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.
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 29th 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.”
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.
In part 2 of the podcast interview with Laurie Christine, she explores the meaning of God’s peace and how it overpowers understanding. We talk about how God’s peace affected her situation with her son’s heart condition.
Laurie Christine: I thought, okay, we’ve been through this before. We’ve done this three times, and now we can do this. I felt at those moments when we got that news, this is really bad. We’re going to have to do this.
But those were the moments I felt God’s peace.
The verse in Philippians says don’t worry about anything, pray about everything and you will experience God’s peace. In the King James version, or what I memorized when I was a little girl, it said the peace that passes understanding. I never understood what that meant.
What is God’s peace that passes understanding?
What is the peace that passes understanding? I didn’t understand the peace that gives us understanding. It didn’t make sense.
But, as I grew and have been exposed to other versions of the Bible, the New Living Translation says you’ll experience God’s peace which exceeds anything we can understand. It’s the peace that surpasses understanding.
It’s the peace that God gives us that we can’t understand.
Like, where did this come from? This is a terrible situation. I should be very anxious, but I’m actually experiencing God’s peace.
I feel that I’ve experienced the promise in that verse.
We will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and your minds as you live in Christ Jesus. So just in aside from Elliot’s story, I definitely felt God’s peace that surpasses understanding in those situations.
Anyway, back to Elliot’s story, but I have to throw in those little nuggets of truth.
Kelly Jo Wilson: Yeah, for sure. It’s the best.
Laurie Christine: So they ended up doing the fourth open heart surgery. They fixed the aneurysm and put in a different valve. This is the third one now in that same position. They put in a third valve that was actually bigger.
It worked out well in the end because they could put in a bigger valve, which would not need to be replaced for much longer.
So that was now seven years ago. Elliot was five when that last surgery happened, and he’s now 12. He has been doing really well ever since.
Kelly Jo Wilson: That’s fantastic.
God’s design.
Laurie Christine: He has very few restrictions on life. I think by God’s grace, he doesn’t really love sports. But people always ask me if he can play sports and does he have any restrictions.
I’m like, well, he doesn’t like sports, so that actually worked out okay. He could play sports if he wanted to, but he couldn’t get hit in the chest. He has a very weak sternum and rib cage. So contact sports would not be the best for him.
But, the way God designed him, he doesn’t desire to do that. So it all worked out, but we still see the cardiologist. First, it had been every three months and then every four months. Now it’s every six months.
It’s a journey, but God’s peace prevails.
They continue to monitor everything. There is still a possibility down the road, actually a likelihood, at some point in his life, that he’ll need additional surgeries as he outgrows something in his heart.
He had a conduit placed in his heart and a valve replaced. He’s got some coils in his arteries, so as he gets older, some of those pieces may need to be updated or replaced. If a valve fails or something like that.
But it’s not anything on the schedule. It’s not anything anticipated at this point.
I often tell people it’s kind of like your car. You know you’re going to have maintenance on your car at some point, but you don’t know when the muffler’s going to go out. You take it to get a checkup every couple of months or once a year, and then they tell you. Time to replace the muffler.
That’s how it will be with his heart. I want to say that I’ve put all worry and anxiety behind me, but …
Kelly Jo Wilson: Not for mama
Laurie Christine: For the most part, that is true. We’re not living daily in the reality of his heart condition.
We continue to trust God through the anxiety.
A couple of times a year, when we go to the cardiologist, I am a little nervous. I think, this is when they say you need to head up to Boston again. Or something is not going right, so you need to check this out.
There’s always that underlying little bit of anxiety. But we continue to trust God, that he’s good, in control, and that He loves Elliot. He is working in Elliot’s heart. His physical heart and his spiritual heart as well. We continue to trust God with him.
Kelly Jo Wilson: That’s wonderful. That is such a good picture of the journey itself. I mean, it’s never the one thing, like you said, and it’s been seven years since his last surgery, but every six months, every three months, it’s always a reminder.
I can imagine how in that time it’s like, here we go, God, I need you to do it again.
But I love that you guys are so faithful. I think it’s so important and so sweet that you said the peace that passes. That’s how I’m going to remember that going forward, is the peace that passes.
It’s interesting that you say it was an overwhelming peace. I’ve heard other people in different situations talk about that too. I’ve actually experienced it myself, for a heart issue for my son who just turned one.
Jesus shows up.
Just a quick little story.
We went in, and they did the ultrasound at the five-month mark when they check the anatomy. We had about six different people trying to find the large vessels in his heart. By the second group of people, I was looking at my husband like this is not good.
It took a long time to find, and they didn’t see the major vessels in his heart. So they thought maybe he didn’t have them. They weren’t able to visualize it correctly.
You were much more graceful in what you shared about how you guys were in those moments.
At that moment, I was like, “Jesus help us!” Literally screaming out of my soul. I can tell you that minutes later, he showed up because the doctor suddenly said, “oh, I see them. I see them. It’s okay.”
It was very intense. But, it is interesting, the overwhelming peace. It’s how it is when you live through that, and hard to describe in words sometimes.
Being your friend, I love that you guys could experience that, and it didn’t have to be an overwhelming peace with a different decision that God had made with Elliott’s life.
I just love that he’s doing well now and that you guys are taking the journey each step at a time.
There was one thing that I wanted to point out from your podcast episode. I thought it was so wonderful, and I was hoping you could share it with the listeners.
Everybody always says in times like this, very challenging times where you have to trust God, that God doesn’t give you more than you can handle. I love what you said about that. Would you mind sharing that? What your take on that is?
God does give you more than you can handle.
Laurie Christine: Sure. You hear all the time that God won’t give you more than you can handle. But I don’t believe that’s true. I think that God definitely gives us more than we can handle.
I actually have a scripture verse to back it up.
Many times people quote the verse in first Corinthians 10:13, which says, “no temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.”
I think many people take that out of context and say, well, this applies to any situation I might be struggling with.
But that verse is specifically talking about temptation. So I think when we are tempted to sin, God gives us a way out. He does give you an option. You don’t have to give in to that temptation, but this verse does not apply to other challenges, struggles, or trials.
Because God definitely gives us more than we can handle. Anyone who’s gone through something like this says, “I can’t handle this. This is too much.”
We aren’t equipped, that’s why we need God’s peace and strength.
When someone tries to tell you, “God knows that you, he chose you to go through this because he knew you could handle it, or he knew that your character was really strong.”
Anyone on the other end of that conversation is like, no way. I know that that’s not true of me. I know that my character is flawed, and my character was not anything special that God chose me to go through this.
There’s a verse in 2 Corinthians chapter one, and it was Paul writing to the Corinthians about a trial he was going through. He said that “we were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure,” far beyond their ability to endure so that “we despaired of life itself,” they wanted to die.
This was such a difficult situation that they were going through, and he said we felt that we had received the sentence of death.
I know some of you listening may have gone through situations where you have gotten news of a diagnosis or a tragedy, and that’s what it feels like. Your despairing of life. You feel you’ve received a death sentence beyond your ability to endure.
But the next verse says, “but this happened that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God.”
We might not rely on ourselves but on God. I absolutely think that God gives us more than we can handle, but his goal is to cry out to him and rely on him, and we come to a point in our life where we realize that we can’t do it.
We need God’s peace.
We can’t handle this situation on our own or do it in our own strength. His strength is what we need.
We need God’s peace, joy, and love.
That’s what we experienced going through the situation with our son Elliot. I called out to God, saying, “God, we can’t go through this on our own we need you.We desperately need you to walk through this with us, to be right beside us, to give us the strength, to give us peace.”
We definitely saw God’s faithfulness through the situation and God being faithful to give us his peace.
We saw God being faithful to give us his joy, and I hesitate to say that God was faithful in healing our son because no matter what the outcome had been, God is still faithful.
You know, we are very thankful. We’re incredibly grateful that God chose to heal our son. He chose to give us the outcome we had been praying for, but God would still be faithful. Even if that had turned out very differently.
Kelly Jo Wilson: For sure. I love that you highlighted that and shared the scripture too. I can’t wait to put that in the show notes so everybody can go right to that scripture and say, yes, he does give us more than we can handle to rely on him because, in our weakness, he is strong.
With God’s peace and compassion, we comfort one another.
Laurie Christine: I’ll just point out real quick right before that verse, and if you’re, if you’re wanting to dive into 2 Corinthians chapter one, it says God is the father of compassion and the God of all comfort. I love that verse that promises God gives us comfort.
“He comforts us in all our troubles and has compassion on us.” It says, “so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”
I see how we went through this really difficult situation. Still, now here seven years later, I am here talking with Kelly. I can share God’s goodness and faithfulness, able to offer comfort to other people because God has comforted us.
I just wanted to encourage you all with that.
Kelly Jo Wilson: That is a huge encouragement. Thank you so much, Laurie. You’re so right, absolutely. That’s the purpose of this podcast: to comfort one another with how God has comforted us in the challenges we’ve gone through and how it builds your faith and relationship with him.
I appreciate you sharing, especially about your baby boy. I’m so happy that he’s doing well now.
Really quick just to wrap up. If another mother is listening today and struggling with a similar situation in her child, what takeaway would you want her to remember from this episode?
What is the one thing that you would give to encourage her?
God is with you, even when it’s really hard.
Laurie Christine: Just remember that God is with you in your struggle. It doesn’t mean the struggle or the situation will go away, but that God will walk with you every step.
I would encourage you to be in the scriptures, to be in God’s word. That’s how God communicates to our hearts, through his spirit to our hearts. Through his word. That was lifesaving for me when I was going through the situation with Elliot.
Clinging to those promises of God and to the scriptures, reading them over and over again, memorizing them, meditating on them, and just claiming those promises to be true.
Even when the situation around me felt really, really hard.
Resources for you
Kelly Jo Wilson: That’s beautiful, Laurie. Thank you so much. I’m sure that’s a huge encouragement. I will definitely share the verses Laurie has shared with us today in the show notes to give anyone listening to that encouragement. You can pick specific scriptures to help you along the journey as well.
Laurie, we can find you on your website, but I also wanted to just talk about your website. You have so many wonderful resources to share with moms with different focuses.
Is there one of them to share with the audience today or just to talk about? I can put a link to it in the show notes.
Laurie Christine: Sure. Like Kelly said, I have a lot of free resources on my website.
The one I’m most excited about is a recent book I wrote that is available for free.
It’s a free download on my website right now, especially for boys. So if you’re a mom of boys, I’d love for you to go check out my podcast, Redeeming the Chaos.
Kelly Jo Wilson: It’s great. Check it out.
A special book for your son
Laurie Christine: Also, if you have boys between the ages of 8 to 13-ish, I have a devotional book specifically for boys, and it’s called Rise of the Enemy, and it’s the first book in my Dragon Slayer Bible series.
It’s an action-packed adventure that’s a retelling of a Bible story. There’s a devotional and a short Bible study. The whole theme of this first book is spiritual warfare. Putting on the armor of God and teaching our boys how to defend their hearts against the lies of the evil dragon.
Right now, it’s a free download on my website. You can get it for free, but later this year, I’m hoping it will be available in print for you to purchase.
If you want a free copy now, head over to my website, and you can download it at www.dragonslayerbible.com.
Kelly Jo Wilson: Wonderful. It looks like a very exciting book! I cannot wait to download it and read it with Jake. It looks fantastic.
Thank you so much, Laurie.
I appreciate you talking about your journey through Elliott’s heart condition and your faithfulness, and the grace God has shown you and your family with us today. I’m sure that it’s going to be encouraging to a lot of people. So thank you so, so much.
Laurie Christine: Well, thank you for having me on the show, Kelly. It’s been really great chatting with you, and I appreciate being here.
We have a great show today about trusting God through challenges. Our guest Laurie Christine had to rely on God’s will for her firstborn son through a difficult diagnosis.
Laurie Christine is an author, podcast host, certified biblical parenting coach, wife, and mom of four wild, loud, adventurous boys. Her podcast, Redeeming The Chaos, invites moms of boys to join her in the wild, wonderful adventure of raising courageous boys and connecting them with Christ.
Kelly Jo Wilson: Laurie, thank you so much for coming. I’m so happy to talk to you.
Laurie Christine: Hey Kelly, I am so happy to be here. This is so fun.
Kelly Jo Wilson: Yes, absolutely. Laurie and I are in a mastermind group together to help grow in our writing, influence among other people, and foster the call that God has given us. So, I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Laurie for a couple years now, and I am so happy to have you on here.
Laurie Christine: Thanks so much. Yeah. Three years. We’re coming up on three years here.
Kelly Jo Wilson: Three years. It’s so crazy! Laurie has a very interesting story that I just wanted to expand on a little bit. Laurie, your podcast tries to reach moms of boys, and I am one of your target people with two crazy boys. But before we get into a little bit of the story that you shared on your podcast, why don’t you just tell the audience, tell the listeners a little bit about yourself, your family, where you’re from and just a little bit more about you.
Part 1 of the interview with Laurie Christine
Laurie Christine: I am from Pennsylvania along with Kelly, and I am a mom of four boys and a wife. My boys are ages 6 to 12. We’re right in the middle of raising our kids. We’re out of the baby stage, the toddler stage, and I almost have a teenager, so that’s getting a little, I’m getting a little nervous about that.
Kelly Jo Wilson: A little nerve-wracking with that age for sure. But what a great range of ages. How fun is that? Right now as we record this it’s right before Christmas, so that probably looks really fun in your house.
Laurie Christine: It gets a little wild and crazy. They’re very excited. Lots of energy in our house.
Kelly Jo Wilson: I’m sure. It’s probably just wonderful. I wanted to expand a little bit on what you shared in your podcast episode about what happened with Elliot, your oldest son, and his journey through his heart condition.
The initial diagnosis shocked everyone.
A lot of our listeners really struggle with trusting God and facing different challenges that are very difficult. We do have a lot of moms that also listen. If you don’t mind, why don’t you tell us about that journey with Elliot whenever he was very young and expand to let the listeners know about your journey through that too?
Laurie Christine: Our oldest son, who is now 12, was born with a congenital heart defect, and we were not aware of it at the time he was born. We found out when he was about three months old. Then we took him to the cardiologist and found out that he was in congestive heart failure, and you know, that’s not the news you wanna hear about your three-month-old little boy.
That’s something that you hear about older people. Congestive heart failure, isn’t that an older person’s disease or ailment? We were told that he would need heart surgery within a month.
When he was four months old, he had his first heart surgery. We didn’t know at the time, but he would end up, over the next two and a half to three years, having four heart surgeries to fix the problem in his heart.
It was a scary time. We didn’t know what to expect, but looking back, we saw God’s grace through all of it. I think one of the ways that we saw God’s kindness and His grace in our lives was that we didn’t know everything that was gonna happen. we didn’t know, we couldn’t see the whole picture. We only knew that he had this heart defect and he would need one heart surgery.
The easy fix turned into a rare condition.
The cardiologist said, “oh, you know, it’s not that big of a deal. You know, this will be an easy fix. Now, look up this one thing.” We went home and Googled it and it was a rare heart condition. I said, wait a minute. He didn’t say anything about it being rare. What’s going on?
It just seemed we learned a little bit more with each step of the journey. We could see God gave us grace for that next step. We just saw God’s kindness in that.
He had his first heart surgery. We found out during the surgery that the condition was a little bit worse than they had originally thought. They couldn’t perform the procedure they thought they could.
They did a palliative procedure to hold him over until he was a little older. We were disappointed they couldn’t fix his heart then but thought it’ll just be one more, and then they’ll be able to fix it.
“This is the last one.”
During the next surgery, we thought it was the last thing that’s gonna have to have to happen. This is the last one.
In the second surgery, they went in to do the repair, and we found out it’s actually way worse than we thought.
They told us, “you’re gonna have to have two more surgeries.”
God gives grace one moment at a time.
Looking back, I think if we knew, here’s what you’re gonna have to go through, that this is serious, and he’s going to have four heart surgeries before he turns five. I think that would’ve been so overwhelming.
Kelly Jo Wilson: Oh yeah.
Laurie Christine: But just knowing one step, then the next step, like, “okay, what do we need today? What do we need to do next?” I think it was God giving us His grace one moment at a time.
Kelly Jo Wilson: I think that’s such a good thing to touch on because, you know, at the moment, it probably didn’t seem like that at first. Because you have that fear. As a nurse, I’ve seen many patients and families handle terrifying news and diagnoses.
But like you said if you knew everything at once? It’s so overwhelming already, just one element of it. Especially you being a new mom, and your son is being diagnosed with anything, any type of condition is very scary. But I think once you realize that it’s a journey, you have a different perspective. Initially, that is something God does share in His grace. He shares that preparation for each step, which I think is such a great way to look at it.
But at the time, were you feeling anxious? What were you going through at the time, initially in that office when they were telling you?
Trusting God through fear and anxiety
Laurie Christine: Yeah, there were definitely times of fearfulness and anxiety. But also times of just overwhelming peace too. In situations where I would’ve thought I would be so upset or worked up, I could feel God’s peace in my heart, helping me to think rationally and take the next step.
But yes, for sure, there were definitely a lot of times when we didn’t know. We didn’t know what the outcome of the surgeries would be. We didn’t know what his long-term prognosis would be. There were a lot of times that I was fearful and anxious.
I tend to be an anxious person in general. Situations like this kinda escalate those feelings of anxiety.
Do not fear, for I am with you.
But during those times, I really just clung to God’s promises in scripture. Throughout the Bible, there are so many times where God says don’t fear.
Do not fear, do not worry. I went through and did a word search in a Bible app. I just looked up all the passages and verses when God says, do not fear or do not worry. There’s a whole bunch, but I came up with maybe 8 or 10, and I printed them out on card stock. I carried those around with me for those years.
I just had this pile of Bible verses and would read them, meditate on them, and just focus on those promises God had made.
One in particular that I loved was Isaiah 41:10, which said,
“Do not fear for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
So many times and in many verses, I found the reason to not be afraid. God wasn’t saying, don’t fear because nothing bad is ever gonna happen. Or don’t be afraid because everything’s gonna be totally fine.
That wasn’t the promise. The promise was, do not fear because I am with you.
Laurie Christine: God’s presence, the reminder of God’s presence, and clinging to that promise of God’s presence was something that just helped to get me through those periods of fear and anxiety.
Cling to God’s promises.
Kelly Jo Wilson: That is so wonderful. It’s so reassuring. I think it’s so great that you printed out the scripture that you’re like, no matter what, he’s coming with me in my purse.
But I think it’s a really important point to make sure that we hold His promises close. That’s what’s so great about having His word at our fingertips. In free Bible apps and things like that, we can go right to the source and remember what He tells us.
But you also pointed out how He says, don’t fear because I’m with you. That comfort He gives you to know you’re not alone is so profound. It’s just so amazing. I’m so happy you felt that in those moments. I think that’s important.
How was it between you and your husband? Were you two handling things? I would imagine handling as a unit, but sometimes things like that happen, and it’s almost like a grieving process. Because you’re trying to handle what’s coming at you, and both of you are probably taking things in a little bit differently.
So how did you two walk together on that path? Was that a challenge in itself, or did you guys have a connection?
Complete surrender of our son in God’s hands.
Laurie Christine: I felt like we were on the same page. I feel it probably brought us closer together during that time.
We had to trust God and put our son in God’s hands, praying for him and our families surrounded us with support.
I wouldn’t say that it caused extra stress between my husband, and I think that it was something God probably used during that time to help us. Connect in a common cause almost. A lot of times, there’s conflict. If there’s conflict in your life, or in a marriage, many times it’s between the two of you. The conflict gets between you.
But when the conflict is outside of you, and a difficult thing to go through that was outside us, we were going through it together. I felt that was helpful.
But, just talking about trusting God, I think my faith was challenged.
I really had to wrestle with, do I trust God?
It was strengthened but challenged at the same time. I really had to wrestle with, do I trust God?
Do I trust that he is good?
Do I trust his character and that he wants what’s best?
I never doubted his power, which was interesting. I never doubted God’s power because I knew that God was powerful, and I knew he could heal my son.
He had the ability to work through the surgeons and allow everything to work out how we were hoping. But I didn’t know if that was his will. I didn’t know if he would allow something more tragic to happen so that we would be drawn closer to him.
God works in mysterious ways. I sometimes found myself trusting in the surgeons more than in God. I thought the surgeons had my son’s best interest in mind and they want to heal my son. They want to fix his heart.
But I didn’t know if they could. I didn’t know if they had the power. I knew that the surgeons would fix Elliot’s heart if they could.
Trust God could, but unsure if He would.
But on the other hand, I knew that God could do it if he were willing and would do it. I just had to trust in God’s character, you know?
In the Bible, through scripture, what is God’s character? God is loving. God is good. Even if this doesn’t feel like a good thing in our lives.
Even if this doesn’t feel like a loving thing for God to do, I know that this is true of him, and I’m gonna continue to trust that it’s true no matter what the outcome.
Kelly Jo Wilson: That is so hard to do. Because if you look at anybody in a situation like that, similar, you could say, Yes. I love how you said, I know God could if he would, and that’s the thing. We know God can, but you trusting him isn’t if he can fix him. It’s trusting him if he’s going to fix it or not.
So I can see where you could say, I know the surgeons really want to heal him, but if God doesn’t, I need to trust that he is taking us through a different journey here.
We didn’t choose it, but He gave us grace for it.
That is so hard, especially as a new mother. I’m sure you had plenty of people saying, I don’t know if I could go through that. Because when it’s yourself versus your son, it’s so different, right?
I mean, it’s just so different. You would probably die for your son, you know? So it’s just a different kind of thing. It definitely takes you through a different trust journey there.
Laurie Christine: It’s interesting that you said about people’s comments, “how do you handle a situation like that? How could you have? I could never go through something like that.” We had people say that to us, and I just had to chuckle a little bit cause it’s not like we chose this.
I don’t feel God chose us to go through this because we had any special abilities or special qualities. God gives you the grace to go through what he gives you, what he puts in your life. He gives you grace when it’s needed. People would be like, “oh, I could never handle that situation.”
It’s when you’re forced to handle it, then you do.
Trust God’s grace for today.
God doesn’t give you grace for the things that might happen, or the things that you’re worried about might happen. He gives you the grace for today. He gives you grace for what is happening right now. So you take the next step, and continue to trust him.
We were thankful for God’s faithfulness in being who he is and who he said he is. His character, his goodness, and his lovingness.
Kelly Jo Wilson: Absolutely. I think it’s so important to really focus on his word and what he tells you. Because it’s so easy, like you said how you felt anxious and fearful, to listen to everything else, such as people close to you who generally have good intentions.
It’s easy to get distracted by your feelings and your emotions in situations like that, especially with your baby boy. But it’s just like you carried the promise cards around. I love that so much. I think it’s so strong.
Even when you probably felt weaker than you ever felt in your whole life.
What ended up being the outcome? You guys realized pretty early that this wasn’t gonna be a one-time thing. That this was a journey. What was the outcome of Elliot’s journey? How is he doing now?
A blessing emerged.
Laurie Christine: That’s a great question. So after his first two surgeries, we ended up getting a second opinion from a different cardiologist who sent us to a different Children’s Hospital in Boston.
We went to Boston Children’s Hospital, the best in the world for pediatric cardiology. We were so thankful that God brought her into the situation, and we connected with her because, in Boston, they were able to repair his heart.
They were able to make the repair that the other hospital couldn’t. And so, after his third surgery, Elliot was two. Anatomically it looks very different, but it’s functioning properly.
Trusting God through the unexpected
His fourth surgery was actually very unexpected. That was when he was five we had another opportunity to trust God. We thought this was behind us. We thought that we were moving along.
When he was five, one of the valves in his heart which had been replaced during the previous surgery, failed.
He needed a valve replaced. We went to Boston again. I know Kelly, you know all about cath labs, but for those of you listening who have no medical experience, basically, they were going to go in through an artery with this long tube and put a valve into his heart and not even have to cut open his chest at all.
That was the plan.
They did the heart catheterization and put the new valve in during that procedure. But he developed an aneurysm on his pulmonary artery.
An aneurysm is basically a bulge, like a weakness in the artery. It got bumped or knicked, and this big bubble was a weak spot. It’s a pretty dangerous situation.
There were a couple of days he was under general anesthesia and intubated, so for two days, we waited to see if it would resolve itself. He was in a very fragile state.
Then the surgeon came in and told us we would have to operate again. We’ll have to go in and do a fourth open heart surgery to repair what had just happened.
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.
Are you fighting the never-good-enough battle?
Do you want to embrace your unique gifts to share Jesus’s love with the world?
The goal of this podcast is to encourage and show you ways to witness for Jesus in your character daily. We embrace stories of difficult situations that test faith and discuss the hard challenges of being a woman in this world just trying to follow him. I’m so happy that you’re here for this very first episode.
This is our pilot episode for the I Witness Podcast. I am just so grateful for you to join us today.
This has been a long time coming. God has really been speaking to my heart about setting up this platform for people to share their stories and encourage each other.
Kelly’s Witness
A little background about me, my name is Kelly Jo Wilson. I’m a mom of two wonderful boys, a wife to an amazing husband, a nurse with a master’s degree in nursing education, and a writer. I have been called to pursue this path, and God just plucked me right out of my nursing profession.
I’ve always loved being around people, talking with them, and serving them in any way I can. I really love being a nurse. I miss caring for patients, but when God calls you out of where you are, you have to listen, or he’ll put pressure on you and make you listen.
I’m just trying to follow that call and want to share my quick story with you.
I would like to witness today about some things that I’ve struggled with, and maybe you can relate. When I was young, I always fought body image issues. I was a happy kid, well-liked and well-loved, with lots of friends and a wonderful family.
But I always struggled.
I grew up in an Italian family, you know, where gatherings were always centered around food, which was delicious. When I was younger and then into my early teen years, I was a little on the softer side.
My body was bigger, different, and never-good-enough
I was a teenage girl going through all those changes that we go through, and I just didn’t like what I saw in the mirror. When I went to school one day, I decided not to eat my lunch that day. Then one day turned into a week and a week turned into a month, and before I knew it, the struggle was into a full-blown eating disorder.
I didn’t even know it at the time. I didn’t mean to hurt anybody, it was a very concrete kind of thinking that if I wanted to be thinner and prettier, I had to stop eating. It was very simple. My mom took me to a few doctors, and she was a nervous wreck.
Once I realized that it was an issue and it was more than what I really wanted or thought it was, I had to realize that this was a real problem.
I remember talking to one of the doctors and he asked me to describe my normal thinking every day about myself, about food, and what I would do, essentially.
He asked me what started everything and he said how many times a day are you weighing yourself? I told him that I wasn’t, I didn’t weigh myself at all. It was only going on how I looked. I remember him writing that down, so in my teenage mind, I thought that was significant. I thought I should focus on getting better.
A secret battle with unrealistic expectations
I really struggled internally. Anybody with any mental health issues like that, an eating disorder, or any other mental illness, it’s really a secretive disease. It’s a really kind of keeping it to yourself, don’t wanna hurt anybody, don’t wanna bother anybody.
You just want to handle everything on your own. At least, that’s how I felt. So, that kind of thinking really plagued me for most of my life, leading into my young adulthood and even early adult days.
It really fueled that, you’re never good enough, I was never thin enough, never pretty enough. It fueled the unrealistic expectation that I could just never meet. I don’t even know why or how that expectation got set, and it was really difficult.
It led to me making very poor, horrible choices throughout my life. And to not really care about my body, going into this never-enough mindset, and trying to people please all through my adulthood. It really was a struggle internally for a long time.
On the outside, I had a lot of friends, and not many people know or knew. This is the first that I’m really sharing it in the open. When I got older and God brought me to a place of realization, I recognized that food and image weren’t the issues.
It was about control, and that control issue was something I was chasing but I could never get. It wasn’t until Jesus really spoke to me one day and said “You’ve got to stop,” that I made a really drastic change in my life when I heard His words.
I knew exactly what He meant. He meant that I had to stop this never-good-enough, never thin-enough, just always tearing myself down. It was into such a spiral that with every single mistake I made, I spiraled more and more down this web of shame and guilt.
And I knew him, I accepted him into my life when I was very young and always felt his presence and the presence of the Holy Spirit.
But, the more I felt shame and guilt, the more I knew I was unworthy of Him. I didn’t even feel worthy to speak His name. So, I really did not embrace what He teaches us, to rely on Him and come to Him when we are weary and weak. I just didn’t even feel good enough to even talk to Him.
Once He spoke to my heart, I knew that it was time to reevaluate what I was doing in my life. I had a season when I was completely broken down to my core. I had to surrender everything to him. It was a very life-changing moment.
Once I did that, I finally realized that it was never about me being worthy enough to accept Him, be loved by Him, or be good enough to talk to Him.
It was always because He is worthy that I am accepted through God’s grace. And once I realized that’s when I could fully embrace His presence and what He wanted to change inside my heart.
Life was still hard, but He changed me
After that, I had a number of challenges that I’ve gone through in my life, my adult life. It’s not like it completely disappears. Once you finally listen, sometimes you even face challenges that are a little harder.
But all through those challenges, instead of the craving for control, I was able to surrender the control and give it to Him. I really stepped back and let Him work.
I still struggle sometimes to take up my cross and follow Him and give Him that control. It’s, it’s always been my struggle. It probably will always be, but He is with me in the fight.
Reason for this podcast
So, that’s one of the reasons why I started this podcast is that, as women especially, we really struggle. We play all these different roles and we have all these roles in our lives. We are juggling all these balls in the air. It’s really hard to give up control when we have so many things, and we’re just that glue for our families and for all the people in our lives.
We’re trying to live this life for Him. But we especially struggle with guilt, shame, past mistakes, and never-good-enough thinking. I wanted to have this platform for other women and people struggling with that or have struggled in different situations to speak.
To share how their faith was changed and their relationship with God and Jesus changed when they faced those hard times. He brings us through to the other side to see things we would never have seen if we kept going down a certain path.
I initially had the idea for this podcast years ago called I Witness. Just us witnessing, literally writing down and sharing a big notebook across the world, and just kind of a naive. . simple idea.
But, loving technology nowadays, this is a wonderful place to share and get that message out. To share the encouragement of how Jesus works in our lives and how he brings us through really difficult times into a peace that we never would’ve known.
Podcast Overview
I am going to share a couple of details just to give you an overview of what to expect in future episodes and what the podcast can provide for you. One of the reasons to listen to the show is for encouragement and an opportunity to have community with other women struggling with things similar to what you’re struggling with.
I really hope to provide some tools, tips, and different resources for us to embrace that daily walk with Jesus and embrace those times that are really hard
If you are a mom, wife, single woman, or a Christian woman just struggling to see yourself as a capable, beautiful, worthy daughter in Jesus. If you fight that never-good-enough battle in your mind and wonder what unique gifts you can share in witnessing for him every day are, then this podcast is for you.
I hope this will encourage you and empower you to live your purpose for Him, that He’s calling you to live.
Future episodes will be some solo episodes. A devotional style, sharing devotional stories, resources for you, and recommendations that can help, depending on what topic we’re talking about for that day.
It’s also an interview-style podcast that will have people on with really compelling stories of faith in hard situations to show us how God works in our lives and to share that encouragement with one another.
How to subscribe to the podcast
If you want to subscribe to the podcast, you can open your smartphone. It will have a podcast app built in, whether it’s through Google, Apple, Android, or you can use Spotify or any other different kind of podcast app.
You can click in your podcast app and search for I Witness. If you click the button to subscribe right in the app, that would be fantastic.
I just wanted to give you a quick overview and share my story. I appreciate you so much for listening today. Just hit that subscribe button in your podcast app so you can be notified of new episodes.
I hope that you have a wonderful day, and thank you so much for listening.
If you or anyone you love struggles with an eating disorder, please click here for support through the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA). “Eating disorders have the second highest mortality rate of all mental health disorders, surpassed only by opioid addiction.”- NEDA
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. They're not the kind that are delicious, I'm sorry. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
