Sherayah: Memories of What Made Me

I’m Sherayah, pronunciation…Sure-rae-uh. When introducing myself I often am asked where my parents got my name? In short its from an Amy Grant song “Sharayah”. People who haven’t met me assume I am anything but Caucasian, however I assure you I may be the whitest girl you’ve ever met. I want to give you a glimpse into who I, Sherayah, am.

I’ve been wrestling for a few weeks now with this question of who I am and what makes me who I am. Max and I are striving to make this blog authentic and real. We want you, the reader, to come along with us on our journey of life and know that what you read is an accurate representation of our lives.

I was born in Sioux Lookout, Ontario in 1991. My family moved back home to the Interlake of Manitoba in 1993 when my older sister Evangeline was diagnosed with Fanconi Anemia, a rare genetic disorder that affects the bone marrow. She passed away in January of 1994 when I was almost 2 ½ years old. I have exactly 3 memories of my older sister; one in the summer time before she was admitted into the hospital. We were running in the sunshine to play on a slide, and I remember being on top of the slide and having to brush a spider web off my face. The second was when she was in isolation in the hospital. I had to wear an isolation gown and mask to visit her. The third memory was her funeral.

Even though these memories are deeply painful they are treasured and I consider them a gift because they include my older sister who I grew up without. I experienced loss and pain at a very young age, which has shaped me in the way I view life, God, His love, and His plan for my life.

The majority of my growing up years where spent on a sheep farm in Zbarz, Manitoba surrounded by my tight knit Mennonite community which included a church and private Christian school which I attended K-12. To say I grew up under a rock is an understatement. I remember listening to the radio in my brother’s car when he got his drivers license and drove us to school. It was a pivotal memory because up until that point, the only music was “Christian” music. I honestly don’t understand most pop cultural references from the 90’s or early 2000’s because that wasn’t a part of my life.

I decided to follow Jesus when I was 7 years old. I remember it was at a revival service that my church was having and I felt convicted that I needed to follow Jesus. At 7 years old I knew that following Jesus meant my life needed to be different. I needed to obey Jesus and do the things He wanted me to do.

My journey with Christ was slow and steady. I had the privilege of growing up with parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, teachers, and friends that loved Jesus. I was deeply immersed in a faith community that, although not perfect, helped shape me into the woman I am today. My mom taught my siblings and me to have a quiet time with Jesus. She emphasized how important it was to spend time in the Word and to pray and talk with him. It is a constant struggle to make time for Jesus but every minute I spend with him allows for intimacy and revelation from Him, and a greater knowledge of his plan for my life.

I started my four year nursing degree at the University of Manitoba in 2010. Two words: culture shock! I am incredibly thankful for my home church community and especially my mom who kept me accountable and helped me navigate my way through school and the culture of disregard for Jesus. Nursing school was incredibly difficult both mentally and emotionally. I realized just how small my world growing up was and that I was very naïve to the world and to others’ circumstances around me.

In spring and summer of 2011 I worked at Camp Arnes. Even though Camp Arnes was only 25 minutes from my home in Arborg, I had only been there twice before and knew almost nothing about it. I worked in outdoor education in the spring and was a part of summer leadership with Max. This again was a very challenging time where I experienced a lot of growth. My eyes were open to the painful circumstances that many children live with and in. I remember at the end of the summer I told myself I was never coming back—ha!

God had other plans for my life that I hadn’t even imagined. When I imagined my life, I didn’t imagine a husband and kids. Not that I didn’t want that. I thought that it simply wasn’t in the cards for me. I hadn’t had a romantic relationship where I felt accepted and loved unconditionally, so I thought that I was destined to be single.

Then I reconnected with Max at that October wedding of 2012. We went skating several times that winter. Once I accidently knocked over his coffee thermos, which crashed to the ground. I looked at him worriedly and apologized profusely, afraid he would be upset with me or make fun of my clumsiness. He looked at me with incredible kindness and said, “That’s ok.” The tone of his voice saying, “What are you so worried about?” It was at that moment that I knew I wanted to be with him. Falling in love with Max gave me a bigger picture of God’s love for me. His unconditional love, His love for me as a person; not for what I am capable of doing but for who I am. Marrying Max was the second best decision I made, the first being following Jesus.

Max continued to work at Camp Arnes and I worked as a nurse in Gimli and then in Arborg, the two small towns nearby. In summer 2015 my family found out that my younger sister, Tamara, was in need of a bone marrow transplant. Not long after, Max and I learned I was pregnant with our first child. Learning I was pregnant gave me joy in a time of such grief and uncertainty. Although the science and technique of bone marrow transplants had improved drastically in the last 20 years, the fear of loss and the unknown was consuming.

My sister had her transplant December 2, 2015. My mom and I spent December in the Health Sciences Centre with Tamara as she battled the effects of chemo and the donor’s bone marrow, which saved her life. Although there was immense fear and sadness I never felt forsaken by God. I know that each day we sat there and stayed with my sister He was there. When we had to leave for the night, He remained with her and with us. We were not alone. In all the pain that was experienced God showed that He is a good God and He does not forsake us.

I gave birth to our first daughter Jovie Evangeline on April 4, 2016. Jovie means ‘joyful’ and Evangeline means ‘good news’. She was and is our ‘joyful good news’. After giving birth to Jovie, I fell into postpartum depression. I felt completely inadequate and that I was a failure as a mother. I remember thinking that Jovie would be better off raised by someone else, and I wanted to run away from it all. It was an incredibly dark time for me.

On one particularly low day my mom, who was unaware of how I was feeling, offered to come over so I could mow the lawn. Mowing the lawn is something I love doing and it was a break from caring for a baby that I felt incapable of caring for. As I was pushing the lawn mower, I began talking with God, pleading for some relief from the dark cloud that surrounded me. He said to me, “My arms are big enough.” It was then that the heavy cloud of depression began to lift. As I surrendered myself and my feelings of failure and disappointment, I felt the sunshine coming into my soul. The healing did not come instantaneously, rather slowly the Lord worked on my heart and my mind. He began to help me see the situation clearly and gave me joy. It took a couple of months to start feeling totally “normal” again; I am so thankful that the Lord is gracious, patient, and loving.

Max and I went to Oroville, Ca in November 2016 for my cousin Lisa’s wedding. What we saw and experienced there blew us away. On the Sunday after her wedding we decided to attend her church, The Father’s House. At this service, during worship the pastor’s daughter prayed for us. She prayed for the things that were on our hearts that we hadn’t even told her about. We saw that this church not only had a vibrant, loving and fun community, but also it was community completely focused on serving and loving Jesus and equipping others to do the same. They loved us and accepted us even though they did not know us. Our interest in the Father’s House Church was piqued.

We decided to visit them again in April of 2017 and this time we took Jovie with us. Max and I wanted to know if the experience we had in November 2016 was just a single experience or a consistent reality of living there. We wanted to know if it was a place that would be conducive to raising children. It was a “Yes” to both. Yes we want to go there and learn what it means to, “Give your life away.” Yes our children will be well taken care of. They will be surrounded by people who love them, and will help raise them to love Jesus and live their lives for him. This was an unspoken fear I had then and still struggle with. “What about my children? Will I be able to take care of my girls?” Again and again that fear was spoken about, as people prayed for me and reassured and affirmed that my children will be taken care of. Jesus loves them so much more than I do, and he will take care of them.

Arrow Lark was born August 27, 2017. She was diagnosed with ectopic atrial re-entry tachycardia while I was pregnant with her. Basically her heart was beating extremely fast. I was put on medication, which she received to slow down her heart. We spent 5 days in the neonatal intensive care after she was born to see whether or not her heart rate had normalized. Thankfully she did not need to be put back onto medication. Instead, a cardiologist is monitoring her and I check her heart rate three times a day for tachycardia. Our hope and prayer is that she will outgrow this by the time she is one year old.

The Lord is teaching me trust. He is telling me, “Trust me with your money. Trust me with your daughters. Trust me that I am leading you and you will not fall.”

We have decided to follow Jesus’ call. He has asked us to take a step of faith and be willing to surrender everything we imagined for our lives and to trust that what He has in store for us is so much better. At the end of my life, when I see God face to face, I want to stand before him with humble confidence as he says to me, “Well done my good and faithful servant.”