Podcast

A Symphony of Sorrow and Sovereignty. Janell Neumann

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Unshakable Hope podcast, where real life intersects redeeming love. I’m Kelly Hall, and this is where we wrestle through faith questions such as, how do I trust God’s heart when his ways and delays are breaking mind? We’ll hear from people just like you and me who have experienced God’s faithfulness when life didn’t unfold as they expected my prayers, that God would renew our hope and his word and his love through these conversations.

Kelly: Hey friends. Welcome to the Unshakable Hope Podcast. My guest today is Janell Newman. When I asked her about her family, she said that worship is their heartbeat. You’ll hear that in this episode.

Kelly: But I’m telling you, this woman is one of my new faith heroes. Her vulnerability to wrestle through loss and grief without giving up on God is courageous. She asked him hard questions and [00:01:00] through it all, she experienced the faithfulness of God. One of the things Janelle said to me before we recorded is that she discovered in this long, tumultuous story that her God, our God.

Kelly: The one true God is really a God of abundance and not a God of scarcity. He’s a God of healing and help and ever present strength. Even though Janelle’s story is not my story, I’m incredibly in awe. Of the faithfulness of God to walk us through unimaginable loss and to weave his impossible glory into our stories, and that gives me hope for all the hard things that I’m walking through.

Kelly: Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He’s our constant rock and a place of steadfast hope when everything in our life is in shambles. Janelle describes herself as a daughter of the king, a lover of Jesus, a wife, a mom, and a homeschool ninja. She has worked in children’s ministries and worship ministry for [00:02:00] many years.

Kelly: So Janelle, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for giving me your time while your kids are holed up in another room.

Janelle: You’re welcome. Thank you for having me.

Kelly: I wonder if you could start by telling us what gives you joy in the weariness of parenting? A really busy, busy family with a lot of responsibilities.

Janelle: Yeah. I think. The chaos. Like one of the things that brings such great joy is just worship music In my home. We’re a very musical family. We love worship music. My husband and I and our oldest son lead worship together and we love that. But in the crazy, God is so, faithful to that busy mama who gets two minutes in his word before little hands are flipping.

Janelle: Pages that if you can get a nugget, he’s faithful to have it sustain you all day. So when we are grumpy and tired and weary, we just flip on our worship music and we have a couple of different playlists, and within two to three songs, the atmosphere in [00:03:00] our home is different. It changes even in the car. If we’re grumpy in the car driving to an activity, we just flip on the worship music and it changes everything.

Janelle: And so I think that’s. The simplest way we find joy in the chaos of every day because kids are beautiful and crazy. And that’s the joy of children is they have so much zest for life, if you will, but sometimes we all get grumpy. And so that joy of just the worship and the presence that worship music brings in it just , changes the atmosphere for us.

Kelly: I loved what you said about even when you don’t have time , you can rehearse the nugget you got in the morning from a devotional, but you can always soak in his presence by turning on worship music.

Janelle: Just really understanding that everything you do as a mom is, is and can be worshiped to the Lord.

Janelle: Like if you look at your whole life as worship. It changes things. It changes how you feel about things.

Kelly: Yeah. Like every moment is a gift you’re giving to the Lord. Yep. [00:04:00] You have an amazing family story and it’s a story that’s full of miracles actually.

Kelly: It’s full of God’s provisions and his faithfulness and his miracles. And so I’m wondering if you could just give us an overview of your story and then we’ll, we’ll dive into some of the,

Kelly: Details. Sure.

Janelle: So my husband, Jason and I are, I always say we’re half high school sweethearts because he was completely in love with me and I wanted nothing to do with him there.

Janelle: We have a little bit of an age gap. I’m older. By a couple of years, and it wasn’t until college that we kind of found each other. But he had always loved me. And so when we finally connected, God was so clear with us. So it’s kind of a history, like once we connected, that was the end of it. And we were married in 2006 in Michigan.

Janelle: That’s where we both grew up and we grew up in not really. Christian homes a little bit of, of Jesus, but not a lot. And neither one of us were really rooted in anything. We were part of Christian fellowships in college and we [00:05:00] obviously had a god glorifying wedding because we saw it as a way to evangelize to our family and to really bring them along on our journey.

Janelle: And so. From the very beginning of our story, we kind of joke that we’re like Abraham and Sarah, like God kind of plucked us out of our homeland and took us somewhere far, far away. We got married in December of oh six and we were, we landed in Arizona in July of oh seven.

Janelle: In Arizona we didn’t have anybody.

Janelle: We were plucked from everything we knew. And it really forced forced us to have Jesus as our center and as our rock because we didn’t have anything else. Our plan was in and out of Arizona in five years. We were coming out here to pay off all of our student debt to kind of be footloose and fancy free, and then we would move back to Michigan, close to family, settle in and have kids.

Janelle: Well, it’s 20 years later and we are still in Arizona. We have eight children in total. We have four on this side of heaven that we get to love and nurture and raise in the Lord. And we have four in [00:06:00] heaven that we have not met yet, but we look forward to meeting someday. And so we have quite a story.

Janelle: But we have been out here since 2007. We love it out here. We’ve raised our children out here. They are Arizona, born and raised kids, which is kind of weird to find. Most people are. You know, they transitioned to Arizona. But we’ve enjoyed our time out here. We’ve enjoyed our churches and our people and our children right now are 16, 11, 8, and five.

Janelle: And so we have kind of a gap there, and that’s kind of part of our story. But I think even in God’s provision of moving us out here, we were never short. Stand-in, grandparents stand-in aunts and uncles, people who loved our kids and still love our kids. And even in that, with our family being out here God has still just provided amazingly so.

Janelle: That’s

Janelle: so cool.

Janelle: Well, there have been a lot of levels of loss and trauma that you have experienced and the way the Lord provided for you and met you in those places and proved himself. [00:07:00] Present intangible ways. Mm-hmm. It really is beautiful. So I’m wondering if you could just start with some of those places early on.

Janelle: Sure. So, like I said, we moved out here in 2006, or we got married in 2006. We moved out here in 2007. We settled into a church family and into a small group because that was super important for us. And in that first year of marriage, we, I uncovered some, some things about my husband that sent me for a loop, and the Lord knew that those things were gonna come to light.

Janelle: He knew. And it’s struggles that are common to every man, but as a wife, you, I just didn’t expect them. And had we not been out here. It surely would’ve ended my marriage. I would have run to my family who would have supported me leaving and I didn’t have grounds. There wasn’t biblical grounds, but God knew that he needed to put us out here.

Janelle: So we were out here and I had nowhere to run, but to the arms of Jesus and to a couple in our [00:08:00] small group. He had experienced exactly the same thing. Mm-hmm. Who were able to take us under their wing, bring us into a place of reconciliation and healing, and that was just the first step of God saying, okay, I am doing a new thing.

Janelle: And one of the things about our family is my husband Jason. He, hi. His last name Newman, isn’t attached to his family. Newman was his first stepdad who actually adopted him. Hmm. And our familial name for him is, is Walker and he is the only male. His family that would carry that name forward. But his mother let him be adopted by her, the his first stepdad, so his name is Newman.

Janelle: So we are connected literally to no family tree that we are biologically related to. And God showed us early on like. I am doing a new thing, like our name literally means new man, and he has taken us off of the trees of brokenness. He has grafted us into his family tree and he put us in [00:09:00] the desert where his water is what sustains us.

Janelle: And that’s why we joke about having an Abraham and Sarah story because God called Abraham to. Far, far away with no, you know, nobody except himself. And so that’s kind of where the early story starts. But one of the things that we didn’t think we would do is start a family out here. And the deepest desire of my heart from even when I was a little girl, was to have a big family and raise them in the Lord.

Janelle: Like I wanted to redeem things. I, when I, Jason and I first started dating, I’m like, I wanna buy a minivan and fill it with kids. Like that’s what I wanted to do. Right. So we get married and, and we had plans like right, like man plans his way, but God ordains his steps and we were gonna have, you know, X many kids and they were gonna be this many years apart and, you know, all the things we think we can have control over.

Janelle: Right? Yeah. As a young wife, you know, dreaming and we ended up getting pregnant the first time. As fast as that baby showed up, we lost that baby.

Kelly: Mm-hmm.

Janelle: And [00:10:00] I remember sitting thinking, Lord, this isn’t fit with my dream. This doesn’t, this wasn’t on my, this wasn’t part of my plan and I don’t wanna do this.

Janelle: This isn’t like, why, Lord, why would you give and then take away? And it was really quickly then that I realized I ha one have no control over our story. And two, God didn’t take that baby. God accepted that baby back into his hands. But the brokenness and the fallenness of this world, we don’t have control over that.

Janelle: Our bodies are subject to the fallenness of this world, just like anything else. And so I had to really grapple with. The goodness of God, even in that first loss. That was a tough one. And then a year later we got pregnant again and we had our son Judah. And Judah. The fact that he was a boy for my husband was a big deal, like a.

Janelle: A son to carry the name, to be the beginning of a legacy. We [00:11:00] named him Judah after, you know, the lion of Judah. And is it actually means joyful praise because we were so excited that, you know, this baby was given to us. He is a lion of a personality. So mamas beware what you name your children because they will live up to.

Janelle: up to that. He is, he is very strong-willed, but he loves the Lord. And so that was a gift, you know, having Judah, and we knew, you know, after we had Judah, we wanted to have several other children. But we had no idea what was coming next. We, you know, got to about the 18 month mark with Judah and decided, you know, let’s, let’s have another baby.

Janelle: We want them to be close together. I wanted like four. In a row, two years apart. So I had eight, you know, 2, 4, 6, and eight is what I was hoping for. Yeah. You had a very specific plan, didn’t you? I had a very specific plan, one that I’m sure God laughed at every time we talked about it, I’m sure of it. But we, so we did, we ended up getting pregnant.

Janelle: Getting pregnant was never the problem. [00:12:00] My body was able to get pregnant. It was holding the pregnancies that was the problem. So when Judah was 18 months old we got pregnant again. And thought it would just be normal and it was anything but normal. I was. I was about, oh, maybe six or seven weeks along and I decided to stay home from work.

Janelle: One day I was still teaching and Juah was in daycare, and I decided to stay home ’cause I was having some cramping and just some, some irregular symptoms that I just didn’t think were normal. And I had called the doctor, and the doctor was like, just take Motrin. It’s probably nothing. It could just be an ovarian cyst.

Janelle: But I just didn’t have peace about doing that. So that’s when we took a pregnancy test, found out we were pregnant. And that went on for about a week. And then finally, like that sixth or seventh day, I stayed home and I was at the, at the stove making macaroni and cheese for Judah. He was in the high chair, very little guy, and all of a sudden I had searing pain go through my [00:13:00] abdomen, like someone had stuck a knife in me.

Kelly: Mm-hmm.

Janelle: I started to sweat and I started to shake. And I knew something was wrong. Like God has this built-in alarm system when our body is not well, it goes off. And I called a friend and I said, something is very wrong with me. I don’t know what it is, but I need you to come over right away. So she came over, she brought her son with her, she rushed me to the hospital.

Janelle: I was dying in that moment ’cause I was bleeding internally. I had a. Corneal ectopic pregnancy. So the baby had implanted in my fallopian tube right where it connected to the uterus. So the baby almost made it, but not quite. Mm-hmm. And when it ruptured, it left me bleeding from my, the uterine wall.

Janelle: My fallopian tube and my husband, he had did not have the car that day. I had the car, so he had to borrow a car from a friend to rush to the hospital. I waited for probably 10 and a half hours before I actually was taken into surgery to repair [00:14:00] that ectopic pregnancy, and I was literally knocking on death’s door.

Kelly: Yeah. It life threatening. I know. It was, it’s hugely terrifying.

Janelle: Yes. And I was in and out of consciousness ’cause I was losing blood. My blood pressure was doing all kinds of things. When they finally got me into surgery, they pulled a liter and a half of blood outta my abdomen and I had to have lots of blood given to me.

Janelle: But yet the Lord saved me. My story wasn’t over. And so as I, you know, you come outta surgery, you, you’re healing you’re wrestling with Lord, why? And I think the. The biggest thing was when I was released from the hospital and I came home, I was walking in the house and Judah was holding my hand and I came into our bedroom and the bed was half made, half slept in because I had been in the hospital for four days and my husband had been home.

Janelle: And I looked at that and I just started to weep and I thought, Lord. This could have been Judah’s story. A bed half slept in a widow , and a and a little boy without a mom. Yet you saved my life. And so even in the [00:15:00] gratitude of being saved, I was grieving because there was another baby we never got to hold.

Janelle: And I just wanted like, again, like that minivan. Let’s fill it up. Lord, how am I gonna ever fill a minivan if now my chances are cut in half? Because everything was so damaged. I lost that whole left side. Of like my fallopian tube and everything, and I, I had to grieve, I had to grieve that loss.

Kelly: And you’re coming out of a life-threatening medical crisis where you almost died.

Kelly: You’re trying to heal from a huge loss of blood, and you’re also dealing with the trauma of losing your baby and the trauma of dreams that you, you had dreamed of a minivan being filled and you didn’t know if you were, if all those dreams had been shattered as well.

Janelle: Yeah, it was really, that was a rough season coming out of that.

Janelle: Like how do you balance being grateful for your life and be, and praising God for the fact that he saved you, but then questioning him for the loss of, of a baby like God. You couldn’t have [00:16:00] just pushed that baby. I was like this close Lord. Like, why, why, why me? And I did a lot of the why mes like, why me?

Janelle: Why two, God, why? Why not you? Like, I’m not above suffering. I’m not above the attacks of the enemy. Why not me? Like it’s almost like job. And God was like, well, were you there when I told the seas to stop? And I did a lot of questioning and, and God and his mercy gently put me back in my place like I am holding you.

Janelle: I have you. So we, this was a

Kelly: big faith crisis, so the promise that really helped you was, God, just telling you, I am with you. I’ll never leave you. I’m not gonna forsake you. I’m holding you. Yeah. You’re in my hands. I’ve got you. I, and I love that promise. I think that’s the best promise throughout all of scripture, from Genesis one to the end of Revelations is God saying, I’ve got you.

Kelly: Okay. Yeah. I’ve got this and I’ve got you. [00:17:00]

Janelle: And I think one of the verses that bought so much comfort to me, and I can’t remember, it’s in the Psalms where it talks about where he catches our tears in a bottle.

Kelly: Yeah.

Janelle: Like not one tear fell from my eye that he was not keenly aware of. Not one piece of pain went through my soul that he did not know about.

Janelle: And sometimes I would try to go in prayer and I would just weep. And I just fully believed that every tear he kept and every tear he was aware of, and as I was aching, so was he like this wasn’t his design for his people. This wasn’t what he wanted. This wasn’t how he designed it. And so when I could grab a hold of the fact that I have a God who is probably grieving on some level with me, and that every tear that falls is.

Janelle: He’s aware of that brought incredible comfort.

Kelly: Yes. Yes. Well, we have the picture of Jesus weeping at Lazarus grave, even knowing that he was gonna raise him from the dead right there in just a minute. But he gives us the freedom to know that [00:18:00] he grieves with us. And like he doesn’t, he doesn’t turn his back.

Kelly: He’s right there with us. He, he’s experienced being human. He knows what this is like, , and so it’s very comforting to know that he weeps with us and doesn’t dismiss our pain. Yeah. I think the verse about he collects our tears in a bottle is Psalm 56 maybe, but I’ll look

Janelle: it up later and I’ll put it in the show notes.

Janelle: Yeah, yeah. It was just, it brought great comfort. And you know, the other thing that brings comfort is fellowship. I think. Yeah. Sometimes we’re shamed into, we don’t talk about miscarriages, we don’t talk about loss, we don’t talk about reproductive things. But as women, like we were built for fellowship and I needed.

Janelle: I needed the other women in my life to remind me that God loved me, to remind me that he was there because there were days where I didn’t wanna believe it. I’m like, no way. God, I’m out. And he would bring a sweet sister to say, no babe, you’re not out. He just, this is just hard. You know, it would just those, those kinds of things.

Janelle: So not only did he himself, but also bringing [00:19:00] sisters in Christ to walk alongside of me was a big deal.

Kelly: Was it hard for you to even think about trying to get pregnant again?

Janelle: Yeah, I think it was at that point we we were like, that’s it. We’re done. Let’s get a dog. Like I had been through so much that I was like, I can’t do this again.

Janelle: And my husband on his end was scared like this almost cost him his wife. And he was like, I don’t know. I don’t wanna do life without you, so I’m not sure I wanna do this. And when I finally convinced him, let’s try again, we lost that baby too. We lost that baby at thir between 13 and 14 weeks. So we had to go through the process all over again and we were like, Lord, are you kidding me?

Janelle: So after that one we actually went, this is really funny. We went, not right away, but we went to a golden doodle breeder. He had a litter of goldens and we we adopted two puppies out of his litter. They were like six weeks old and we knew that we couldn’t have them until they were 10 or 12 weeks is when he wanted to [00:20:00] get rid of them.

Janelle: But we went and we met them, we picked them out, we tied their little bows on, they said they were ours. We named them. We were all excited because we were like, Lord, we’re done. Like, we’ll, like this is the end. It’s gonna be Judah and the dogs and us, and we’re gonna be okay with that. And we adopt the dogs.

Janelle: And about maybe literally like two or three days before we were going to bring those puppies home. We were pregnant again. And this was like probably six or eight months after that, that third loss. So it was a, it was a quite a timeframe and I laughed. I’m like, Lord, for real. Like I can’t do a newborn and puppies, but if this is gonna go the way it always goes, then I wanna keep the puppies.

Janelle: And my husband was like, we are not keeping the puppies. Like we cannot do this. And so we relinquished. Puppies to different owners. We didn’t even take them home from the breeder. But God was really faithful in that because I had given up hope. I really had, and I wasn’t saying it out loud, but I had given up hope.

Kelly: Mm-hmm. I

Janelle: had told a very dear friend who is a [00:21:00] pastor’s wife, I said, I, I can’t do this anymore. I said, this is too hard. I said, I don’t, I don’t wanna do this anymore. I said, I don’t think that God is going to meet me here. I think I had given up hope and she had prayed over me. She’s like, God, show her how faithful you are.

Janelle: Show her who you are. And he was very faithful in that. He definitely did that. And. We ended up getting pregnant shortly thereafter, and I was hesitant. Like I was hesitant to find joy in it. I was hesitant to believe it was true. I was hesitant to tell anybody. But we have learned early on that if you don’t tell anybody, then there’s nobody to grieve with you.

Janelle: Right. You know, and there’s nobody to celebrate either. And so this baby was looking like it was gonna stick. Everything was great. I went to my six week appointment, got home, started spotting, and I was like, you have got to be kidding me. And I threw my hands up. I was like, Lord, I’m so done [00:22:00] with this story.

Janelle: I can’t do this anymore. And I told you that I can’t do this. And yet here we are again. Yeah, and for the first 12 weeks of this pregnancy I spotted and the doctor told me, if you are still spotting at 12 weeks, we’re gonna have to do a DNC because this isn’t healthy for you to continue to lose blood.

Janelle: And so I went into that 12 week appointment fully expecting to have a DNC fully like I was. That was it. And they obviously do an ultrasound first, and I had requested that, right? ’cause I just wanted to be sure. And the last thing I expected to see we saw on the screen, and that was a fully formed 12 week baby girl.

Janelle: Absolutely moving like crazy, completely full of life. And I stopped bleeding immediately that day.

Kelly: Wow.

Janelle: It was like, God was like, I told you, and he wa it was, I wa I don’t think he was testing me, but it kind of was a test of my faith, like, [00:23:00] do you trust me? Do you trust me when your body appears to not be cooperating?

Janelle: Do you trust me when the doctors are saying like, do you trust me because I am the final word? Mm. And that ushered in a full term healthy pregnancy with our daughter, Evelyn. Wow. And her name, her name literally means full of life. Because for the first time after Judah, my womb was full of life and she was healthy and thriving and beautiful.

Janelle: And she is our 11-year-old now. So that brought in a lot of healing and just the provision of God to say, I see you, but my time is better.

Kelly: Oh, that’s so powerful. There was one thing you said that I just wanted to touch on, and that’s the fact that when God, I mean, you didn’t know for sure how things were gonna turn out, but you had, God had just been telling you, I’m faithful.

Kelly: I’m faithful. You can trust me. But I think it’s just so important that that we don’t judge our story by our circumstances, but [00:24:00] instead we allow our story to unfold in the hands of a good God. That’s hard.

Janelle: Yeah, it’s hard. Like I said at the beginning, like I had a plan and I learned early on I couldn’t have control.

Janelle: Well, I like to take control like I am. I like to be the one in charge and God just kept telling me over and over, I’m the one writing your story. I am unfolding your story. So that is completely true and I. Had to learn that lesson over and over as we journeyed

Kelly: this story. It’s quite a tension to live in that mystery because you’re, he calls us to live in hope and at the same time to live in surrender and to continue to believe God for a really good story when your heart is breaking and to live with joy in that story that he’s unfolding, it is hard to do.

Kelly: Yes, it is. It really is. And you don’t want to, no, you don’t want to because we wanna protect ourselves. And we see that with Sarah in her story. You already mentioned Abraham and Sarah, but when God showed up and said, Hey, next year you’re [00:25:00] gonna have a son, you know, through your own body, you’re gonna have a son.

Kelly: And she laughed because it was so hard for her to open up her heart to hope again and believe, I mean, she was being cynical and trying to protect herself. She lived with so much loss, so much disappointment, so much waiting. And then God was inviting her into a better story.

Janelle: Yeah. And that’s why we joke about being Abraham and Sarah because like so much of the story, like I, that cynical nature she had, that’s no joke.

Janelle: Like Right. I remember feeling that way, especially when after we got pregnant with Avelyn, it’s like, oh yeah, sure Lord, go ahead. Like show me two pink lines and then take her away from me. Like I felt that deep. Yes. Like, and then she was here and alive and beautiful and her soul reflects. Evelyn is gentle and kind, and she’s so in touch with the spirit and she loves the Lord so much.

Janelle: She’s a gift and over and over and over. I find myself thanking God that he gave her to me because I don’t [00:26:00] feel worthy to raise such a gentle soul. Mm-hmm. And I feel that way about all my kids. Like all my kids are a gift. But there’s something about her and her story that she was handpicked for me and what the enemy tried to snatch.

Janelle: God was like, not this one, this one, this one stays. And I will never forget the feeling of seeing her moving and healthy on that screen. It is like burned in my memory as one of the most God near times I think I’ve ever had. Expected to see something different.

Kelly: Well, there’s a phrase I wanna share with you. So I just interviewed Nicole Zasowski. She just came out with a lifeway Bible study called Daring Joy, and she’s a licensed marriage and family counselor. So she has a lot of wisdom and insight. One of the phrases she uses is when we’ve experienced a lot of disappointment, we become suspicious of joy.

Kelly: And I thought that was a phrase that so captures what we go through in those moments. We’re very suspicious of joy and it’s hard to surrender to joy and celebrate [00:27:00] joy because we wanna self protect.

Janelle: Yeah, 100%. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a phrase that so adequately described how that moment felt like.

Janelle: I’m just not so sure, Lord. And sometimes we call it cynicism, but maybe it’s just that we’re suspicious of joy.

Kelly: Yeah. We’re as a,

Janelle: that’s a very accurate phrase. That’s that’s a good one.

Kelly: Yeah. I really like it. Well, I want to move into the next phase of your story, but we are celebrating Evelyn.

Kelly: I wonder if she’s gonna be a worship leader like you are. Yeah. Maybe. We’ll see what God does with her. Yeah. All right. So tell us the next.

Janelle: Part of your story that he unfolded. So the next part came with complete like out of nowhere our third earth side baby.

Janelle: His name is Makia and we did not see him coming. We really thought we were done after Evelyn, like I did not expect anymore, even though my dream was four. I kind of laid that dream down and was like, eh, we’re done. We have Evelyn, and three years later, almost on the dot, like they’re 10 days apart, three [00:28:00] years and 10 days apart came Mackay and as fast as he came is as fast as he moves.

Janelle: Today he is. Our wild one. His name means teller of the truth or bringer of the truth, and he is just, like I said, as fast as he came is as fast as he moves. And he came with like, there was no complications, there was no loss. And for the first time I was like, I am normal. Like I can do this. And so again, it brought healing on another level and just a deeper level of trusting the Lord.

Janelle: But then after Mackay three years almost to the, to the date. We found out we were pregnant again, and we were not trying. Four was our number, it was the number we held deep in our heart, but we kept it deep. We didn’t share it. We just, we figured our family was done. Truly after Makia, our family is done.

Janelle: And right before my husband’s birthday, I found out we were expecting. The next baby, which would be baby number eight in our story. And I wrote on his birthday card, like I [00:29:00] signed it. Love the five of us, right? Because there would be four babies and me, and it was this big thing and I was so excited.

Janelle: And that didn’t pass the way we thought it would either. It took a long tumultuous twist.

Janelle: With that baby. I announced it to Jason on like his birthday. We had gone with some friends to see a movie and I had handed him his birthday card and he’s like, oh, I’ll open it later. I’m like, actually, I want you to open it now. And he opened it and he read it and he was like, oh my gosh, are you serious?

Janelle: And I was like, yeah, I’m serious. And his. Obviously our friends were like, what? What are you serious about? And I was like, we are pregnant again. And they were like, no way. And it was, I couldn’t believe it. They couldn’t believe it. We were so excited. And we got to about the eight week mark, and I started not feeling great.

Janelle: And I, because I’m high risk, I’m always at the doctor super early. And so the doctor was like, everything looks good. Everything is good, you’re good. But at week eight. Things weren’t good, and I didn’t know [00:30:00] why, our doctor sent us to the emergency room just to get checked out, and as it turns out, there was more than one type of ectopic pregnancy.

Janelle: We didn’t know. And so this baby had made its way into my uterus and had implanted in my scar tissue. From my cesarean.

Kelly: Wow.

Janelle: And there was a lot we didn’t know about that. The er doctors and the doctors on call were like, this is ectopic. This is life-threatening. We need to do something about this.

Janelle: Well, having had previous, I was like, I was so scared. My husband was beside himself scared. We’ve already been here. And so the, the treatment for that is. Injections of methotrexate, which will stop the pregnancy and dissolve it so that you don’t rupture. That goes against our moral code 1000%. Like we just, we wrestled so hard, like, Lord, this is not right.

Janelle: We, how do we do this? And the doctors were like, you will not survive like this is worse than the one you had before. And so against what our gut [00:31:00] was telling us, and under the pressure of the doctors who were talking to us, we followed protocol. And I remember being in the hospital when they came in. Two, two doctors came in at the same time and they gave me a double dose of methotrexate, one in each hip.

Janelle: And I remember thinking, God, what are we doing? Why are we here again? Like, why would you do this? Why would you let me walk through this again, Lord, why, like, do something, stop this. And we had called dear friends from the church to come and be with us and the tears streaming down my face as they’re injecting this medicine that is going to terminate life so that apparently I can live.

Janelle: It was the most painful because I was, I was giving the permission. And I just remember begging God to do something. So they release us from the hospital and then they watch your number. So I had to go have blood work drawn every couple of days. Well, my HCG numbers weren’t going down. They [00:32:00] were going up, which means the baby was still alive and still growing, which we were like, oh, what on earth is happening here?

Janelle: Because there’s a threat on my life, but the baby is still growing. So now grief and fear and joy are doing this crazy dance in my brain. My question was, Lord, where are you Lord, where are you? Why are you? Like, where are you? Where are you? Where are you? And at that point we would, could not be seen by any ob no OB, GYN would touch us because now we were in a medical almost like a malpractice kind of thing, and nobody wanted to get their hands dirty in our case.

Janelle: So we went to one high specialist, O-B-G-Y-N. They did an ultrasound. Baby was there, heartbeat was, heart was beating, but baby was very brachycardia. So in essence, she, we don’t know it was a girl, but I always say she, she was dying and it was awful and the process just wasn’t doing what it was supposed to and it was causing a great deal [00:33:00] of pain and other symptoms I just won’t go into.

Janelle: And finally we landed ourselves with the top doc in Arizona, and I will never forget him. He was an angel. And he met with us and he took on our case and he said, listen. He said, I’m not gonna hide anything from you. He’s like, you could have carried this baby to term. He said, you would’ve been extremely high risk.

Janelle: It would’ve been a great risk to you. Because scar tissue doesn’t stretch like uterine tissue does. But we would’ve watched you and we would’ve delivered you before the risk. You probably would’ve had a hospital stay a little longer. I just don’t wanna lie to you about what happened to you, he said, but right now.

Janelle: We’re in this really touchy situation. You have things happening to you that aren’t healthy for you. Baby is still alive, but is dying, and I think the best thing is to go in, and do do A DNC. And, and, and I said, what does that look like? And he said, well, we would go in and we would inject the methotrexate directly into the baby.

Janelle: And I was like, absolutely not. Like I [00:34:00] cannot, absolutely not like my, my, I, my moral code, my Jesus in me says no. Like he is the giver of life. He will, he will either give her life or he will take her life, but you are not doing it. And he said, okay, well we, I think we do need to go through with a procedure.

Janelle: He said, for your health. And so we prayed that entire week, Lord, when they get in there, either let her be strong and healthy, or let her have gone into your arms on your time. And I’m like, you have to prove it to me Lord, like I will not be conscious. You have to prove it to me, Lord. And I made them, I’m like You, I, I’m like, I was not rude, but I was not.

Janelle: Gentle. I was like, you will show me an ultrasound picture and you will prove to me that there is no heartbeat on this baby. ’cause if you do this procedure and she is alive, there will be massive consequences. And we begged the Lord all week, like Lord, do something, do anything God like. If there’s any way to save her.

Janelle: And I remember [00:35:00] driving, you were driving from a doctor’s appointment and the Lord. Was just really the, his presence was heavy in the car. And my husband was so angry and he was like, this, God moves mountains. This God heals people. This God brings people back from the dead, but he won’t move my baby into a safe place.

Janelle: Like what on Earth is going on? Why on Earth? Why? And there was just such deep pain and anger and frustration. And we went in for the procedure. We went in for the procedure and she had already passed. She, the Lord had taken her. They didn’t have to do any extra methotrexate. They didn’t have to do hardly anything.

Janelle: But I went into that procedure weeping and I woke up weeping and the nurse, she was with me, she’s like, you cried the whole time. Like even being out like I was out. She’s like, but you cried the whole time. And I think that was the hardest part is I was giving [00:36:00] permission for them to take her. And in God’s mercy, he took her first.

Janelle: And that, in that tragedy, his redemption was there. He was like, I won’t do this. Like I’ve got you. And then we had to wrestle through all of that. Like how do you wrestle with the news? Like you could have saved your baby if you wouldn’t have taken the doctor’s advice. But you did. And he had to redeem that.

Janelle: And I had to wrestle and it took me a couple of years to really wrestle until

Janelle: I told my story to a pastor and he was weeping like his big huge six four, you know, 300 pound man. And he was reduced to tears as I was sharing my story with him. And he got up from around his desk. I will never forget this. His wife was there with us too, and he wrapped me in his arms and he said, this is not your fault, and God does not see it that way.

Janelle: And that was when the, when the chains fell off. And I was like, [00:37:00] thank you. I needed someone to tell me that it wasn’t my fault. Even though God had already redeemed the story, I was still carrying the weight of her passing.

Kelly: Yeah,

Janelle: I hold to so much hope that one day right after I stand before Jesus and get the best, biggest hug in the world, four littles will be right behind him.

Janelle: Like I, that’s the hope that I have. Like, and that’s what makes me tear up is they’re not gone forever. They’re just gone for now.

Kelly: Yeah. Yeah.

Janelle: And I get four to raises and four to look forward to. There’s a lot of hope in that our God is a God of hope and he is a god of redemption, and the redemption story is incredible.

Janelle: But that was a really hard one to walk through that.

Kelly: Yeah. Well, I, I’m gonna have to wipe the tears outta my eyes again. That was really such a hard, hard, hard story and I’m, I’m very thankful that the Lord sent you that pastor to [00:38:00] speak the truth over you, to set you free from guilt and shame.

Janelle: Yeah, because that’s never part of God’s plan for us.

Janelle: God never intended me to hold that, but I couldn’t get out from under it until somebody else spoke truth over me.

Kelly: Yeah. Well then the Lord surprised y’all in a totally different way.

Janelle: The baby we lost was actually due February 4th. That would’ve been our due date with that baby. So. Maybe six months after that. Some dear friends of ours at our church, their daughter, we found out she was pregnant. She was homeless on the streets. She was addicted to drugs and. She was pregnant. And so our prayer for her really became, God let this baby be the thing, the person, the, the gift you used to bring her out of this lifestyle.

Janelle: Like that was our prayer. We were just praying for her. And what was happening in my family is my daughter Evelyn, was convinced that the baby be lost, was her sister. And that God would [00:39:00] never give her a sister. ’cause she had two brothers and she just really wanted a sister. And she, she just kept praying and we just kept telling her, baby girl, if you want a sister, ask the Lord like he’s the giver of life.

Janelle: We cannot do this. This is not something that we are capable of. God can do this. And as the journey went with Emily, and that’s, that’s the birth mom’s name an ultrasound picture came across Facebook like, we’re having a boy. We’re so excited. It’s a boy. And like the picture was like pretty clear that it was a boy and January 28th, 2020, so right before pandemic and you know, six days, seven days before our baby would be due, Emily went into labor and had a baby girl, not a boy, she had a girl and her auntie is a really good friend of ours. And I was sitting in my office at church just.

Janelle: Literally minding my own business, like getting ready for Sunday. And she came over and she sat down and I said, girl, where have you been? I’ve been calling you all week. And she said, I’ve [00:40:00] been at the hospital. Because Emily had her baby. And I was like, oh my goodness.

Janelle: Tell me all the thing, what’s his name? How’s she doing? Like I wanted to know all the things. And she goes, Janelle, stop. And she said, it’s not a boy, it’s a girl. And in that moment it was like the Lord was sitting next to me in the chair and he said, Hey, that’s your daughter. Go get her.

Janelle: Oh my goodness. And I was like, wait a minute. What? We had never even thought about adopting. I mean, we talked about wouldn’t it be fun to adopt when our kids are older and I didn’t say anything to Beth at the time. I said, how is she, what’s her name?

Janelle: How is Emily? And, the baby was tiny. She was just under five pounds. She was meth and heroin addicted. Mom had already fled the hospital and Beth was in the hospital every day caring for her. She had gone into Beth’s custody, which kept her out of the system, which was really good. And so I drove home with [00:41:00] tears in my eyes thinking, Lord, I don’t know, like, how am I going to even.

Janelle: Tell my family about this. Like I know that I know that I know what, what I heard. And so I came home and my husband was in the bedroom. He was, I don’t remember what he was doing, folding laundry or something. And I said, Hey. I said Emily had the baby and it’s not a boy, it’s a girl. And the Lord told me, that’s our daughter and we’re supposed to go and get her.

Janelle: And he turned around and he goes, I know. And the Lord had already been talking to him. About this baby. He just didn’t know she was a girl. Mm. And that’s so powerful, right? Like when God is clear, God is clear. Like we knew. And so we’re like, okay, Lord, what do we do? So the first thing we did was we went to her parents and said, we feel like we’re supposed to adopt this baby.

Janelle: Will you give us your blessing to pursue? Adoption of this little girl, and they said yes. So now what we’ve got is she was in the hospital, so Valentine’s Day she came home on Valentine’s Day, and we [00:42:00] hadn’t taken any steps yet to do anything.

Janelle: We were just really being prayerful. And of course COVID is coming, right? So the pandemic is coming. We don’t know it yet, and so, Beth called me one day and said, can you come over and just sit with the baby? Well, I go pick up formula.

Janelle: And I said, yes. I had not even held her yet. And I went over to Beth’s house. And I walked in and she handed me the baby. And I knew that I was holding my daughter. Like I knew that, I knew that I knew that I was holding my daughter and I called Jason, I said, I’m holding our little girl.

Janelle: And he said, okay. He goes, I really think we need to move forward. So we contacted an emergency cert agency and they emergency certified us. And here’s the kicker. They certified us as kinship. Now we are not related. We’re not blood, , there was no reason to certify us as kinship, but when they ask our relationship with the family, we said they’re very good friends of ours.

Janelle: And they were, we did all the holidays together and we did, and I said, the moms are like sisters to me. Like we, you know, [00:43:00] the grandma, like we’re very close and and so she certified us as kinship and did an emergency certification so that we could take her and have her like on the weekends or whatever, until we got further in the process.

Janelle: Well, we got to about March 1st and Beth said, listen, we all know this is your daughter. You take her, which again, like these things don’t happen, and so Mia came to us at.

Janelle: Just, just over a month old, full-time. And normally when you go through an adoption process, it takes about six, six to nine months to go through all the family interviews, all the paperwork, all the certifications, vaccine records, all the, you know, home inspections the CPR classes like, and it’s all like, it just takes a very, very long time.

Janelle: Well, COVID came knocking on our door and although it was not something I wanna live through again, I think God used it so powerfully in our family. We were completely certified in six weeks. That’s

Kelly: crazy.

Janelle: Yep. She was [00:44:00] permanently in our home in eight

Janelle: and my husband was home for nine straight months.

Kelly: Wow.

Janelle: Yeah. And so. We could have never orchestrated that. Like that is a complete God orchestration. , And a little bit of background for Mia’s family, her parents, so her mom was also adopted and the family that adopted her mom, they fostered and adopted several kids. So they were like, this is not even normal.

Janelle: This isn’t even real, that this could happen. But it did, and God made her ours without even a hint of adversity. She was fully adopted, she was. 17 months old and she was fully adopted. It moved really fast. And there was tragedy even in that, like in that process her dad passed away, like her biological dad.

Janelle: And we, you know, how we had to work through that process. But God redeemed her and, and literally handed us our baby. [00:45:00] Born at the same time, like Mia Marks every milestone that our baby would have marked. They are exactly the same age. And Evelyn got a glory story. She got her sister.

Janelle: The picture I have of Avelyn holding her for the first time, her God is very real to her because he saw fit to give us Mia

Kelly: and to answer that prayer, just to answer that childlike prayer that she kept praying.

Janelle: Yep. And it is it is a story. We could not write, we could not orchestrate. And we had tried we had talked about, like I said, fostering before, but we found out we couldn’t get certified because of medical records, choices that we made as a family. With vaccines and different things that they wouldn’t certify us, they wouldn’t place a newborn in our home.

Janelle: And then when we went through this agency, same agency that said they wouldn’t, you know, couldn’t certify before. And we had other friends have the same experience completely and totally certified us with no. Exceptions.

Kelly: Yeah. And certified you as kinship and did it in like no time at all. [00:46:00]

Janelle: No time at all.

Janelle: God did the impossible. And right after she was adopted, she was adopted.

Janelle: June 7th. It was like August 10th or something, like two months later. The agency we were certified with called and said, Hey, we found some errors in your records. We don’t have. Certain documents that we need to keep your certification going. We need, just need you to send over your kids’ records. And we were like, sorry, we don’t have those because our family chose a different path.

Janelle: And they’re like, okay, well then you either need to get up to date or close your license. And we were like, we’ll close our license for now. When God moves, God moves and there is nothing that’s gonna stop him. He makes the impossible possible and he makes the absolute, like hopeless situation full of hope.

Janelle: And we have her, and she is our daughter, and she’s the answer to every prayer. Our Avelyn prayed and has brought so much life and joy into this home. And we knew [00:47:00] when the, when the gavel dropped, and her name will henceforth be known as, you know, Miriam Faith Newman. Our family was finished. Wow. And peace, hit and joy and we’re like, okay, our family is finished.

Janelle: And it did not get built the way we had planned to build it. No,

Kelly: no. God built your family in a way that I’ve, I’ve never heard before. So as we wrap this up, I’d love for you just to share with us what do you know about God now that you didn’t before? And then what scriptures really anchored you to God’s heart along the way that maybe you haven’t mentioned yet that you’d like to share with somebody else walking through a hard thing.

Janelle: Well, I will tell you, there were so many times where I was like, God, this is not the story that I want. I do not want this story. I want a different one. And I didn’t get a different one, but I got the one that he completely intended me to have. The one that showed how faithful he was, the one that showed how near he is because he [00:48:00] was

Janelle: So near and so real. I would have no, I don’t wanna say, I would’ve no understanding, ’cause I don’t know how my story would go if it would’ve went different. But because of the story that he wrote for us, I know him as faithful. I know him as hope. I know him as Joy. I know him as sustainer. Like he held me when I was so prickly, I couldn’t be held by anybody.

Janelle: He held me anyway.

Kelly: Hmm.

Janelle: He saw every piece. Of my heartache, he held every tear. God is so very near and I think that’s what I couldn’t, I couldn’t have understood before. But I understand now and I think, you know, when you ask about verses the sustained me, I mentioned before the tears in a bottle, like he’s so near, he can count my tears.

Janelle: The other one was be still. Be still and know I am God. I am working all things like, and the whole idea, like what the enemy meant for evil or you know, like the [00:49:00] whole Romans 8 28, like I work all things for good. Like he took tragedy, he took trauma, he took medical awful, and he made it beautiful. Do I wish it would’ve gone different?

Janelle: Maybe. But I have to think like if we would’ve had that first baby, we wouldn’t have Judah. And I can’t imagine my life without Judah. And in raising him, I am a better follower of Christ, right? If we would’ve had those two in the middle, we wouldn’t have Evelyn. And she’s a gift that I can’t even begin to express.

Janelle: He wrote a beautiful story despite it all. And so when you hand the pen to him and you surrender. He will write it and he will hold you while he does it. And I think those are the things that have really sustained me. God is good, he is gentle, he is kind. If it’s not good, it’s not done. That’s just the reality.

Janelle: Like if it’s not beautiful, it’s not finished. And so to the, the weary [00:50:00] mom, to the grieving mom, to the, whatever the circumstance is, if it’s not beautiful, it’s not done because he makes everything beautiful in its time. Yeah.

Kelly: Even in the stories that don’t look beautiful, he can open our eyes to see his beauty and his glory in that really hard place.

Janelle: Yep. Yeah. And he’s faithful to do that. Like he doesn’t want us to not see him for who he is. He wants to be fully known by us and fully seen, and he wants glory out of our story. And as often as I can, try to give him the glory in our story and let people see his hand was on us.

Kelly: If you’re still breathing, God’s not done. And you will see his goodness in glory in your story. That’s what I love so much about how the Lord met me in some really hard places. He just kept telling me, Kelly, you’re gonna see my hand up close and personal.

Kelly: Yeah. And you’re gonna be very blessed. I’m with you. Even when you feel like you can’t do this, I am with you and I can do it. I will give you grace to help the moment you need it, so you don’t have to be afraid.

Janelle: [00:51:00] Yep. Exactly, exactly. His faithfulness is amazing. And you know your podcast is unshakable

Janelle: Hope. That’s what he gives you. Yeah. When all the sands are shifting and everything is changing, but Jesus, he stands there as the rock and the hope that you can anchor yourself to because he will make it good and beautiful and right. You just don’t know how. Right. We sometimes you don’t, like I got, I got answers.

Janelle: Have I got answers? Earth side, sometimes we won’t know until heaven side and in heaven side it won’t matter. Do you know what I mean? Like glory will be so beautiful. It won’t matter.

Kelly: Mm. Amen. Well, Janelle, thank you so much for joining us today. This was very encouraging and I will continue to pray for your family and I can’t wait to hear how the rest of it unfolds.

Janelle: Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be an adventure, just like the first part.