especially kneeling, humble prayer) brings peace that outlasts outcomes. Fear yields to scripture, and work becomes steadier when guided by a quiet mind and a soft heart.
There’s a practical, personal side too: reordering life to God, spouse, kids, work; blessing your partner before you part ways; and treating planning as an act of love, not just paperwork. If you feel stuck between calling and career, there is a path forward in small, faithful steps: asking God to soften your heart, embracing community, and saying yes when doors open. If you’ve wondered how purpose, faith, and legal planning can coexist, this story makes the case: peace changes everything, and systems built on care can change a life.
If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs courage for a new season, and connect with us at EsGreenhouse.com
And today I have Dixie Noonham. She's an attorney. She works with Wilson Trusts, is her primary area, well, or an area that she can work in. But I have experienced the love of God that comes out of this woman when one of my friends who's got has used her, and she has been so mighty on behalf of them and such an advocate. And she really is using her gifts for uh God's glory. But today we're going to talk about where he's moved in her life. And so, Dixie, welcome, introduce yourself, whatever I left out.
SPEAKER_00:No, thank you. Um, I am very passionate about the work I'm doing now. Um, and that wasn't always the case. So I guess, you know, I'd kind of like to start there. Let's do it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I feel like the Holy Spirit's leading us and we'll do our let's talk about that. Let's talk about where you were and how you got to this place of such servant. Such a servant. I love it.
SPEAKER_00:I do too. I do too, because I do feel like I'm of service. Yeah, it was a lot of background I've practiced for 20 years. Um, but after we moved here to Wimberley, I was kind of at a stage where I, you know, I enjoyed the areas I practiced in before, but I wasn't really feeling jazzed about them. And we just moved here, and I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. And so um I kind of just decided I'm gonna open a yoga studio. I need a break, right? And so I still practicing part-time in Colorado. That's where Anne's from. And I'm running this yoga studio. I a little lost, right? Just moved here. I don't have community yet, right? I don't know a lot of people, although I think I've met you like almost instantly.
SPEAKER_01:Right now, yes, right. It's hard. It is hard. Like, I feel like that's one of those pivotal moments when uh that I went through too was moving. When you move to a new community and you're so untethered. Yes, you know, you just don't have friendships, they are so important for women. I I feel like they are for men too, but but we really need our friendships with our women.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And I was feeling I was feeling lost and tethered when I started the yoga studio. I yeah, I go to church one day in here, and there was a message about your purpose, right? And your gifts. And I remember sitting there during the message going, Oh, God really still wants me to practice law. I was like, seriously, that's not what you're telling me. And so we're getting the car, and I I like to, and I'm very blessed. I have a husband who likes to talk about scripture and theological stuff and philosophy. And so we get in the car, and but oftentimes after church, we'll talk about the message. And so I'm like, what did you get from that message? And he's saying whatever he got, I don't remember what was, but most of my class like I really feel like that's something I still need to practice a lot. And he's like, Oh, whatever you think.
SPEAKER_01:Sean had just gone through a big thing with starting the yoga studio previously. You had invested, you had a space, yeah. But there were things that weren't like uh exactly what you thought. Yeah. Yeah, and it's you're very good at it.
SPEAKER_00:Oh no, no, I enjoyed the classes. And um the yoga studio actually turned out to be a blessing in a much different way than I've ever explained. Okay, yeah. So I was looking at it as a potential different avenue, right? And then I got to thermostat. So I'm like, oh, I think he still wants me to be an attorney. And about that point, my career started to take a turn into more of the Wills in the States trust, probate arena. Just naturally, people started to ask me more about do you do that, do you do that? And I'd done some of that before, but it wasn't my main focus. And so it started to turn that way. And I was like, well, so he was just opening the doors. He was opening the doors, and the minute I embraced that, he the door just went right, like it's so powerfully opened. And the studio ultimately ended up being a way for me to meet people in the community that I would have never had otherwise.
SPEAKER_01:Which ended up being your clients. Right to some degree. Yeah. Um I feel like that happened with me with the store. Uh when we had the Whimsey store downtown. Um, that was what I got out of it. We were there for four years, uh, and I loved it. I loved the time I was there. But what the biggest benefit was the number of women in Wimberley that I was able to build relationships with. Yes. And it was a lot of women. And the same ones that uh ended up coming to your yoga studio. Isn't that funny? That it leads us in past where we would have never expected that outcome.
SPEAKER_00:Right. I would have never expected that the yoga studio would build help me build community and meet people and make friends. And then when it's time it run during COVID and get them unsustainable, keep it open. Yeah. And my lease was up. And I had known, I had decided at the beginning of 2020 before COVID hit that I need to sell it or derivative or do something because I was being pulled so powerfully in this other direction. And I knew it was time to go ahead and embrace that purpose. Right.
SPEAKER_01:You know, one of the things that I love about the way you do it, and we've talked about it before, is you you really have a very defined process for the business to be a service. You've spent a lot of time building out that notebook that is part of the deliverable you give to your clients, knowing your clients really intimately, so that when they go through something and they call you, you're able to be very powerful on behalf of them so that they don't get lost in that grief and not do the things that need to be done for their lives. And that's very impressive to me that you had that forethought. But uh tell us like, did God how did he put that into you to be able to just was that something you were already doing and kind of put the process together?
SPEAKER_00:No, not really. So I had worked with a separate attorney in Colorado who didn't have the same process I have now, but had to have the notebooks and stuff like that. So over time I developed it and it was informed a lot through my own personal um things that happened in my life, right? So in 2018, Bob lost his dad, my husband lost his dad in October, and then I lost my mom in that December.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my gosh, you're double hit.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, double hit. And but going through that process really started to inform okay, how can I make this easier on the people that come to me, right? And you know, experience is the best teacher, that just all there is to it. I think God puts it, I think he gives us experiences to equip us for where he wants us to.
SPEAKER_01:The work of service that he's given us. Yeah, that's the thing I I want to say too, is I, you know, I feel strongly, I know you feel strongly, that our work is actually our mission field. This is our purpose. Yeah. Like just like God told you in church that day, he wants us to live in a place of purpose. Well, and it makes such a difference in your everyday, you know, everyday it's still work. I mean, don't get me wrong, right?
SPEAKER_00:It's still work.
SPEAKER_01:But it's good work, it's not bad work, it's like you're working for something worthwhile.
SPEAKER_00:Right, right, right yourself. There is, there's not a day where I don't go home where I haven't felt for my clients or felt God moving, or, you know, had those little even it's so fulfilling for me too, because I have those little times during the day where I can just say a quick prayer to God, you know, be in this meeting, give me your words, help me to be of comfort or service to this person, right? And so, in a lot of ways, it brings me closer to him.
SPEAKER_01:It allows me to serve, which is a way different way to live. Yes, it is. It's like freedom. It's you go to work and not every single day, because you know, there are days that are hard and and you don't really I didn't always put God first like a Hawaii. But sometimes I had like, like if I went into work and wasn't joyful or laughing, it would affect 1200 people in that place. You know, they would start coming up to me saying, What's wrong? What's wrong? You know, their whole attitude would be down, and it was so strange to see that just because I was in a bad mood as a leader, that God had put you in a position of a servant leader that you could impact so many other people in your attitude towards the day. And so that has changed. I mean, over the years, like I know I when I feel like I'm in a bad mood, I think, nope, I cannot take that to work with me today. I have a mission, I'm on mission here today to make a difference in to be a light in darkness, to help somebody that's maybe in a hard place. And my gosh, that's what you do every day with what you're serving with.
SPEAKER_00:I try.
SPEAKER_01:I try. I mean, I think it's it's God, right?
SPEAKER_00:It's like it's not powers that yeah. It's him giving me the power and the strength and the insights, and there are times I still fum it, right? You know, but it's uh it's you keep going back to him.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, one of those stories like somebody mentored you at some point that really mattered in your life. There have been different people in my life that have really I Gay Feats, this friend in Jacksonville, um, was about 20 years old or so, about my mom's age. She and her husband were so instrumental in teaching Lee and I to uh grow in our faith and to pray, like pray the word. They would and they pulled us out to play tennis with them once a week. And that was great, but through that, we were growing in the word, playing with them. And I just think I always want to be that person now, like she was, that's giving back that joy and truth that she gave me.
SPEAKER_00:I think you know, the prayer piece, the the prayer is so very powerful. And we went through a few things um several years ago as a family, and I was feeling very disconnected with God, and I was feeling very at odds with God, kind of embattling him, right? I called a friend of mine and I said, I hate to put this on you, but I think you're like gonna have to be my spiritual advisor because I need someone to point me back, dear, dear friend. Started walking with me regularly, and we started having these wonderful conversations. That started to bring me back into prayer, and that started to bring me back into um into saying, okay, I need to, I need to look to God, not fight him. And kind of around that same time, a couple other things happened. I talked to someone who had been going through something, and she had mentioned how much her life had changed when her and her husband got on their knees and prayed together. And I thought, well, you know, I I I I don't know, I've never actually done that with my husband. I've never actually gotten on my knees and prayed with him before. And so I wasn't quite brave enough to go there. But something about being on the knees was very powerful in my mind. And so I decided to try it. Because in it is a humbling of yourself before God. And before I pray, that's really what I want to do. I want to humble myself and quiet down this monkey mind that's demanding to be in control and say, Okay, God, this is this is the time for me to listen to you, right? This is your time for me to be with you. And so, as you know, before church, I'll often go into the gap.
SPEAKER_01:The gap is a place for anybody to go into it or church. It's open all the time to just pray or be with God. And uh many times I've watched Dixie come in before church and kneel down and pray. So, how did that that started from this started from this?
SPEAKER_00:From the friend walking with the friend, and then the um other woman telling me how powerful it was when she had gotten down there and prayed. And I thought, well, God might as well give it a shot, right? So I actually started at home, right, in the morning when I do my prayers. I kneel down and then I decided, you know what, I want to go to church. Where can you be more humble with God than his own house? Yeah, you know, and so I really tried, you know, if I'm in town, right? And I I try to go to church if we're in town, right? Unless I'm sick or something like that, and make time either before or after the service to humble myself and be with him. And that's why.
SPEAKER_01:I love that you go in there. And then, like, have you seen results from being on your knees? Tell me what you felt from being before God.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah. Um, you know, and it's not so much, it's not so much the results in my life, but it is how I feel. That's the huge problem. Right, right, which is I guess I think that's everything. Honestly, that's everything. How you feel about your life is kind of everything, right? But when I submit to God, right, and when I am really trying to let Him have control, there is a piece that I haven't felt any other way. And that to me is really the power of prayer. More so than asking for things, right? I don't, I don't, I I struggle with this idea of God as a cosmic butler, right?
SPEAKER_01:Like, hey, just get you what you need. Right, just get you what you need. Except that I'm telling you, he gives you what you need.
SPEAKER_00:I think you've got to be open to how he's gonna be able to do that. That's exactly right. Right. Because I could never imagine how he handles those things. And then he handles them. I'm like, why that's what you're doing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's a matter of that's good. But it is the it is our peace, it's our joy, it's the strength we feel to walk that probably is it. I mean, I know it is, it's overshadows every other aspect. I have been broke and owing everybody, and been panicked about that, and then God came in, and I still was broke and owing everybody, but I had peace. I have been sick and not knowing what's going on and been afraid, and then I let God come in, and again, I'm peaceful and I'm joyful and I'm enjoying the season I'm in and not fighting. Um so like it's in everything, right?
SPEAKER_00:Right? Well, and it's you know, in a lot of ways, it's a remedy to fear, right? So in my um some of my darkest times, I turn to the Bible, right? And I'm I'm always you're trying to overcome that anxiety, that fear of the thing.
SPEAKER_01:God's really that's his word that he I'm pointing. Because it's so important to me that God didn't give us the spirit of fear, he didn't give it to us. If we know, if you know that, and and let me just tell you that it if he didn't give it to you, I know who did. It's his name's Satan. We're not afraid of him, God's overcome him. We are God's vessels in this earth, so we don't have to be afraid or anxious for anything, but in everything, give thanks to God, and he give us the spirit of power and love and a sound mind. So when we know that, it changes the way we walk.
SPEAKER_00:Right, right. And when you and I truly believe in your open to that and you let God empower you to live a life without fear, without happiness, right? Then you show up differently, and then different things happen. Yeah, right. So your life changes. Yeah. Um, and again, not in the not in the cosmic butler sort of way. Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_01:But it just aligns with God's will.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And then it's different, and you will still have tragedy and you still will have hardship, but you have the strength to walk through that. And to remember that even in those times, he's equipping you for the next thing so you can take that challenge and go out there and help other people having learned from it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, just like you went through uh your clients and then your own walking through death and grief. Yeah, you being in imbued, I believe, with the Holy Spirit to know how to help people walk through that a little easier. It's still gonna be hard, but a little easier where all the financial stuff and all the the will uh directives stuff don't be the thing that overwhelms them. That they can just grieve the loss of somebody that they love. Well, that's the important thing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:When you lose someone, it's the last thing you want to be worried about is the bank accounts. That's right. Or the house. Like the high deal or whatever. You have to.
SPEAKER_01:If you don't have a good plan.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. And you still, even with a good plan, you still have to be cognizant of it, but you don't, you just don't need that on top of everything else, right?
SPEAKER_01:I I've loved getting to meet and know Dixie and then watch that process unfold because I really hadn't thought about how important it was, but then walking through it with uh especially I have a very dear friend, Nancy Williams. Y'all know her. And she lost her husband very suddenly, unexpected, and thank God their lawyer was Dixie because she walked through, she she carried Nancy through that. I'm just gonna tell you, I've watched a lot of other people go through death, and I've gone through it, and that's not the way we went through it. It was not like this experience. So, you know, God cares about every one of those details. He cares about how you are able to walk. He says, if you'll do everything to stand, then just stand and watch me. I'm gonna deliver you from all of your enemies. I'm gonna deliver you and give you favor, I'm gonna lift you up, even when you think nothing can lift you up again. I'm gonna lift you up. And he is so faithful to do that. And that's why we talk about this. We want you to know. We want you to know. It's not just about us, it's really about you knowing that God will be mighty on behalf of you if you will just take one step towards him. He is just so good, right? Yes, oh good. Yeah, so uh, I wanted to go back to one thing you said. You you so Lee and I prayed together. We didn't always in fact the way it started was uh God just put on my heart to start praying for Lee. And so I was praying the word over Lee, which got the words of his mouth and the meditations of his heart were pleasing to God, and that he had favor with men as he had favor with God, and that uh bless him indeed and enlarge his territory so and your hand be with him and keep him from sin so he doesn't cause harm. And just I and God's of course done more. And then he started telling me I needed to pray that for me too, for all those. Things I wanted in Lee, I needed to have those things too, which was kind of an eye-opener. Uh, but then along the way, Lee started praying for me in the mornings. And I don't know if we talked about it. I was gonna say, how'd you feel I had to find out? Sure. I'm not really sure how we figured it out, but one day we started praying for one another, and it wasn't always consistent at first. Now we do not leave the house apart from each other without that prayer. But I want to encourage you and Bob to do that. Just say, it'd be great if we would just say one little prayer for each other when we leave each other in the morning to bless each other because we have seen God really move in our ministry, in our work. Lee's a superintendent on construction projects. And, you know, my work has not been, well, I'm I'm a coach for businesses. Um, so not anything that that the world would think is a place to bless people. And yet he brings those people into our lives with those specific things that are on their hearts. And we, even if we don't talk to them, but most of the time we pray for them with them. But even if we don't feel like we can talk to them, we're praying for them. So there's prayers, incense being lifted up on their behalf. And that's achieved you, like right before you go in with the client. You know, we're two separate human beings as a married couple. And we have our own will and our own mind and emotions. And so when we are being dealt with to become one before the Lord, um, it really helps when the word is what we're relying on to do that because it's a sword, you know, it cuts us under those things in our life that don't meld together. And so it's kind of a cool thing.
SPEAKER_00:Well, you know, growing growing together as a couple, right, in the Bible, um, that's something over the last probably five years I started to understand was I was focused so much on my kids and my work that had my pyramid, if you think about like life as a pyramid, I had inverted, right? So it should be God spouse kids. Yeah. Work. Okay. In that order. I had that kind of flipped, I don't know where work was in there, but I definitely had kids at the top. Right. And then spouse, some spouse work somewhere in there, and then God. And this is a disaster.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Right? It's a disaster.
SPEAKER_01:We think that's what we're supposed to do. Like, I think we're we learned that from the world that our kids are more important than anything. And they are very important. Nothing we can, I mean, we are their moms. Right, right.
SPEAKER_00:But they need to be, and so what has been really enlightened to me the last couple of years is once I start to get that footback upside back around, right? God's at the top, then my spouse, then my kids, to see how beautifully Bob and I work together now.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, right. There's peace. And there's peace. We're not even having to struggle to have that peace. Right. And there's so much more respect.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I am much more open for a long time. I didn't um listen to him as well as I should have. I was too quick to discount. I'm I'm mom and I'm home.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And now I am we talk about religion all the time, and I am much more reverent to him.
SPEAKER_01:That's why you love God first. That's right. Exactly. Let's go back, y'all. It really starts with love of God. Love of God. And you cannot love God until you know him. And you only know him through his word and through listening to him. He speaks with a still quiet voice. You have to seek a relationship. You know, uh, when I want to have when I meet somebody and I'm like, oh, I want to be their friend, I want to be Dixie's friend. Um, then I go out of my way to find out about her. Like, I want to know who she is and what she loves, her kids, her husband, her work. I want those things. But we need that with our father first. Right. Well, and that's part really of the prayer. That's right. So humbling yourself before him and just getting to just being there with him.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I remember so when I was raised Christian as a kid, and then I went off to college and went through this period where I would have said I was agnostic or whatever, right? And I didn't really know. I was really lost. Yeah. And I'd look at people who had faith and I'd be like, I wish I could be like you. I wish I could be like you. I wish I could just believe. I can't. And then somewhere in there, when my kids were little, I decided, no, you know what? I want a relationship with God. If I want that faith, I have to go out and search it. And I started regularly going to church. I started regularly reading the Bible. I started regularly starting to talk to people. The prayer piece is much more powerful in this season of my life than it's ever been. So at that point, I wasn't praying nearly as much. But that's how it starts. It was exactly that, right? Was searching out him.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. That's how I think you can't you can't have a relationship, you can't just want a relationship with them. Yeah. When I was 19, I was already married. I've been married for three years because I was mi pregnant and got married at 16. But at 19, God brought these two women into my life. I said, and they talked in a Bible study about loving the Lord your God at your whole heart. And I was like, so sarcastic, you know. How can you do that? I mean, really, you can't see him, I can't hear him, you can't touch him. How do you love somebody you don't even know?
SPEAKER_00:That's a very nice that's a very 19-year-old.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my gosh, I'm so stubborn and smart on key. But they said, all you have to do, all you have to do is ask him to teach you to love him. And before, like uh, I went to this Bible study because it was in my mom's house and she wanted me to come. So I went, but I had always said, the Bible is boring, it's just so boring. That begap, begat, begat. I said exactly that. I said that. But then I just kept feeling this need to pick up the Bible and I'd just open it and I'd start reading a story, and then I would get so mad at those dang Israelites. I was like, how dare you? How dare you do that to God? So I was getting all offended for God. But in the process, I was understanding. I feel like he was showing me how he felt. But then he said, But Denise, you did the same thing. You're just as unfaithful. You're just and then it started really sinking in, not as condemnation, but as, oh, I don't want to do that anymore, Lord. So at that point, I was turning a corner to a relationship with him. But I also know that at one point when it was like, love the Lord your God with all your heart. And I started thinking about that all the time. He put it on my heart. I was older, I was feeling guilty because I thought, well, that's not fair to leave. I mean, I had all these thoughts. You know, I remember thinking that and thinking, like, well, I can't love you more than I love my kids. My kids, that came from me. This is like, I can't do that. And then, but he was so gentle, you know, he was patient. He didn't make me change overnight. He just kept opening the door and saying, Do you want to come in? Do you want to come in? I love this relationship. And you know, through that, like both of us, we learn, like you said, it took a while for the prayer to really sink in. It took a while for me to be able to talk to him on a regular basis. But through that, we've both said, like, there was peace. And peace is worth more than anything else in your life. If you can have peace, no matter what you're going through, wow. And we go through things, right? Yeah. We've gone through things with our children, we've gone through things with our husbands in our work. If you could tell uh the young women something, your daughter, like that would really help them to maybe walk a little easier than we did, what would it be?
SPEAKER_00:Start asking God to soften your heart. To open your heart to him. Just start there because I can be grand. I think that is the starting point is to ask God to open your heart up to him. And I think if you invite him in, he's gonna show you the next step. He'll put someone in your life that tells you, you know, that's just love God, right? Um, and or will point you to a church or point you to the next person or point you wherever. But I think that would be the softening your heart.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, because mine at 19 for sure means. Oh, dead kid. Whose doesn't at that age? I mean, I still, like, you know, he says, he'll take the stone places out of our hearts and replace it with a heart of flesh. And I often, because he'll he didn't show me like all at once, but then he'll show me something that I'm still holding on to, some hurt from a long time ago. And I do believe he's still taking away stony areas of my heart and replacing them with his heart. And so it's a long process. I mean, I'm 67, but I have to be 68 in February, and I'm still learning how to walk with the father, but it's good, girls. Like I recommend it highly. Well, it's it's a lifelong journey. It is, we're gonna be in his lap one day again. So, like, that's you don't have to be afraid to die because death is nothing, it's just the end of this mission, but then we're back with him. And so I I want you to know that this is this is good. This is really good. Walking with him is a good thing. So so glad Dixie Nunham was on my show today, and that you guys get to be part of this conversation. I hope you'll comment and share. Um, and I hope you'll go to our website, easegreenhouse.com, and get on our newsletter or get on our mailing list because our newsletter is starting in January. So once a month you'll get just an encouraging newsletter and maybe some stories from uh women about what's going on in their lives. So we're looking forward to that. And we love you. God bless you, Father. And we just ask you, whoever's watching this message, that it will just touch their heart in a profound way, that you will be able to take those stony places from out of their heart, the places of unforgiveness or fear or anxiety or hurt. Father, I just thank you that you're healing our hearts, all of us, um, and that you're raising us up so that we can walk in a manner worthy of this calling of Jesus Christ in our life.
