The Shoemakes were established in 2006 when Timmy and Amber decided to turn their three years of dating into a lifelong journey together through marriage. Each of them from very similar backgrounds full of poverty, abuse, hurt and brokenness. Looking back they both knew it was God who placed them together.

Timmy and Amber met when Amber was just 17 years old and still in high school. Amber often says that Timmy saved her from all of the things she suffered through as a child. You can read more about that in Amber’s blog posts. Together, they would share a love that was only seen in movies and that others only dreamed of having. But they would also face some of the hardest moments and losses that this world could ever give.

The first of many losses was when they suffered through three miscarriages. Leaving them feeling an emptiness and wondering if they would ever be able to have a family of their own. But through God’s favor, they had their first child in 2009, Leland. Their next blessing came in 2014, another son, Logan. But when Leland was just 6-years-old, tragedy struck again when Leland lost his life due to a brain eating amoeba called Balamuthia Mandrillaris. Leland’s story reached people worldwide after Amber posted a letter he left them onto her social media page. You can see that letter and post here.

Timmy and Amber had each other to lean on during the most traumatic loss any parent could ever face. They were best friends and with each other and God, they were able to one day smile again and remember Leland in all that they did. They had the assurance they would see him again one day.

They were blessed tremendously after the heartache of losing Leland. That blessing came in the form of a daughter named Lana in 2017. Amber knew Lana was hand picked by Leland and sent to her. Amber found out she was pregnant on the one year anniversary of Leland’s passing. She was baptized that next day and proclaimed her love for God publicly and told the devil he was a liar and nothing would stop her from fulfilling her purpose and praising God through it all. Amber spent all Easter Sunday in labor and at 1 am the following day she welcomed Lana into the world, on Leland’s original due date! As if that doesn’t give you enough chills already, Lana came out looking just like Leland!

As the page grows we will share more stories of our past and you’ll get to know us more but for now you’ll get the cliff notes version of who we are and our story. We love amusement parks and nature. We love going camping and our favorite place, our second home really, is Universal Studios in Orlando. Our family was happy doing anything as long as we were together.

The hardest thing Amber would ever go through was when Timmy went home to be with Leland. It was very sudden and unexpected. There will be a post about this in more detail one day soon when I’m able to type about it. But he passed in our living room the day after his 43rd birthday from sudden cardiac arrest. He was healthy and in great shape so the shock of what happened has left us all in disbelief and with a lot of questions. We were talking one minute and the next the kids are standing by crying and screaming out to God while I administer CPR. The events of that traumatic day are on repeat in our minds along side all of the good memories we hold so dear. Those memories and the knowledge of knowing we won’t make anymore knew ones, battle each other in our minds.

We hope this page shows you the honest, raw, real, pain and emotions that come with such great losses. That it shows you it’s ok to be open and vulnerable. That maybe if you are suffering a loss, you will see the things you are feeling and thinking, are normal and grief is a very complicated and debilitating thing to have to learn to live through. We never move on, we move through it. Grief will always be a part of us and will always walk by our side, quietly until it decides to speak up at the most inopportune times, and make us break all over again. The person I once was, the person Timmy helped make me into, died when he did. I’m trying to learn who this knew woman is staring back at me because I don’t recognize her. Seeking my purpose now because I lost what that was. Timmy took it with him, right along with who I used to be. God isn’t done with us just yet. So, until the day he calls us home to be with Him, and Timmy and Leland, we will do our best to listen to Him and be obedient in whatever it is that he’s called us to do, and to be. May God be with all of you who are here reading this, and suffering a loss of your own. Just know that even when you feel so alone and abandoned, you aren’t. God gets quiet sometimes, but it’s up to us to be still and listen. Sometimes He speaks the loudest, not when it’s a loud thunder like we read about in the Bible, but when it’s merely a whisper he offers.