I bought my first house at forty-one.
A wonderful little house within walking distance of my daughter’s school in a beautiful mountain town. It sat on a quarter acre of flat land, set back from the road a safe distance. It wasn’t really affordable, but it was the cheapest house I could find.
It was also built the same year I was born: 1981.
We were exactly the same age.
Someone had bought it five years before me and done a quick flip. Everything was painted light grey and white. New hardware. Updated light fixtures. Laminate flooring. Subway tile backsplash.
The usual band-aid renovation.
I knew it when I walked through it. The gaps along the edges of the flooring and the crazy configuration of pipes under the sink told me the workmanship probably hadn’t been permitted.
But I could walk my daughter to school.
That felt like a miracle.
The Bonus Room
The previous owner had also converted the three-bedroom, one-bath house into a four-bedroom, two-bath by closing in the carport.
The new room had marble tile and a soaking tub that looked gorgeous in the listing photos. The rest of the room had mismatched rubber carpet tiles, but it had a semi-private entrance and felt tucked away from the rest of the house.
When we moved in, I chose it as my office.
I filled it with my work desk, my bookshelves, and my life.
Within a few weeks, I learned why the previous owner had installed removable carpet tiles.
The Flood
One August afternoon, I had been working at my computer all day. Around four o’clock, I moved into the living room just to change scenery while a heavy rainstorm rolled through.
An hour later, I walked back to the office.
I stepped down from the laundry room into an inch of water.
I spent the next four hours moving furniture and books out of the room by myself while sobbing.
There is nothing lonelier than trying to move a soggy six-foot bookcase by yourself in the middle of a storm.
I knew nothing about house repair. I also didn’t have the money to hire someone to fix it. I was already in over my head with the mortgage.
So I started trying to figure it out.
Because I couldn’t keep peeling up carpet tiles and putting them on the roof to dry every time it rained.
The Problem
From the outside, the problem was obvious.
The room had been built directly on top of the old cement carport. Someone had attempted to install a French drain along the back and side of the house, but it wasn’t deep enough. The pipe ran almost level with the ground and in some places wasn’t even buried.
In other places, there was no drain at all.
The thick red clay sat directly against the siding and ushered water straight into the unsealed gap between the cement floor and the wall.
And then there were the plants.
A scraggly rhododendron anchored one end of the wall. The other end was blocked by a tangled mess of roots: another rhododendron, a volunteer tulip poplar, a black walnut, an azalea, and something else growing in between them.
A downspout ran awkwardly down the middle of the whole mess.
It all needed to go.
Waiting for Help
My ex came over and looked at it.
“You can’t dig those up,” he said. “You need a track hoe.”
He used to run a landscaping business. He had connections. He said he could get someone out to do it.
I called 411 to have the utilities marked.
They came out.
Then they came out again weeks later when the paint marks expired.
Time passed.
The track hoe never arrived.
Meanwhile, the rhododendrons and their friends dug their roots deeper through fall and winter while my half-finished trench and a $300 dehumidifier kept the empty room sort of dry.
But I needed the space.
I dreamed of turning it into a little guest retreat. Somewhere my daughter’s brother could stay, where visiting friends and family could sleep. Maybe even an Airbnb to help cover the mortgage that swallowed most of my paycheck.
But first, the plants had to come out.
Digging
When spring thawed the ground, I decided to do it myself.
No matter how long it took.
The tools I had were simple:
A shovel.
Leather garden gloves.
Hedge shears.
And a Gorilla cart that became my greatest ally.
I started with the small rhododendron in the back corner.
It took a few Saturdays of digging, loosening the clay, letting the rain wash dirt away from the roots. Eventually, I lifted the heavy root ball out.
That small success mattered.
It proved I could uproot something.
Roots
The front corner was another story.
Under the gutter was a tangled ecosystem: a massive rhododendron, the tulip poplar, the black walnut, an azalea, and something unknown growing between them.
Their roots formed a rock-hard mass under the soil.
I dug and dug around them.
Some days it felt pointless, but the repetition was strangely therapeutic.
I hacked roots with an axe and hauled loads of red clay across the yard.
While digging, I thought about my friend vacationing in Tahoe with her husband. Their group photo showed matching ski outfits and wide smiles.
Other friends were on trips with their partners.
Couples everywhere.
Meanwhile, I had recently pulled away from many of my oldest friends while trying to get my life together.
I was jealous.
Jealous of people who didn’t seem to worry about money. Jealous of couples. Jealous of people who didn’t feel alone.
The realization hit me one afternoon while I drove my shovel into the dirt.
I started crying.
Crying and digging.
The Deeper Work
Eventually, I realized the whole root mass wouldn’t come out in one piece.
It had to be weakened.
Broken apart.
Some roots were shallow and new.
Others were old and deep.
That’s when I realized how much the trench felt like the work I was doing on myself.
Money.
Men.
Myself.
My ability to take care of myself and provide for my daughter.
All of it tangled together like roots under the soil.
For most of my life, I had lived on the surface of things.
I drank a little wine. Scrolled social media. Read self-help books. Went to therapy. Tried to feel better without really digging.
But there were still rocks and roots I avoided.
If I wanted to stop the emotional flooding in my life, I had to clear the whole path.
Learning How to Dig
The soil around the house had been packed hard by time and weather.
Sometimes I would drive the shovel into the ground, stand on it with my boots, and nothing would move.
Sometimes all I could do was scrape the surface and loosen things a little.
That was another lesson.
Sometimes you have to walk away.
House projects. Writing. Relationships.
Put down the shovel.
Come back the next morning with coffee and fresh eyes and listen for the still small voice telling you where to dig next.
Eventually, everything loosens.
The Year of the Trench
During that year, I lost the freelance job that had been helping me stay afloat.
My mortgage was two-thirds of my income.
Groceries and medical bills started being charged to credit cards.
Meanwhile, friends were building dream homes with help from family. My sisters bought huge houses and beach houses where everyone vacationed.
And I was hand-digging a trench so my house wouldn’t flood.
Sometimes I worried about spending forty dollars at the Mexican restaurant down the street because we were out of groceries and I was too tired to cook.
The jealousy was real.
The frustration was real.
But so was something else.
Faith.
This house had felt impossible to buy. Somehow, the financing worked out. Somehow the doors opened.
God had given, and would not take away.
Sometimes faith just means pushing the shovel into the ground one more time.
When the Rains Came
The digging took a year.
I uprooted every plant and tree. Dug out the foundation. Built a trench one foot deep, five feet wide, and ten feet long.
At the end, I took a week off work just to finish it.
And when the torrential summer rains came, my foot-deep, five-foot-wide, and ten-foot-long trench kept everything dry.
The Specialist 
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