WHEN JESUS STEPPED INTO THE ROOM

What does an encounter with God look like? Sometimes it looks like a woman who doesn’t even believe in Him… holding her husband’s hand at the edge of a hospital bed, whispering, “God, if You’re real, show Yourself to me.”

Dr. Janie Unruh has devoted her life to public health, earning a PhD and graduate degrees in the field, along with a nursing background. But her story isn’t just about education. It’s about how Jesus found her in the one place she never expected: the moment she ran out of answers.

Janie says she was a troubled teenager, caught up in drugs, alcohol, and a fast life. At sixteen, after her parents divorced and her home life fractured, she made a decision that would shape her future. She got her own apartment, bought a car, begged to return to school, and finished two years in one. She changed her language, her friends, her habits. “I realized I had to grow up very, very fast,” she recalls.

But then came a different crossroads. Sitting alone, at sixteen, she became “an atheist.”

Her reasons felt airtight. First, she compared God to Santa Claus, another unseen figure people talked about as if He were real. Second, she watched churchgoers dress up in their “Sunday best,” then go home and speak harshly to their families. If that was Christianity, she wanted nothing to do with it. Third, she couldn’t reconcile a God of love with the idea of eternal torment. “That is a monster worse than Hitler,” she thought. And with those three strikes, she stopped thinking about God entirely.

For twelve years, Janie says, God wasn’t on her radar.

Then she met the man of her dreams. Their life was full of speed, motorcycles, adrenaline, and laughter, until a warning sign appeared: bleeding. Janie, with a nurse’s instincts, feared cancer. A doctor dismissed it. A year later, the diagnosis came: colon cancer. At first, they were told it was treatable. But soon, the truth landed hard. The cancer had metastasized. It was far worse than anyone thought.

Hospital visits replaced weekend adventures. Transfusions, chemotherapy, and failed options became their new normal. They moved up their wedding and, with only twenty-four hours’ notice, had a beautiful ceremony. Two days later, Janie watched the monitors and knew what they meant. The man she loved was slipping away.

She asked everyone to leave the room. Alone with him, she recounted everything they had tried. And then a story she’d once brushed off came rushing back, a testimony from a woman who had surrendered her life to God in the ICU and walked out the next day. Janie didn’t pray with confidence. She prayed with desperation.

“Well, I might as well try Jesus too.”

“God,” she whispered, “if You’re real, You’ve got to show Yourself to me… and please heal my husband.”

Janie says something happened inside her that she still can’t fully explain. She describes it as instant knowing: Jesus is real. The Bible is real. Not a theory. Not a feeling. A certainty.

To hear Dr. Janie Unruh share her full story in her own words, watch It Is Written Canada this month on CTV or online at iiw.ca, and find the episode entitled: “When Jesus Stepped into the Room” on the It Is Written Canada YouTube channel. Her testimony will strengthen your faith and introduce you to the Saviour who still meets people at the edge of their strength—with light, truth, and hope.