Our mission is to cultivate wholeness in new adults so they launch into the world thriving in purpose and responsibility.
Meet Matt + Tammy Dorsett
We were blessed to be able to raise our kids in a home where both of us had professional careers. Matt is an engineer and Tammy is a physical therapist. We raised our kids in the church. We weren’t perfect. We certainly made our share of mistakes. But overall, we felt like we did a “good job” as parents. Conversations about life after high school when our children were little always centered around college. As if there were no other option. We knew other families who had children that took a different path but those scenarios were few and far between in our world.
So, imagine our surprise when our oldest son, who was a national merit commended scholar, left the university he was attending not once, but twice. For a myriad of reasons that parents lay awake at night and fear. What we didn’t know at the time is that the Lord was using the experience to grow us as parents and our son as a man. The Lord was laying the foundation for what has become The Gap at Sawmill Meadow. The experience has allowed us to be bold in having conversations with other parents and other new adults about expectations. About Jesus after high school. About security in how Christ designed us. About what we don’t teach our kids. About what new adults wish they would’ve known before they left high school.
Drew Dorsett, the ‘why’ behind The Gap at Sawmill Meadow.
what if the best path isn’t the standard path?
As Matt and I have shared the stories and outcomes from our inaugural year with college-aged adults, the most common response we hear is “I wish I would have had something like that when I finished high school.” It is scary to choose a divergent path. To choose an unknown. To be different. To make a choice to “grow up,” or better yet, embrace the person the Lord made you to be before stepping out fully into the world. We don’t take your questions or your concerns lightly. We’ve been there.
Oh, and as for our son, Drew - his “gap year” was of his own making. And while he missed out on the intentionally designed focus on Christian community and discipleship that is available at The Gap at Sawmill Meadow, he created his own “gap” experience. He came home. Got a job with benefits. Moved out. Lost 30 pounds. Paid his own bills. And after 18 months, came over one day and told us he applied for and was accepted for readmission back into his major at the university he left, and, he graduated in December 2022!