Hello family and friends! It has been almost 3 years since posting to this blog. Emily and I are celebrating our 6th anniversary and God has placed it on my heart the last few months to start writing to this blog again to share where our journey has gone and continuing to go.
Emily and I both have used FaceBook to share joys and struggles alike over the past three years. I've been very much prompted over the last few months to start sharing again on this blog not just about a point in our marriage that started this blog, but to continue it as a way to share our faith and grow even more. Our adoption of our wonderful son Shane was a huge faith builder in our Savior Jesus Christ as we learned to trust His guidance, provision, and love starting our family. Since then we have grown in so many areas of our lives. As Christians we are called to tell everyone we can the good news of the Gospel. Just living our lives for Jesus has transformed us both so much on our faith journey both individually and now as we have become one under God in our marriage. I pray when you read this that you are encouraged and your own faith in Christ is grown or even started if you don't have a personal relationship with Him!
Catching Up!!
So much has happened in three years since last writing to this blog. Our son Shane kicked off our family growing as we had such struggles with fertility and being able to get pregnant. What a joy he has been in our life and grown us personally as we are now parents. Shane was named after my own biological brother who passed away to be with our Lord as an infant. He would have been older than myself and it always struck me growing up when my family celebrated memorial day that there was something missing by my brother Shane not being around. I understood that he was in Heaven with Jesus but that comfort didn't truly come until much later in my life. Emily had the great idea of naming our son after him and it was a surprise to my family when we were matched with him. My brother's memory now lives on in our son and I'd like to think his personality is what I would have imagined of my brother!
After we came home with Shane in the fall of 2012, Emily and I celebrated Thanksgiving that year with our families in a special way! Christmas that year was also very special as we began to raise this young baby boy. In the spring of 2013 Emily and I prayed about and decided to look back into fertility. We explored with another doctor the possibility of having children. God lead us to new Doctors that suggested we try doing an IUI. All to our surprise and gratefulness the first time we tried it the timing was perfect and we were blessed with a pregnancy! We couldn't believe it! So the journey of that pregnancy lead us to natural child birth classes and adding space in Shane's room to have a 2nd child join our family. On October 23rd Shane's little sister Ella Grace greeted us and our family grew. We've been blessed to learn about God's design not just in child birth but parenting as well since then. Shane and Ella have taught each other and us both. Joy and peace was very much given to us from Jesus.
As our family grew I personally started having a lot of struggles with my job and health. I was sleeping very sporadically and became very stressed. There were a lot of self imposed causes for that now that I look back. Much of it was once again a journey in my personal faith in Jesus to trust Him and surrender more of myself and my life to Him. Being a new parent brought much of this to my attention. I couldn't dig into my job the way I used to and needed to prioritize my roles as a husband and father appropriately. However, the demands and changes in my job lead me to more times of sleepless nights due to being on-call and just lack of enjoyment of what I did. I was given a burst of trying to improve and enjoy my job more and then it happened. On June 16th of 2014 while at work I had a grand maul seizure and woke up to paramedics at my desk. I was in shock as the EMTs took me to a local hospital here in Wichita. My wife was called and came to the hospital after dropping our kids off at a friends house. I could tell Emily was worried. That very morning I had spoke with an old boss of mine and a co-worker from Cargill IT in which I asked about a position that was open at NetApp as Technical Support Engineer. I had been getting up the courage to get my resume updated months before this. After the conversations I had with them that morning I had decided to apply. Having the seizure that afternoon was a culmination in years of working up the courage to make a change. It was very much a trust factor that I could do something new and still provide for my family. Having the seizure that day in June just confirmed the spiritual warfare that was going on. Once again our family's faith was grown and God provided during that time. I applied for the job from the hospital bed, got an interview, and accepted a position in a 2 week time frame. So much stress was relieved when I left and started a position that was a good fit for me. Due to the seizure I wasn't able to drive for six months and slowly found gracious people that gave me rides to and from work and being was dependent on them to help me get to and from my new job thus providing for my family. During that time I developed a closer relationship with friends and family that helped with giving rides. I especially was blessed by a friendship with Napoleon (Toby) Austin who faithfully and by himself got me to work every morning while I found 5 people to spread out the load of bringing me home. We had such faith bolstering discussions as Toby took me to work every week day morning during those 6 months. My family was so appreciative of his faithfulness and friendship that continues today. I found out that the light headed episodes I was having 2 years prior to my grand maul seizure were petite maul seizures. The doctors never could find a reason for them and thankfully a good friend and brother in Christ, Kelly Hansen, came to the hospital and prayed with me. We both felt the presence of the Holy Spirit was strong and I believe firmly to this day that a miracle happened during that prayer and by many prayers lifted up by others. After that the doctors have never been able to find anything wrong that would cause the seizures. The best prognosis they could give was stress and sleep deprivation. Regardless I got better and began driving again! I continue to enjoy learning and helping others at my new job as they train me and I get experience working with a great team. Most importantly I only work Monday through Friday 7am to 4pm. No more night and weekends has relieved a huge amount of stress and allowed me to fulfill my roles as husband and dad so much better.
Yesterday October 15th was pregnancy and infant loss awareness day. Emily's dear friend posted to Facebook about their journey having a family and the loss of infants through miscarriage. It has been something that they shared openly along with other friends of ours. We've prayed for them and it has been a testament to other couples. With that in mind brings me to the next point in our journey that we haven't shared much outside of our biological and church family. After adopting our son, Emily having surgery for fertility, and a successful IUI we were blessed to be able and get pregnant naturally without any medical intervention! In December of 2014 it happened and we were so pleasantly surprised to find out in January 2015. We let both sides of our family know that a 3rd child was coming and they rejoiced with us! Emily and I decided to delay celebrating our 5th anniversary in October of 2014. A trip to Disney World was planned for February 2015 for just Emily and I. Before we left on that trip Emily was concerned and a 5 week sonogram appointment was scheduled. It was early in the pregnancy and a sonogram revealed a little heart beat of our baby. We were given the precautions to take and Emily did a great job at her pre-natal care as with our daughter Ella. We prayed and said good bye to our children as they had some quality time with nana. Emily and I left on our 5th anniversary trip early in February to Disney World rejoicing the wonderful changes in our lives and seeing God work in so many ways through us and the Church. We had a wonderful time in Florida and got to reminisce on our last five years of marriage and life together. It was wonderful that we were together, as on Sunday before we returned home Emily came out of the bathroom crying. She said she was bleeding heavily. Her pregnancy symptoms had gone away the days before. She knew that the baby was mis-carrying. We held each other tightly and cried. We prayed for comfort and peace during that time. We know that our child was received home to Jesus and that God was not the cause for it. Grief did strike us and fortunately our faith once again got us through that time as is promised. We were welcomed home and loved on by those that we shared the loss with. Emily's OB doctor confirmed what she knew to be true. We were both numb for awhile and grieved differently. It lead us to some Christian counseling with a pastor at our church. We trusted in the Lord and stepped forward as a husband and wife determined to not forget our child. We were blessed to be able to get pregnant naturally and that gave us hope for the future. So now we have been blessed to be the parents of 3 children and will never forget our baby. We will see our child again someday when we are received into Heaven as well and look forward to the day.
So now shift forward a few months. We've worked on healing our marriage through the only one that can. Jesus used many people in our life to do that. He grew our faith and as it says in Romans 8:28
"And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose."
That is so true in our case. The loss of a baby led Emily and I to love each other deeper and renew our faith in Jesus deeper. We've become better parents for Shane and Ella. We have a renewed passion for our roles at Hope Christian Church along with gaining a better vision and understanding in what it means to live a balanced life. What's important to us and how we prioritize things has definitely changed since the miscarriage. So low and behold after only a few months Emily was pregnant again with our 4th child! Wow what a confirmation and validation to prayers lifted up and answered. This time the pregnancy has been very healthy and we are celebrating the births and arrivals of not just our 2nd daughter but the children of many friends. So as I write this Emily and I are celebrating our 6th anniversary, the birthdays of our children, and the coming of another daughter joining the family. We are passionate more than ever in our relationship with Jesus which overflows into our marriage, parenting, friendships, and our roles in spreading the Gospel through Hope Christian Church and our daily lives. I personally have a renewed passion to grow my faith deeper than ever and spread the fruits of the Holy Spirit to others. Looking forward to what is in store next! Stay tuned.
God bless,
Shannon and Emily Wiedeman
