In part 1 of this episode of the I Witness podcast, Jenny Leavitt shares her journey through faith when an unthinkable tragedy struck her family. The Leavitt family is no stranger to difficult times, and Jenny shares how God prepared her for her worst nightmare.  

Kelly: Welcome to the I Witness Podcast. I’m your host, Kelly Jo Wilson, and this is the show for women who struggle to accept their worth but want to embrace their gifts and share their witness for Jesus. We have a great show today about tragedy that shakes faith. Our guest is Jenny Leavitt a pastor’s wife, mother, author, and follower of Jesus.

Jenny is amazed by God’s reach to rescue broken, hurting people, and has witnessed God’s faithfulness through shattering loss. Jenny’s passion is encouraging others to lean into Jesus during life’s ups and downs. Jenny lives in Florida with her husband of nearly 30 years, Myron, and her dog Molly, who thinks she’s a cat.

Listen to Part 1 of the interview here:

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Interview with Jenny Leavitt

Welcome to the I Witness podcast, Jenny. I’m so happy to have you.

Jenny: I’m so happy to be here.

Kelly: Great, great. Today we want to talk through a little bit of your journey and your struggle with the tragedy that happened to your family. As I said, you can share whatever you feel comfortable sharing. So why don’t you let our listeners know a little bit more about you and your family?

Jenny: Well, I became a Christian when I was 15. I met my husband when I was 16, and we got married when I was 18, so very young.

Kelly: Wow, that’s wonderful.

Jenny: Both of us had parents who were married for a long time, but we had at least one parent that battled with some addictions.

So we carried some baggage into our marriage and then married young. So, obviously, there were some maturity issues that we had to work on together and grow together. Then, we both fell in love with Jesus in our late teens.

God has a way of changing life’s plans and testing faith

So, God has a way of reaching in and changing your life’s plans. And neither one of us really planned on being in the ministry when we were growing up, but God had some other plans. So, we’ve been in some form of ministry almost all of our adult lives. This is the third church he’s pastored that we’re pastoring right now.

Kelly: Wow, that’s wonderful.

Jenny:  We’ve also assisted with youth ministry, for years and years back in our home church. That’s actually where we were, in our home church in Jacksonville, assisting with the children’s ministry at the time when the accident happened, back in 2015.

Kelly: So that’s pretty cool that you guys met whenever you were in high school and that you’re like high school sweethearts. You have been married for what about 30 years now? That’s great.

Jenny: We just celebrated our 29^th anniversary this past Monday.

Kelly: Congratulations! Happy anniversary.

Jenny: Oh, thank you. Actually, he’s four years older than me, so I was a senior in high school. He was in the military when I met him. I was trying to do the math in my head.

Kelly: Oh, no worries. Yeah, no, he was 20-something. So that’s what we could say.

Jenny: Yeah. Yes.

Kelly: So that’s great, you guys are high school sweethearts celebrating your anniversary. You were into the ministry, which is funny because I agree with you, God definitely works in very mysterious, funny ways. So you had some struggles before the accident. You had some things that you had to fight through.

God prepares ahead of time

Do you want to talk about that a little bit? Talk about some of those major struggles that really shook that faith, shook your faith.

Jenny: Probably the first really big struggle was, I was only 22 years old married just a few years, and already had our two boys, but I got a phone call on a Friday afternoon. I had recently had our youngest Jacob in November of 97. Ever since then, I’d been having a lot of weird, symptoms that they kept trying to blame on postpartum issues, but it was like weird things. One pupil would dilate while the other would stay large, and then they would flip.

So it was like bizarre symptoms. It wasn’t your normal postpartum symptoms. And I never had anything like that with my oldest son anyway. So anyway, finally, after I started passing out and what really got them looking was I got jaundiced, and that’s when they really started taking me seriously.

But I was still only 22 when I got a call on that Friday afternoon. The doctor, the specialist, said, “I hate to tell you this over the phone, but timing is critical. So, I have to tell you over the phone that the test came back, and it’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”

I was 22, totally naive. I said, “I don’t even know what that is.”

He said, “It’s cancer, and it is in every lymph node in your chest. Your chest is full of it.”

 He felt pretty confident that they thought the tumor in my pancreas was the non-Hodgkins lymphoma metastasizing down to my pancreas.

Faith in God was tested and rocked

I was only 22 and I think that was probably the first time that, my faith was really tested and rocked.

I gave my life to Christ when I was 15 and thank God that he led me into a good Bible-believing church. At that time, I didn’t realize it, but God was putting some foundational truths in me that he knew I would need.

Like for instance, when I became a believer. I think that one reason God gave me the scripture I’m about to share as a new believer was partly because of my upbringing. My parents were together, but it was rough. One of the scriptures that in those first years before cancer really just was like an anchor for me was where Jesus said, “I’ll never leave you. I’ll never forsake you.”

As much as I loved that scripture, I didn’t realize how much I needed that anchor until I went through cancer.

There were some times, I mean, my husband, God bless him, he was there as much as possible, and he has continued to be throughout the years as I go back for treatments and cancer scares and all kinds of stuff, he’s continued to be there, but the one constant through it all has been that Jesus has always been there.

Jesus never left me

He’s never left me, never forsaken me. Looking back, it seems through all these different seasons of my life and things we’ve gone through, there was always a verse that God was speaking to my heart ahead of time. I didn’t even know why he was giving me that one to focus on, but he’s just so good and so faithful like that to prepare us even when we don’t know. That’s what he’s doing, giving us that little kernel of truth to hold onto.

Fear grips faith

Kelly: For sure. That had to be scary, especially young, 22, and a new mom, you’re just trying to navigate that with two, two young boys. But, then getting the call. I can totally understand how it can resonate there with you and I love that you had that to carry with you. Personally, I had a similar, similar scare too. I got the call too, and I had to have surgery.

It was cervical cancer, though. But a similar thing. The fear that grips you is so inexplainable because it’s more so for everyone else, I felt like. Did you feel like that? Like you look at your boys and your husband, and you’re like, “I can’t imagine. I have to be here for them.”

I think the scariest part for me was the PET scan. That was probably the scariest part for me. Because going into that, it’s like they know it’s there. But it may be a little bit different for you just because of the nature and type you had.

But for me, it was like, “Okay, is it everywhere, or is it just in this one spot?”

I don’t want to focus too much on that, but I can understand a little bit of your fear. So what a great verse to carry you through.

Faith in God is shaken

Jenny: That fear was so … I mean, I totally agree with you. I had settled it with Christ, so I felt confident that if God chose to take me home, I knew I would make heaven my home. My fear was my boys. I can’t tell you how many times I would be like, “God. We have a three-year-old and a baby. How is Myron going to do this?”

I know he’s a tough man and everything, but that’s a lot. And that’s a big part of my testimony I’ve shared many, many times over the years with other moms. I remember one night in the throes of all the treatments. I had six months of chemo treatments and 56 radiation treatments.

So somewhere in the middle of all that, in the middle of the night, I couldn’t sleep. My mind was just whirling with all that fear over the boys, “What’s gonna happen to them if I die?”

I found out later that I had stage four and I didn’t know that at the time. I just knew that the prognosis wasn’t very good. I just remember I went out in the living room in the middle of the night and I said, “God, I am not leaving until I get some peace from you about our boys. I can’t keep living in this fear. I just can’t.”

Peace surpasses all understanding

I don’t know, it was probably an hour, hour and a half later that I just kept wrestling God about that and just praying. There is no other way to describe it, which the Bible actually says that peace that passes all understanding. You can’t describe it.

It was like this peace just settled on me. God spoke that, that quiet, still voice that he does, and he said, “They’re mine. I love them even more than you do. I’m gonna take care of them.”

There was such a peace that just settled over me that I mean, I kid you not even as they were growing up, obviously, I survived cancer. But, still, as they were growing up, there were times when  I probably should have been scared at some of the things they were doing and places they were going. But that peace carried with me.

Wrestling with God

I wrestled with God about that and he gave me that peace and that stayed with me. It was a staying factor. Actually the night of the accident, that was crucial in my receiving the news about our boys. That was actually a reference point that I have no doubt that he’s the one who brought that back to my memory.

Kelly: I’m sure. That is intense. That peace is very difficult to describe unless you have experienced it. It’s like when you should be writhing, you’re still. It’s only him that can really do that. Right?

Jenny: Mm-hmm.

Kelly: I think it’s interesting, like you said, how he prepares you with the verse before going through the actual thing you’re gonna go through. So you get through cancer, get through all of that.

So having that peace, and him telling you they’re mine, and you know he will hold them in his hands. Why don’t you tell me what happened later? So, in a way, that was preparing you for the next thing, right? The accident. Like I said, you don’t have to go into a ton of detail, but what happened with the accident. How did you handle that?

Jenny’s faith in God is tested even more

Jenny: In the interim. Because I’ve been cancer free since November 1998.

Kelly: Oh, praise Jesus!

Jenny:  Yes. The accident happened in August 2015. So in that interim of, what is that, like 17 years or so, another verse that, when I look back in my life, it’s the verse that held those years together.

A lot of people know it. It’s the Romans 8:28, how God works all things together for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.

Because so many times over those years, we saw how. Even on this side of eternity, we may never understand exactly why I had to go through cancer. But we’ve seen how God has used it for good.

Steadfast faith, even when they lost everything

There have been so many times that a coworker, somebody from the church, our pastor, or somebody will say, “Hey, I just met so-and-so and they just found out they have cancer. Would you guys mind talking to them?” Or, “Hey, I know so-and-so and his wife, and it’s not looking very good. Can both of you talk to them?  Because I think the husband could benefit from Myron talking to them too.”

Times like that, just seeing God work good out of it. There was also an interim time when my husband broke his back. I mean, horribly. He’s had two back surgeries since then.

At that time, my husband, who’s a very hard worker and has one of the strongest work ethics I know, was sent home because he wasn’t allowed to work for almost a year and a half.

We lost everything.

We had two houses, we had cars, and we lost everything. So in that interim, we even saw God work those things for good because, during that time of being homeless, we could look back and draw from the times that God brought us through cancer.

My husband would even say, “God brought us through that. He’s gonna bring us through this.”

We could look back and use that as a reference point. So even those things in our life, that scripture, I feel like, was the overall theme for that time. Which led us up to the greatest time of trial in our lives.

A mother’s worst nightmare

So on Saturday, August 29th, 2015, our whole family had been volunteering at our church in Jacksonville. My husband and I worked with the youth, and they were doing a special event for the community. My husband and I were involved and our oldest son was actually in the event.

Our youngest son, Jacob, it was his first time being in the lights and sound ministry. He was so excited.

When you volunteer like that, you’re the first ones there and you’re the last ones to leave. So we had just gotten home, but it was super late. It was almost midnight we got a call from our pastor’s wife, because they drove home a similar way from us, asking us if we knew where the boys were.

When you’re faced with something like that, even with a cancer diagnosis, sometimes that shock and numbness can be like, “no, that happens to other people. That doesn’t happen to me. That doesn’t happen to us.”

So to make a long story short, our boys were in our oldest son’s Ford Escape, and they were hit by a drunk driver.

Our youngest son, Jacob, was 17 at the time, Caleb was 20, Jacob was 17. Jacob died on the scene and Caleb almost died.

A miracle emerged from the devastation

To this day, I’m so grateful for the first responders who were there. It was a dark, dreary night, like drizzling rain out in the middle of the country, so it was not a well-lit intersection.

Without them getting there quickly and getting them in, we would’ve lost him too. It was still touch and go with him for at least a couple of weeks. He was in a coma for eight or nine days. He, he’s had so many surgeries that we have to start with the top of his head and work down to the bottom of his feet to remember everything wrong.

He’s a miracle. When people see him now they can’t believe it because he just barely has a limp when he walks. He’s got so much titanium in him, it’s amazing. He came home in a wheelchair and C-collar and is walking today.

God’s faithfulness all along

 All those lessons we learned kind of converged all in that timeframe, which was instrumental in how we were able to heal and process. Looking back on our lives, seeing God’s hand of faithfulness, and how he prepared us even when we didn’t know he was preparing us. All those lessons that we learned that was because he knew what was coming.

He had placed people in our lives … one of our dear friends in the fellowship of churches that we’re in, he’s a mentor, almost like a grandfather to us.

Our pastor’s pastor is in his eighties, and he and his wife lost their daughter when she was 15, like 40 years ago. So, we knew that about him. He talks about it frequently when he’s preaching. So things like that God had put into our life, and we didn’t realize the significance.

 Until you’re going through that, and even then, I’m condensing months, even years of healing after the accident. Things that God helped us work through. Deep wounds that he had to heal.

These lessons and the people God had placed in our lives were instrumental in that healing.

Healing through faith and surrendering to God

Those verses that I shared with you already, they came back around where we were like, “Okay, all right. You said you would never leave us. You said that you’re gonna work all things for good, all things God. So you’re not a liar. If you said you’re gonna work ’em all for good, we don’t see it right now, but somehow you’re gonna bring some good out of this somehow because you’re a man of your word. You’re faithful. You’ve proven to us that you’re faithful in our times of homelessness, our facing cancer. In me lifting the boys up to you.”

Earlier, when I told you that that was going to be, I didn’t realize how much me wrestling with God about that and finally surrendering and getting that peace.

The night of the accident, when Myron got that phone call in our house, he went to the accident scene. He didn’t tell me this until a lot later, but he was really in the back of his mind thinking, if it is the boys, I don’t really want her to be there until I know what to expect.

So even in the middle of that, he was trying to shield me just in case.

What he did when he found out that it was our boys is he sent one of my good friends who’s also our assistant pastor’s wife, out to our house to pick me up and take me.

In that timeframe, when I knew she was about 20 minutes away, I was just pacing back and forth in the kitchen and in the dining room. Just pacing and trying to pray, and at that point, all we knew was that it was our boys.

The unknown strangled her until she had enough

We didn’t know anything about their status. I was praying, and I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. I couldn’t get focused.

Finally, I still remember, I stopped by the dining room table and said, “God, you know what. Enough! If you told me all those years ago that they were your boys and that you loved them even more than I do, then I’m gonna have to take you at your word that you still love them more than I do, which can’t fathom, but okay. And so God, I’m choosing, I’m gonna choose right now to trust you. I’m just going to put it back in your hands that even if it’s our boys, I’m going to trust you that you said you love them even more than I do.”

And once again, that peace came over me where I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt. Even all these seven years later, I can still feel that peace when I talk about that time because God knew I needed that anchor. He knew that Jacob was already gone.

Faith in the little things

I didn’t know that, but he knew that and knew I would need that anchor. So, once again, it was just those little times, those little nuggets. Sometimes I have told people when I’m talking to him, don’t discredit those little times that God plants those seeds in your life. Hold on to him with everything you’ve got because you don’t know why he’s putting that there.

Our God is so good.

I think there are so multiple reasons He does it. It can be to heal past wounds, past insecurities, and areas where we don’t feel like we deserve his love or his care. But it can also be for something in the future he knows that’s coming that we don’t know.

Bible Verses for Encouragement

Hebrews 13:5, NKJV “Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Philippians 4:7, NKJV “and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

Romans 8:28, NKJV “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”

Where to find Jenny Leavitt

You can visit her website, JennyLeavitt.com

Her new book, God Prints is available on Amazon.

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