Rooted in Love

One of my favorite verses is found in Ephesians and says, “Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong.” Another translation says, “being rooted and established in love…” I consider my roots a treasured heritage and although my childhood wasn’t picturesque it established me, it rooted me deep into a love for Jesus, His beloved people, and provided me with such a sweet calling to nourish, sustain and cultivate health and wholeness through our two small businesses, The Sunshine Shoppe and The Core.

I quite literally grew up in the Sunshine Shoppe. Some of my first memories are actually of that blue barn with the linoleum “brick” floor. The Shoppe sold soft-serve frozen yogurt back then because at the time yogurt, regardless of sugar content, was considered healthy. Isn’t that funny and so representative of health trends?

But even before I was sneaking carob bars off the shelves my roots were being established. My great grandfather, Guy Miller, gave Linda, his daughter, my cherished Mimi, the funds needed to open up her own business so that she could support herself and her three children. In 1972, she and her mom, my Nena, opened the Sunshine Shoppe in a little house in an area of town we now wouldn’t walk around in the dark. This was in a time where “preventive health,” Whole Foods, essential oils, and CBD were most definitely not trendy or even trusted.

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The weight of the value this health food store has had in my family is immense. Family owned and passed down businesses are not just a job to clock in and out of. They have fed, housed, and clothed generations before us. They are intertwined into all aspects of the family’s life. The family business is discussed over meals, requires late nights of working on books while babies sleep and early mornings to open doors, sacrifices of time and attention from every member and the constant awareness that there is more you could always be doing.

As a young girl I simply absorbed the uses for vitamins, herbs, ointments, tinctures, and teas. I followed my Mimi around and listened to her speak to customers about the mental health benefits of St. John’s Wort, the EPA and DHA content in fish oils, and substitute ingredients for baking allergy-free goodies. I loved when she would pull out one of the well worn books from under the counter to discover something new or make a copy of a gallstone cleanse recipe. As I got older I was allowed to run the register and total up the end of the day’s receipts. I fought with the sticker pricing gun, wheeled around the tiny shopping cart and lovingly faced bottles to the front and forward.

My memories of learning to care for the shoppe don’t read as magical as they feel. But I just always remember feeling like what happened within those walls had such weight and great purpose. It never felt like just selling, just stocking, just ordering. Behind each action was this prayer, “Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul.” (3 John 2) My Mimi would pray this verse over the Shoppe and its customers because her purpose was always about providing more than just a quick fix or a pill to cover up symptoms. She wanted her customers, her friends, her family to find health…body, mind, and spirit.

I continue that prayer and ask for wholeness over those that walk through our door looking for a quick healthy snack or grabbing our last bottle of elderberry during flu season. I desire to see wholeness where there is depression and anxiety, illness, pain, and exhaustion. I want to see families living whole by eating real food and having real conversations. I want to see our seniors living life fully and enjoying the stage of life that finally allows for travel and time with family and friends. There is so much more to living than existence. There is purpose, passion, love and love and love and LOVE. I’m so humbled to be “rooted and established” in love and to have an opportunity to continue my Mimi’s prayer for our community.