I'm Suzy Lee. I'm a minister, a writer, a teacher, and a Sacred Harp singer. I live on a mountain in Tennessee with my husband Daniel, a developer, a builder, and a stone mason, stone being his particular love. He can build a house from below the ground to above the roof, and he has. He is a creative genius and a brilliant problem solver, and he feeds every bird, possum, and raccoon that presents itself at the porch railing. Between the two of us, we keep a home where the porch light never goes out. This website is that home with the digital door propped open.
You can see from my picture that I'm in a wheelchair, so here's the short of the part you can't see. A surgery more than ten years ago left damage behind, a car accident added to it, and then came a pandemic, when the whole world stopped moving, and I reckon I did too. I bought a cane in a thrift store for $4.99 in 2021. The cane became a rollator, and the rollator became this chair. There is a multi-stage plan for mending this and more, and I am working it. On March 2, 2023, at fifty-nine, I walked down the aisle to Daniel with no cane and no rollator, on my brother Scott's arm. I'd asked him the night before if he would walk me down, and he and Mama were both right proud that I did. So when I tell you I'm working my way back to my legs, that is not a figure of speech. It's a plan.
Sickness will teach you things health never mentions. It taught me what it feels like to be handled instead of heard. It taught me the difference between being treated and being tended. And it taught me that healing is never just a body project. The body, the mind, and the spirit heal together or they limp together, and most of us were never shown how to invite all three to the same table.
That's why this house exists. I have spent my whole life gathering what works: Scripture and science, old kitchen wisdom and new research, prayer and protein, teachers who made me walk across hot coals and teachers who made me sit still. I was declared a minister by one of the great teachers of my life, anointed if not ordained, and I have decided to spend whatever I've got left setting a bigger table. A church with a door instead of a doctrine. A research institute to test what we believe with honest rigor. A publishing house for stories that deserve telling. And this porch, where every last bit of it is free.
But our story, at its heart, is a deep desire to share what we have been given. We share our money whenever we can, and maybe sometimes when we shouldn't, but we've been given so much more than money. We've been given joy, hope, faith, beauty, connection, friendship, counsel, support, guidance, and love, and the good Lord asks us to pass it on. This is our divinely inspired attempt to bring what we have, the goodness we have found, from our porch to your doorstep. We hope you gain wisdom, encouragement, and comfort here. We hope you find a place to plan and ponder, a place to pray and connect with others in this digital age. Take a break from the doom scrolling and land here. Come. Belong. Visit the Prayer Chapel, pray for somebody who's asked for it, and leave a prayer of your own.
The porch light is on for everyone.
Suffering ends where healing is welcomed, and I believe with everything in me that people can heal in body, mind, and spirit, and live long, useful, joyful lives, and that the dignity and upliftment of every human being is the natural outpouring of a healthy heart. That's the whole mission. Everything on this mountain serves it.
Southern Balm is not a wellness brand. It's a home. Built on a mountain, it reaches out through books, app, audio, video, and community to anyone who needs what it offers: natural healing, hard-won wisdom, and the kind of Southern hospitality that has always been, at its best, a form of grace.
We’re so glad you’re here. Love, Pastor Suzy Lee and Daniel
