The LONG Reason We Understand Crisis and Trauma

Shawn & Sonny, THE BACKSTORY 

“Mr. and Mrs. Hennessy, it’s time. We have to turn the machines off. 

There really is nothing more that we can do.” 

It’s time? Already? Can we have just another moment? Do we have to do this now? She just needs more time. Maybe she’ll improve tomorrow. The truth was, if Savannah hadn’t gotten better in the previous 18 days, outside of a divine miracle, one more day wouldn’t make an impact. From the doctor’s perspective, it was time to place our daughter in fate’s hands. From our perspective, it was time to place Savannah in God’s hands. Somehow, I just knew she was going to make it. I just knew she was going to survive. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Savannah Rose Hennessy was going to be divinely healed.

That’s why when the Doctor turned off the life support and Savannah didn’t breathe on her own, I wasn’t ready for it. If you’ve never stood by and witnessed the physical death of another human being, you simply cannot understand the weight of what I witnessed in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of Seattle Children’s Hospital. Right before my eyes, inside the supposed safety of her father’s arms, my arms, Savannah Rose struggled and strained, heaved and gasped, and eventually passed from this life to the next. Even now, more than a decade later, it’s difficult to speak, and even more difficult to write these words – she died. How would I ever recover? No parent is ever supposed to outlive their child. Immediately, before I left the hospital— before I even released my little girl from my arms— the cold clutches of grief seized me. 

If there’s a more difficult topic to tackle than grief I haven’t discovered it. Grief isn’t just an emotion, but rather a collection of emotions we experience when we encounter loss. For the most part, the study of grief has focused on physical death and the trauma that death causes to those left behind. However, grief is not isolated to physical death. Grief can accompany loss of any type— the loss of a job, home, car, relationship, or even a dream. If you’ve ever sat with a friend who has just learned their company is downsizing and they will not be kept, you can attest to the fact that they are undoubtedly experiencing very real grief. Likewise, spend any amount of time with anyone who has just received the final letter from the bank informing them the home they thought they’d raise their children in will be home to another family come Christmas next year. Foreclosure is imminent. In that moment of crisis, you’ll realize, they too are in the grips of grief. Certainly, the aspect of grief that is most prominent though is physical death.    -Excerpt from Shawn’s Gravity of Grief book      

Sonny has always had a love for design, history, and architecture and planned to study interior design and architecture while playing collegiate volleyball. In her junior year of high school at a Wednesday night youth service, where her aunt prayed for her, Sonny felt an undeniable call to ministry. She didn’t know what this calling entailed but she swiftly applied to a Bible College in North Dakota and attended the next fall at age 17. This is where she met Shawn during pre-season volleyball and football camps. The pair fell head over heels in love and married almost immediately during her 2nd semester at Trinity “Bridal” College...we mean Trinity Bible College. 

Shawn and Sonny each graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Studies with Minors in Coaching. They were credentialed and went on to youth pastor in Memphis, TN and Tacoma, WA and finally in Tampa, FL. 

What they hadn’t accounted for, after receiving their theology degrees and credentials, was the childhood baggage they still carried with them into their future marriage and ministry. Sonny’s testimony about giving birth to a baby girl that was born too early to survive, as a 15-year-old, will be in her memoir, Twirly Girl.

Shawn came from a rough neighborhood where he felt he had to fight his way through life and it deeply wounded and shaped him. He earned an athletic scholarship to the University of Minnesota but was expelled and arrested for theft his freshman year and awaited trial in the Hennepin County Jail for 111 days! He was “ironically” released due to overcrowding and headed back to the Detroit/Windsor area to follow in the footsteps of many family members who were faithful to the auto factories. On day 89 of the 90 days required to work before joining the ranks of the factory workers’ union, Shawn got a call from a football coach in Ellendale, ND. He was offered a full-ride scholarship, which “ironically” had never been offered to anyone by that college. Upon arrival, he bought, in his words, “a nickel bag of weed and got smoked out in the Bible College dorm room that night.” That football season Shawn gave his life to Jesus. He didn’t walk through emotional and psychological healing of any kind, nor did he even know at the time it was necessary.

Shawn just began using his gifts of singing and speaking for the college and in internships and his talents gave way to opportunities. Sonny was his right hand and gifted in the organizational and structural areas where he struggled. The partnership worked and worked well. They grew youth ministries big and fast, much like they fought and made up...big and fast. They were best friends but unfortunately also fantastic arguers.

In ministry, they were both addicted to success and people-pleasing. By their 8th wedding anniversary, Shawn and Sonny had endured a miscarriage and then when Sonny was 17 weeks along in her pregnancy with their daughter, Savannah, doctors discovered heart and lung deformities. They actually were hit with these words from a geneticist’s, “You should abort and don’t try again, you just aren’t genetically compatible.” This was a blow to say the least. Their faith was seriously tested as they prayed the remaining 23 weeks of her pregnancy for a miracle. Instead of the miracle they prayed for, they found themselves holding the hand of a very sick infant in the NICU.  

Fourteen days after Savannah was born, they faced the heart-wrenching question from Savannah’s doctor, “You will need to pull the plug and we need to know which day next week you choose?” You can understand why Shawn’s book, The Gravity of Grief, begins with him telling the story of being so angry with God that he wanted to walk away from church ministry. They are so grateful they did allow God to soften them and heal their deep hurts and gave them two healthy children, Isaiah and Aubree.

Like many marriages that struggle after cancer, death or other trauma, Shawn and Sonny struggled to have a healthy marriage with having childhood trauma too. They separated for 4 months and Sonny became the Marketing Director at IKEA Michigan. Although she learned valuable skills about marketing that would help for her future, she knew she belonged married and working with her best friend and soulmate, Shawn. 

Shawn and Sonny yielded to a 3-year sabbatical of counseling and working outside of ministry. Sonny managed a coffeehouse in Green Bay while her and Shawn focused on their kids, their marriage and the healing they individually needed. They became passionate about people becoming spiritually and emotionally whole. They would never view themselves, others, or the local church the same again. Since 2013 the Hennessy’s have made Green Bay their home. They felt a significant shift in their impact on the (920), their area code, in 2014 when they “married the dirt.” They now want all people to love where they live and love their life. Their mission individually, as a couple and as business owners and pastors is that all people find their purpose and live their brightest life.