Lisa Appelo shares how she saw who God is through the shattering loss of her husband. Lisa describes how she was desperate for God in those hard moments, and how her family grieved together but in their own separate ways.
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 life after shattering loss.
Kelly: Our guest is my friend and fellow author, Lisa Appelo. Lisa inspires women to deepen faith in life’s storms and is an ECPA bestselling author. A former litigating attorney, Lisa is passionate about rich Bible teaching. Lisa founded a team of writers at HopeinGrief.com and currently serves on the executive team for Compel with Proverbs 31 Ministries. Her work has been featured at Life Today, Insight for Living, and many more. As a single mom of seven, Lisa’s days are filled with parenting ministry and long walks to justify lots of dark chocolate. Welcome to the I Witness podcast, Lisa. I’m so happy to have you here.
Lisa: Thank you so much, Kelly Jo. I’m happy to be with you.
Kelly: Yes, yes. Thank you. So, today I just wanted to talk about the wonderful but challenging journey you’ve traveled. Your faith and walk with God over these past few years. So I just wanted to share or wanted our listeners to hear a little bit more about your background and family and then go from there about your faith journey.
You’re really passionate about helping women through shattering loss and grief. I think it’s just so inspiring, and you have such a wonderful story to tell. So why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about your family, background, and even how you came to know Jesus. Like how old you were and just a little bit of what that looks like.
Lisa met God early in her life
Lisa: Sure, when you were asking that question, I was thinking about my story, and I thought, even now, it’s hard to believe this is the story that God has written. This is not what I would’ve expected. And I think so many of us can identify that we are living out a life that we didn’t expect things that have happened or that we wanted to happen that never happened.
I’ll start with when I came to Christ. I was a young girl. I was raised in the church, and I was in Sunday school from the youngest I can remember. In church, you know, things weren’t perfect. Even in my home, there wasn’t much teaching about Jesus.
Most of that was coming to church on Sundays, but I knew I needed a savior at eight. So I count that at eight years old, but we weren’t a family that wrote the date in the Bible or anything like that. So that’s really as best I can remember that I was eight, going forward and pastor, and getting baptized and all that.
But then, in my teen years, I did some teen things as a 15-year-old but rededicated my life. So, from that time on, owned my faith as an adult. You understand what you can as an eight-year-old. Then we grow older and almost have to make those decisions over again as an adult wrestling through some of these issues that seem so simple at eight years old, right?
Kelly: Oh, absolutely. Yes.
God’s unexpected journey for Lisa
Lisa: But, fast forward, I married my college, well, I married my high school sweetheart, so we actually were in Sunday school together. We met in seventh grade, but he was just another boy across the room, and then by high school, we were in a big group of friends. He was a surfer.
We’d go to the beach together, and he was my first date. He was my only date. We went to college together very intentionally because we knew we had a future together. We married sometime in college and ended up with seven children, which is another unexpected thing.
This was not in the plan, but God will tender our hearts and ask us to step out in faith in ways we never thought we could.
So, I have seven children. Five are launched and have their own families, and I am still actively parenting two. My two youngest are at home. My story … I think when we talk about shattering loss and how God really gave me a heart for the woman who’s walking that started 11 years ago.
Shattering loss changed everything
I went to bed happily married and woke up a widow and single mom to my seven children. There were no signs of symptoms, but I woke up in the early morning to my husband’s funny breathing on the pillow next to me and called 911 and started CPR.
The paramedics were there within minutes, and I thought, “okay, he’s in good hands. He’s going to be mad when he wakes up and finds out he has to miss work today.”
But he never recovered.
I went into the ER, and they called me into that room you never wanna go into, and the ER doctor said, “we’ve worked on him for over two hours and have never been able to revive him.”
I went home to tell my kids that was it, that their dad was in heaven. After that, life in every sense fell apart, just shattered into a thousand pieces. It would never be the same again.
Kelly: Wow. That definitely would cause your life to absolutely shatter. Being so young and loving him so much pretty much immediately. You went on a date, and you both were so young and full of life and dedicated your lives to one another. Then you have this family, and like you said, your life took a completely unexpected turn, which is even more of a blessing once you’re walking that path.
But then you wake up in the middle of the night, and oh my goodness, as you put it, you went to bed married and woke up a widow. Happily married and woke up a widow.
Brokenness led her back
But, first, I’m just so sorry you had to deal with that, Lisa. I just can’t imagine, and I’m sure you’ve had many people say that to you.
I will say, though, the encouragement, inspiration, and help just even by being here today as we talk through your story. And knowing you and your passion for writing and reaching women, I’m sure that you’ve provided a lot of comfort to a lot of people, and have really blessed them.
I’m so gracious that you’re here today to talk about this. Going back quickly, whenever you’re young, I just wanna point out one thing, which I think is neat. So you’re eight years old and like, yes, I love Jesus. Your family is going to church and you know about him, but it’s not like writing it in a calendar.
I completely identify with that. I feel like my family had always talked about Jesus, that it was kind of like well-known that you’re Christian, right? That you just know him, say prayers and that’s it. So you can’t really pinpoint the day. But like you said, when you were a teenager, after you come to know him a little bit as you were young, but it never left you just like he tells us it never departs from you.
But once you make some mistakes, dealing with all the hormones and teenage everything, you know? I completely identify with you there. Once you realize, once you see a little bit of the brokenness that you are and then go back, it has a little bit of a different meaning right?
Lisa made a choice
Lisa: Yeah, for sure.
I was doing things I shouldn’t have been doing, and I really felt the before and after, and I didn’t get saved at 15. I was saved at eight but wasn’t living fully for the Lord. I was wandering from him, and was really at a point where I could have kept wandering.
Maybe not come back, or I could say, “no, this is the truth.” So he is my savior, and I desperately need him. It’s interesting because I was actually at a youth camp. It was one of those things where everybody was emotional, and I never went forward. They were like, “come forward or pray.”
I never went forward. I stayed right in my seat.
But I remember praying, “Lord, do not let this be a mountaintop experience.” Just praying that over and over. Then I went home.
Dan and I were not dating. We were really good friends. Then, a few weeks after returning school had started in the fall, he said, “You’re so different. You’re so different.” So isn’t that interesting? Somebody who knew me so well could see the difference.
God puts people together for a purpose
Kelly: Wow. That is interesting. And you weren’t dating him then, he already saw the change in you, though, being your friend. Wow. And especially him too, you know, seeing that change in you maybe sparked a little something extra in him too. You never know. I feel like God really does put people together. It just seems like he really put you together for a wonderful purpose.
It’s just amazing how he can work in our lives. So, I definitely did not want to pass over what happened with Dan in that story. I just wanted to talk a bit about you returning to God when you were a teenager.
That’s so funny that you say that Dan really recognized it. I think that’s great. But you started your life together and had seven children, so that’s completely devastating. So share what you feel comfortable sharing.
Grief was different for each family member
I don’t wanna take you too much through every step of that, but how was the family unit?
How did you guys pray together?
Did your kids embrace Jesus, or was it kind of like they were questioning things?
Or do you feel like you were a very tight unit?
Lisa: When Dan died, my children were four years old, and then my oldest had just finished his freshman year of college. So they were at all different points and after he died, you know, it’s hard enough walking through your own grief, but then trying to navigate and shepherd your children through theirs, it’s really just overwhelming.
People will ask me, “how do I do this?”
I think the only answer I can give you because every family is different and looks different, is to just authentically grieve together.
Whatever that looks like, don’t feel like you have to show up all put together for your children. Don’t feel like that or make them feel like they have to, either.
I remember sitting down with my kids and saying, grief is going to look different for each of us, and we’ll have to have a lot of grace with each other this year. That’s how naive I was. Thinking it would just be a year until we got back on our feet. And it did look different for each of us.
Every day in the car, my four-year-old would randomly start crying and saying, “I miss daddy. I miss daddy.” Sometimes at very ironic times.
Grief struck in both dark and happy moments
I remember a few months after Dan died, my daughter went to a Florida event, it used to be called Junior Miss, but now it’s distinguished young women. It’s a scholarship program (slightly a pageant). She won for Florida. We had never done pageants, but this had streamers coming down and the flowers being handed to her. All the kids are going up on stage, and I’m holding my daughter on my hip.
With all this music and confetti coming down, she is whispering in my ear, saying, “I miss Daddy. I miss Daddy.”
That is such a picture of grief. These events are happening, these milestone events, and then in the midst of that is this gaping, painful loss.
It’s never one or the other. It is both coexisting.
How did my family react to that? I think I just tried to walk them through as best I could. We did a lot of reading aloud together. We were a homeschooling family and had the opportunity and the time to have that Bible time together every morning.
I remember we started reading books on heaven. Everything from picture books, from my little ones to bigger books with my older ones.
I kept an open conversation. I tried to keep a safe place for them to just be able to share and talk however it looked. It looked different for my daughter than for my teen sons and my six-year-old and four-year-old.
Grief still looks different
Kelly: Oh my goodness. I am sure it looks so different and probably still looks different for them in every stage you go through together.
I love that you pointed out that you have to authentically grieve together. Because there is no way that you’re going to have that strength for all of them, right?
You want to make sure that you can because you want to shelter them from all these big feelings and all this pain. But, like you said, the perfect picture of grief … wonderful thing happening, missing her father and whispering it. But I think that’s amazing.
I think that you guided them in such a wonderful way and I bet that a lot of women listening to this are probably thinking the same thing. “I don’t know how I’m going to do this. I’m just going to do it with them, and that’s it.”
That’s just a wonderful guide for somebody who’s kind of lost, because it would be impossible to really carry them through each thing while you’re feeling it yourself.
How did you handle that? How did you handle those really tough moments and maybe even angry at God or frustrated with him?
Totally overwhelmed, Lisa met God every day
Lisa: I was overwhelmed in every sense of the word, and I think when life falls apart, you know, we get to a place of overwhelm where we’re having decisions and massive change, hard emotions, and questions. I would get up every morning and get them settled and started for the day.
Then I would get into my minivan.
I say some people have a prayer closet, but I have a minivan. I would go around the corner to this little park and just park. In that quiet minivan where nobody could slip a note under the door or come into my room, I would just cry out to God. Sometimes I cried out audibly. Sometimes, I would journal. Every day I journaled.
But I would have that time to unburden my heart with everything I had been carrying. All the worries I had, all the fears, the missing, and the loneliness, just all of it. I never went through anger.
Desperate for God
I did go through questioning God, saying, “Why would you take such a good dad?”
Some of the ironies of the situation were that his mom, who was not in very good health at all, the last thing he had been doing was paperwork for her. Not that I wanted anything to happen to her, but just the irony of life. He died suddenly so young, and she was there with us for several more years, which was a grace.
I would get alone in my car. I would cry out to God and pour that out to him then open the Bible.
I happened to be reading through the Bible for a year, but I had not started that year doing that, Dan had actually been doing it.
I was just desperate for the Lord. I was desperate for the word more than I needed my own food.
I wouldn’t look for a passage that would meet or speak to me, but I would just open to that day’s reading. It never ceased to amaze me how God would meet me wherever I was reading, whether it was Leviticus, Psalms, or one of the gospels.
God reminded her of who he is
God would meet me on the words of that page. He would remind me who he is and how he cares for us, and it would give me enough hope to go back into the house and parent for that day. It was not enough for the week. I would have to go back the next day and do it over. It became like that daily manna.
I would go out and pick up my daily manna, which was enough for that day.
When we say God is enough, that’s what it looks like. It’s not like God is enough, and we never have to go through anything hard. It’s that God is enough to get through this moment, to get through this difficulty, get through this day, and it won’t always feel like this.
I kept telling myself that it won’t always feel like this, but I did have to have that hope to get through each day. Until we got our fitting and until my smile came back.
Daily walk through the pain
Kelly: Wow. That is so perfect to say how he’s given it to you for that day in the daily walk with him. Because it’s so unknown. When you say you were overwhelmed in every sense, I think that is an overwhelming piece of it. You think, when is this going to go away? When is it going to lighten up? When is it ever going to get better?
But I think you made a good point that you surrendered every day. You made that time, no matter how busy you were, no matter how intense or overwhelmed you felt. You made that time in the morning or whenever it was and took everything to him. Which I think is a really great thing.
Many women who listen to this podcast struggle with making time and even feeling good enough for God to meet them where they are. A lot of them feel broken and that they don’t deserve it. But also, especially if they’re angry at God for something that has happened.
How can you surrender your pain to God?
What would you say helped you to be able to lay it at his feet whenever you went there? Did it come very easy to you because you had been in the scriptures and walking with God through it? Or was there something or anything extra that you did to maybe help the woman listening now who says, “It’s so hard for me to just surrender?”
Lisa: It is for sure too hard for us. We were not made for death, divorce, disease, or devastation like this. We weren’t made for it. So when these things happen, it does overwhelm us. That old saying that God won’t give you more than you can handle. That’s just not true.
We can absolutely find ourselves in circumstances that are too hard for us.
I remember writing at the top of my journal every day for well over a year,
THIS IS TOO HARD. I CANNOT DO THIS.
All caps, bold, underlined. That was the reality of my heart. I’m sure people looked at me and thought, you’re so strong.
But I knew what was going on inside. I knew the war raging in my thoughts and my emotions.
I could feel the enemy and felt like the enemy was trying to get his toe into our family and just pull it apart.
This was not Lisa, who had everything together and was doing everything right. This was Lisa, who was desperate for the Lord.
Listen to God’s nudge
Sometimes I think we can feel that nudge to meet with the Lord, open the word, meet with him in prayer, maybe read a devotion or read the Bible, and we think it’s guilt. You think God is guilting us like, “You haven’t met with me. You’re so bad.”
But it’s not, it’s wooing us like somebody who loves us, somebody who is holding out their hands and says, “I have everything you need. Come to me.”
It makes me weep. Because I remember … I remember those days when I just was desperate. And he says, “Come to me.”
So I think for the woman listening to this right now and saying, “I’ve stayed away from God, and I haven’t opened the word. I am mad,” to just listen to that nudge. Open it and give God a chance to meet you where you are.
It won’t look all tidy, and everything won’t be wrapped up with the bow that first day. God will meet you where you are.
He will give you hope. He will encourage you and remind you how much he loves you. He will remind you of his promises and his faithfulness, and that’s how we do life.
We’re not promised that life will be easy. But, we’re promised that God will be faithful.
Bible Verses for Encouragement
Matthew 11:28, NKJV, “Come to Me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Resources for You
Lisa’s book Life Can Be Good Again helps women to put their world back together after it falls apart.
In part 2 of this episode of the I Witness podcast, Jenny Leavitt shares how she coped with the grief after losing her youngest son, Jacob, to a drunk driver. The Leavitt family has been through extreme hardship, and Jenny shares how God’s peace has led them through healing deep wounds. In addition, she discusses how the event impacted her marriage and her older son, Caleb, who almost died in the accident alongside his brother.
I think there are multiple reasons He prepares us. It can be to heal past wounds, past insecurities, and areas where we don’t feel we deserve his love or care. But it can also be for something in the future he knows that’s coming that we don’t know.
Kelly: That’s a wonderful way to look at it and such a good point. I feel like you and your family have really embodied that so much … how he has truly prepared you. I am grateful to him for the peace that he gave to you.
Because as a mother outside looking in, and I’m sure you’ve heard this throughout telling your story, I don’t know if I could do that. I’m sure you’ve heard that, too, “I don’t know if I could handle that.”
But that’s kind of the point. We can’t handle it without Him, and I’m so grateful you had that peace.
Like you said, when he told you they were his, and then again, at that moment because that is tough.
I appreciate you so much for coming on and talking about that because it’s very hard. I love that your husband was trying to protect you even in the midst of it. He’s by your side through cancer, through all of this. That is so great because a tragedy can shake that marriage up big time in families, especially marriages.
But you guys are rooted in Jesus, rooted in faith.
How coping with grief tests a marriage
Do you feel like going through all this has strengthened you both and fueled togetherness in your marriage?
Jenny: Just three months before we lost Jacob, there was a little girl in our church who was seven or eight that died from brain cancer. My husband and I were the children’s leaders, so we walked that road with the parents.
So, just three months before, we had told the parents the stats were not on your side. In marriages that lose a child, the odds are stacked against you that the marriage will not survive.
Then we lost Jacob three months later. We had been in ministry long enough to know what we told them was right. Looking back now, I think we had a solid foundation in our faith, and we had been together a long time, but it still rocked our marriage in certain areas.
What I tell people is if there are cracks in your relationship, miscommunications, and things you don’t handle well … I’ll use myself as an example. I tend to withdraw and shut down.
My husband is the opposite, and that makes him feel like I want to distance myself completely from him and not want to work it out when that’s really not to me. I’m trying to process it. I don’t want to say something that I’m going to really regret.
It’s just a different mindset. Then you have a serious trauma like this hit marriage, and you have to go into it being aware. My husband and I are polar opposites on so many different things. We’re just completely different, night and day. Then you have the fact that we’re also male and female and grieve differently.
What can you do to save the marriage after losing a child?
You have to fight.
You have to fight for the relationships that you want to survive. It will not just be handed to you on a silver platter. We were good solid Christians too. We still had to fight through those human tendencies to revert to what is comfortable and familiar and not want to battle anymore.
You gotta fight through that and be like, “No! You know what? Our marriage is worth fighting for. Our relationship is worth fighting for.”
Not to say that we’ve arrived, because we haven’t, but we have come through a lot of the hardest times.
As you and I were sharing earlier, I read or heard a long time ago that before you share something so close to your heart, make sure that you’re speaking from a place of your scars and not your wounds.
I really feel like my husband and I have … God has brought a lot of healing to those deep wounds. So not to say that we’ve arrived, because we have not, but I do feel like our marriage is more of a place where God has brought some healing salve to those wounded areas, and there’s scarring now.
How long does it take to cope with grief?
It still hurts.
That pastor that I told you about, he’s in his eighties, that they lost their daughter. His wife told me, this actually made me feel better, that it had been 37 years at that point. And she was crying when she was talking to me. I remember thinking, okay, I feel normal.
If she’s 37 years away, and it still gets her thinking about her daughter that she lost. Okay. So, I’m not weird. It’s okay.
She told me, “Jenny, you can think about the what-ifs. Sometimes we’ll sit around and think, ‘I wonder how old she would be and if we’d have grandkids’, but I can’t let my mind stay there. It’s not healthy. We have to just say, you know what, God, thank you for those 15 years that we had, and we’re gonna have all of eternity with her now.”
So, shifting that mindset. And their marriage has survived.
They’ve been a great example to us that a marriage can survive. It’s worth fighting for.
Kelly: I love that you had them … I don’t love that they had to go through that too, but I love that you had them as kind of like a mentor. I mean, it really is so true how God puts people in your path.
Jenny shares how she coped with grief from a healing scar, not an open wound
I love what you said about sharing things from your scars, not your wounds.
It’s so profound. It really is. Because there is a difference. Once you have felt the scarring, the scars start to heal in your soul and heart. Then you can really help a lot of people.
I love that you are reaching out to help and walk alongside people, especially in your church.
Just sharing your story with somebody can make such a huge difference. Especially coming on and talking to me today, sharing how you have gone through it, is amazing.
People go through these things. But, especially once you’re a believer, once you believe in Jesus, and you declare him as your savior.
We are not meant to cope with grief alone
It is not saying you’re never going to have heartache. There will be times it’s almost harder because you know there’s a struggle. But having him, he’s there to walk alongside you.
I love that you’re taking that and your pain and trying to help others.
It even says in the Bible, Paul had said, how we comfort one another with these words. That’s kind of the point because no matter what, there will be suffering. There are going to be difficult times. Like you said before, how you’ve gone through these seasons and how this healing is building on itself.
That’s so true. I think because you had that foundation and, like you said, keep the focus on those small nuggets of wisdom and the peace and understanding that God gives you. Because in those moments, it’s not this big thing, sometimes, it’s that small, still voice that will give you that comfort and reassurance.
I love that you said that because it’s so true because we are human. We’re going to go to the muscle memory of anger and fear.
But those small moments and his small voice inside us will build and help us in our weaknesses. He even says in our weakness, he is strong.
How did Jenny’s oldest son cope with the grief of losing his brother, and what did his journey look like?
So I love that you had that through this journey because it is very difficult, the path you guys have walked, but you, your husband, and your son walked it together. So Caleb is doing well now? Caleb had a lot of healing to go through as well. How old is he now?
Jenny: He is 27 now. Before the accident, he already had his associate’s degree, and it took him about a year after the accident. He had to learn how to walk again like there was so much physical and cognitive therapy. I didn’t even know there were four different types of therapies that he had to do afterward.
So it took about a year for him to be able to rejoin the world. He went back for his bachelor’s degree and is currently an elementary school teacher in the county where we lived in northeast Florida. Some exciting news is he just proposed to his girlfriend on Black Friday …
Kelly: Yes! That’s wonderful!
Jenny: We’re excited.
Kelly: Oh, congratulations!
Jenny: We’re excited. They’ll be getting married next year. We’re super excited. He’s also been praying about and seeking God’s wisdom on if there’s anything that he can do.
He has a heart for people like him who have lost a sibling because he didn’t find many resources to help him. There’s more out there for parents, and when he told me that, I started looking to see if I could find anything to direct him.
There really isn’t a lot out there for people that have lost a sibling, and not just in a tragic way like this, but just on the whole.
There’s not a whole lot out there. So he’s been considering some steps he might be able to take to help other people. He’s got an entire testimony of his own. He had to navigate through anger towards God, the driver, and even himself.
What about coping with grief and survivor’s guilt?
He battled with survivor’s guilt, and he has his own story.
He could also help some people struggling with those issues from losing his sibling.
Kelly: For sure. Especially because they were so young, and it’s so easy when you’re young and don’t have years of experience behind you. But, I don’t know. You guys are pretty awesome. I mean, at 22, you dealt with cancer and everything too.
You were such a good example with that strength, you and your husband together. So I’m so happy that he had you to look up to, but yes, I was going to say that about the survivor’s guilt. I wonder if he struggled with that because it’s his brother.
I’m glad that he’s worked through that.
And he’s a teacher? What an amazing job! Also, at an elementary school, he’s shaping young minds every day, and then to want to reach out and share his story too. I think that that’s just so inspiring.
You guys are good people. It’s wonderful. Honestly, I love that you’re here talking about coping with your grief. I can’t wait to share the episode. I like that you said you always think it will happen to somebody else, and then it doesn’t.
And then when it happens to you, you think, how will I ever handle that?
But I love that God was always with you and all of you. Even in fear and anger, he walked you through that, which is wonderful. So I love you sharing your story.
How to cope with grief using God’s word
I like to ask the guests on the show to share a Bible verse, and I know you’ve already shared a couple of verses with us, so I appreciate that. I love the verses that you shared in Romans, and then also about how God doesn’t leave us or forsake us. I’ll definitely put those in the show notes.
When we go to that muscle memory with all that pain instead of going to what we want to do in our flesh, it’s so good to have a verse, even one verse, to take with us to have that truth.
So thank you so much for sharing those verses. Like I said, I’ll also put links in the show notes for the listeners, so they can always take those verses because God does work all things for good, even if we can’t see it.
Which, most of the time, we really can’t. I mean, God’s very mysterious in his timing and ways.
Jenny: There is one more I’d like to share.
Kelly: Yes, wonderful. Great!
Jenny: So, then after the accident, one of the verses that I felt like God gave me for that season of healing, everybody knows Jeremiah 29:11 “for I know the plans I have for you.” Everybody knows that one.
Many people don’t keep reading, though, and right after that, verses 12 and 13, so Jeremiah 29, all the way through 13.
So yes, he does have plans to give us hope and a future, but right after that, he says, “if you seek me with your whole heart, you will find me.”
And after the accident, that verse was crucial to me more than the most commonly known verse 11. Because there were times when God felt so distant, and I know part of that is the grief.
But there were times when God felt so distant, and I just didn’t understand.
I couldn’t wrap myself around why. But God would bring me back to that verse, that if you seek me and seek me with your whole heart, you’ll find me. And that was crucial in recentering me when I got off course.
What does God do when your grief takes you to a dark place?
I wouldn’t even realize I’m down a rabbit trail in my thinking. But God would remind me of that verse, and it would re-anchor me on hope, truth, and faith. If I just seek him, if I seek him with everything I have within me, I don’t have to understand. I may never understand. I may understand a little tidbit here, but then get the full thing in heaven, I don’t know.
But I do know that if I really seek him with my whole heart, I will find him. He has proven faithful even in that. Sometimes those questions have been answered, and sometimes they’re still questions that I may never know the answer until eternity. When I get to ask him one day, “why, why did it have to happen that way?”
That’s one thing that I would love to leave with your listeners: if you seek him, he will provide answers.
It may not be in the timing you want or even in the way that you think the answers will come, but he will provide those answers if you really seek it.
Kelly: That’s fantastic. I appreciate you sharing that so much because that is so true. Wow. That’s such a good point, too, the future and the hope, but then you seek him. I love that you shared that you were so honest about times of anger and fear and just getting frazzled with emotion because that’s going to come, it’s going to come, it’s inevitable.
The fact that you could go to that verse is great. I think that’ll really help the women listening to this who struggle with a similar challenge. Coping with the grief of losing a son or a child, or struggling in very fearful situations. Cancer. That diagnosis alone, especially metastasized and stage four.
I mean, it’s very scary. The number one thing that you want to say to God is, why? Why, why, why did this happen?
Your finding comfort is very encouraging. It encourages me very much. I’m sure it will encourage people listening to this and I appreciate you sharing.
We all have the same fears, but God is faithful
Jenny: Hey, you’re welcome. I don’t want people to think we’re superhuman or anything. We’re just like you. We have the same fears and same struggles. We’ve just found God to be faithful.
Kelly: That’s it, and we’re not even meant to. One of the things that I’ve shared on my blog and with different people, is that we are not meant to be like “good enough.”
We’re meant to have flaws. We’re meant to be that way, so we can rely on God to really guide us because, in our weaknesses, he’s strong. I love that you shared such a powerful verse. Well, verses is in Jeremiah too. That’s wonderful. I can’t wait to put that in the notes too.
How to learn more about coping with grief and the Leavitt’s journey with God
So where can we find you if somebody wants to learn more about you?
I understand that you actually just released a new book. Do you want to tell the listeners a little bit about that?
Jenny: Sure. Since my husband is a pastor, he kind of jokes that he’s the preacher, so he’s the one who does the speaking in the family. Since the accident, he’s shared our story everywhere, from mock DUIs at high schools to small groups at churches. Wherever they ask him, he shares our story, and he’ll tailor it for the audience.
And inevitably, people would come up to him afterwards and are like, “well, what’s the rest of the story?”
He says no, I’m the preacher. My wife’s the writer, so that’s kind of how it evolved. I just wrote our book, and we strategically released it on November 25th this year, which was Black Friday.
But it also would’ve been our son Jacob’s 25th birthday on the 25th of November.
So we released it on that day. It’s God Prints: Finding evidence of God in the Shattered Pieces of Life. So it tells the rest of our story. It goes into a lot more detail about when I had cancer, even when we lost everything, were homeless, and then the accident and everything.
So folks can check it out there. I have the photo gallery that goes with the book, and that’s open to everybody.
Jenny’s website is a place of hope for others coping with grief
Even if you don’t read or get the book, you can still scroll through it. I have captions so people can get a feel and look at some things. I’ve shared some tips and things that have gotten us through those hard times. I’m going to continue to build on that. I want it to be a place where people can come for practical help.
A place that I wish we had had seven years ago.
A place that I wish we could have gone to and been like, “Am I normal? Where can I go for help? Does anybody understand this? What are some resources? What are some podcasts?”
I want it to be where people can come and get some hope. So I’m hoping to have interviews with others who have overcome adversity and have those kinds of things too. So to be a place of not just help but hope and healing too.
Kelly: That’s fantastic. Thank you so much, Jenny.
God is working things for good through your ministry, reaching out and, like you said, even just helping. Even if you help one person struggling with a similar thing, then it’s powerful. I appreciate you so much for coming here and sharing your story today.
I will put links to your website and the God Prints book in the show notes. And Jenny, thank you so much. I appreciate you so much for talking with us today on the I Witness Podcast.
Jenny: Thank you so much for inviting me.
Listen to Part 1 of this Interview: What happens to a mother’s faith when tragedy strikes?
2 Corinthians 12:9, NKJV “And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
Jeremiah 29:11-13, NKJV “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.”
Bible Verses from Part 1 of the interview with Jenny:
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.”
This episode is brought to you by The Wilson Shop. Visit The Wilson Shop on Etsy for beautiful, Christian-inspired designs on your favorite home decor, apparel, and accessories.
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