This is My Story!
Jesus has been in my life for as long as I can remember. My parents made sure that us as children were soaked in Jesus and His Word. I accepted him as Lord of my life during evening prayer time shortly after I turned 5. I am so grateful that I did it at young age and was able to grow up in it.
I was homeschooled straight through school and as a homeschool mom now I can see what a super hard, time consuming commitment it is! I am so grateful that my parents made that sacrifice.
In my teenage years I was very involved in our church's youth group, at that time God brought a group of young people who were so hungry for Jesus and were not satisfied with the status quo and kept going deeper and pulling those around them deeper and deeper into Jesus and his word. Looking back I can see how extremely blessed I was to have experienced that been surrounded with people like that at a critical time in my life.
In last months blog post my sister Sherry talked about her commitment to courtship and I made a similar commitment as well. As pretty much any other girl I dreamed of my prince charming coming along and sweeping me off my feet and I heard from somewhere to make a list of traits (both physical and spiritual) you wanted in a future husband. I made such a list and tucked it away for a future day. Well one day shortly after I turned 19 my parents called me into my dad's office, which wasn't an unusual thing as I was the tech savvy one at home at that time, they sat me down and told me that a young man had asked to court me, and as soon as I heard his name my mind blew. Arthur (my now husband) was the last person I would have guessed I would end up with, I had been best friends with his younger sister for years and he was just her annoying older brother. After some time and prayer I agreed to go out with him and see where this thing would go. A few months later I pulled out my "list" and looked it over and compared Arthur to my "list". Physically he didn't measure up to everything but character/spiritually he knocked it out of the park. Less than a year later we were happily married and still are almost 9 years and 3 children later.
This last year the Lord has walked me through a very difficult and trying time in the form of health issues. 6 weeks after I gave birth to my last child I developed severe pain in my abdomen and chest that would come and go until one night it just stayed and became more severe as time went on, I ended up in the emergency room with acute gallstone pancreatitis and was hospitalized for 4 days. They wanted to remove my gallbladder right away but I didn't want to give up so easily as I was dealing with a newborn and nursing full time. So I gave it a year and cleaned up my eating, increased my water intake, took supplements, did some horrible cleanses, and sought counsel from people who had been where I was. But after a year it was no better, in fact it was worse. I ended up with multiple gallstones stuck in my bile duct that caused me to lose 15lbs in about a month and be in constant pain if I ate anything. Because of this I was under a lot of stress and anxiety which hindered me from being the kind of wife and mother my family needed me to be. After much prayer and consideration we decided that the best course of action for me was to have my gallbladder removed. It wasn't how I wanted that story to end but looking back I can see that hand of God in it and his gentle hand leading me through it all and I wonder how I could have doubted at all.
My story isn't finished but I know the author, I am in good hands.
--
Melodie Wiebe
Lighthouse Gospel Church
I was homeschooled straight through school and as a homeschool mom now I can see what a super hard, time consuming commitment it is! I am so grateful that my parents made that sacrifice.
In my teenage years I was very involved in our church's youth group, at that time God brought a group of young people who were so hungry for Jesus and were not satisfied with the status quo and kept going deeper and pulling those around them deeper and deeper into Jesus and his word. Looking back I can see how extremely blessed I was to have experienced that been surrounded with people like that at a critical time in my life.
In last months blog post my sister Sherry talked about her commitment to courtship and I made a similar commitment as well. As pretty much any other girl I dreamed of my prince charming coming along and sweeping me off my feet and I heard from somewhere to make a list of traits (both physical and spiritual) you wanted in a future husband. I made such a list and tucked it away for a future day. Well one day shortly after I turned 19 my parents called me into my dad's office, which wasn't an unusual thing as I was the tech savvy one at home at that time, they sat me down and told me that a young man had asked to court me, and as soon as I heard his name my mind blew. Arthur (my now husband) was the last person I would have guessed I would end up with, I had been best friends with his younger sister for years and he was just her annoying older brother. After some time and prayer I agreed to go out with him and see where this thing would go. A few months later I pulled out my "list" and looked it over and compared Arthur to my "list". Physically he didn't measure up to everything but character/spiritually he knocked it out of the park. Less than a year later we were happily married and still are almost 9 years and 3 children later.
This last year the Lord has walked me through a very difficult and trying time in the form of health issues. 6 weeks after I gave birth to my last child I developed severe pain in my abdomen and chest that would come and go until one night it just stayed and became more severe as time went on, I ended up in the emergency room with acute gallstone pancreatitis and was hospitalized for 4 days. They wanted to remove my gallbladder right away but I didn't want to give up so easily as I was dealing with a newborn and nursing full time. So I gave it a year and cleaned up my eating, increased my water intake, took supplements, did some horrible cleanses, and sought counsel from people who had been where I was. But after a year it was no better, in fact it was worse. I ended up with multiple gallstones stuck in my bile duct that caused me to lose 15lbs in about a month and be in constant pain if I ate anything. Because of this I was under a lot of stress and anxiety which hindered me from being the kind of wife and mother my family needed me to be. After much prayer and consideration we decided that the best course of action for me was to have my gallbladder removed. It wasn't how I wanted that story to end but looking back I can see that hand of God in it and his gentle hand leading me through it all and I wonder how I could have doubted at all.
My story isn't finished but I know the author, I am in good hands.
--
Melodie Wiebe
Lighthouse Gospel Church
