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What do you do when the bottom drops out and life breaks in ways you never imagined? Charlie and Jill LeBlanc have walked that road, and through their personal story of loss, they’ve discovered the sustaining power of God's presence. In this podcast, they offer heartfelt conversations, Scripture-based encouragement, and the kind of hope that only comes from experience. Whether you're grieving, struggling, or searching for peace in the middle of chaos, this space is for you.
Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining us again today on the Finding Hope podcast, getting through what You Never Asked For. We've been talking about understanding grief all month and we want to continue on that again today. But first we want to tell you about a brand new resource that we have.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah, we're really excited about this.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah, it's called the God of All Comfort and it's a USB that has some great materials in it and you have to plug it into your computer, your smart TV, you can even plug it into your, if you have a later model vehicle, you can plug it into the USB outlet there. So it's got, a video teaching on the God of all comfort. It's got a whole page full of scriptures about comfort. It's got the song, God of all comfort and the music video, the nature music video. And so it's just a really rich resource to help you, to help you understand grief better, to help you be comforted by the Lord.
Jill LeBlanc:And this just came out. So you can click the, link below to go there or you can go to charlieandjill dot com and you'll find it there too.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah.
Jill LeBlanc:So we want to also encourage you to connect with us on our email list because we can let you know first when new things come out and we've got a lot of new things that are be coming out this year. So we just would love to connect with you that way. And you can do that through our website or there's a link below that you can connect with us with your email address.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yes. And did you mention that it's downloadable as well?
Jill LeBlanc:No, I didn't.
Charlie LeBlanc:It's on our website.
Jill LeBlanc:Mhmm.
Charlie LeBlanc:And if you would rather just download it to your phone or to your computer, It's it's downloadable. There's a lot of PDFs and things like that in it, some MP3's and some MP4's which is the videos. So feel free to download it to your computer or to your smartphone. But again, on our website, it shows, you know, to buy the USB, we'll ship it out to you. No shipping charges, or you can, download it as well.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah. And it'll go straight into your device just like if you downloaded a song. So, yeah. So we just wanted to be sure and mention that, that, brand new resource we have for you.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. So why don't you start?
Jill LeBlanc:We just wanted continue talking about understanding grief. It's such a huge subject and there are so many things to cover and we've touched on things briefly the last few weeks and we're going to touch on some more things. So we we got to attend a funeral last weekend of a dear friend who we've known for over fifty years.
Charlie LeBlanc:Oh my gosh. Yeah. He was one of the pioneers.
Jill LeBlanc:She was.
Charlie LeBlanc:Well, yes. Sorry.
Jill LeBlanc:The one who passed. Her husband.
Charlie LeBlanc:Her husband who we were so deeply touched by him and his whole family's sharing at the funeral. And and it was just a very, very tender, difficult time for the entire family. I think you and I probably wept more in that funeral than we have in a lot of them in a while. But, yeah, it was tough.
Jill LeBlanc:It was very tough. And not only were we so sad for them because she, we believe she died way before she should have. I mean, she should not have gotten cancer. No one should.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. Was she 71, 72, something like that.
Jill LeBlanc:Maybe 74, But regardless.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. It was too young. She had all these two grandchildren. She has her own children in the prime of their life, having babies. They needed the grandmother, and and we're we're not happy with that.
Charlie LeBlanc:And and I appreciate Kent standing up and saying, hey. You know, cancer's of the devil, and we're gonna fight this thing. And it's not right that cancer's taken out a lot of our friends as well as our own son. Can you believe it? It was cancer that hit my 20 year old son.
Charlie LeBlanc:The doctors at the Mayo Clinic, they shook their heads too. They said they have never seen anything like this.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:And, it had already spread way beyond their control, Of course, we believe that God would be able to intervene, and he did in a lot of ways, and we're grateful to him for that. But in the end, Beau flew off to heaven to be with Jesus, and, and we're grateful that he is with the Lord.
Charlie LeBlanc:Sorry I got you off course with, uh, the thing.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah, well, that's all right. You know, this funeral that we attended last weekend was at the same church in the same room where we had Beau's service.
Charlie LeBlanc:That's right.
Jill LeBlanc:And that I think that's another reason why it was so tender for us because, you know, we were all of a sudden taken back-
Charlie LeBlanc:Mhmm.
Jill LeBlanc:Sixteen years before.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah.
Jill LeBlanc:And we were the family on the on the platform.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. It's tough.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah. It was tough.
Charlie LeBlanc:And, you know, our dear friend Kent, who who is our age, you know, and maybe a little older, but a musician, worship leader, has been in ministry all of his life. They stood for over two years believing in faith that their Carla would be healed, and she did have her ups and downs the same way Bo did where they thought she was healed.
Charlie LeBlanc:But my point in saying all this is that to see Kent grieving...
Jill LeBlanc:So broken.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. Grieving the way he was and and his kids as they shared. It did, like you said, brought back so many memories. And but I was I really appreciated Kent being so transparent at the funeral. He was not embarrassed to break down into tears in front of all of us, and we had hundreds there. Hundreds were there. And and he's this man of God, this worship leader like we are, and and, you know, everyone well respected around the world, And yet I appreciate his vulnerability to be sincere with the Lord and transparent with us and with the Lord to say this hurts.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah. And he wrote us about well, a few days before we were there, at the funeral, and he said just out of the blue, he said, now I understand why it took you over ten years to write your book about Beau. And he insinuated, he just didn't, he didn't understand. He didn't understand why ten years later, why aren't we just moving on?
Jill LeBlanc:You know, why aren't we just pressing ahead? Because it just, it's so impacting when you lose someone that you're really, really close to. And, and so as he was reading our book and experiencing what he was experiencing now, he gets it.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah, he finally gets it.
Jill LeBlanc:But most people that haven't experienced that directly, they they can't get it. They they can't fully understand.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. And and that's that's the the freedom and the grace that we give to everyone that, you know, you can't really understand this, the depth of it that we have unless you've been through it. We were amazed at some people that did come up to us with tears in their eyes and wept with us that had not necessarily, you know, experienced a traumatic loss in their own life. And we know many of those, as well as I'm going give a shout out to Tonja, our dear assistant, that helps us with our ministry. And, and, you know, she helps us with all of this.
Charlie LeBlanc:But she also really understands.
Jill LeBlanc:She has learned.
Charlie LeBlanc:And, yeah, she has learned and and she's very compassionate. And sometimes when we get an email, I'll ask her to to answer it because she understands. And so there is a way to learn and understand the pain and how hard it is. And and I think that's part of our desire is to teach-
Jill LeBlanc:Part of our calling.
Charlie LeBlanc:And help people to to understand so that they can be a better help to their friends and and understand grief, which is what we're dealing with.
Jill LeBlanc:And we have a chapter in our book called Learning Compassion. And that's what it's all about. Just learning how to be compassionate, learning how to respond when something happens in a Godly way.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. Exactly. And you said it, you know, compassion is really the heartbeat of this whole thing.
Jill LeBlanc:Mhmm.
Charlie LeBlanc:Because, you know, the Bible says to weep with those who weep, you know? And and then he said, there's faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love. And Jesus went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, but he did it through compassion. He had compassion on hurting people, and, and that is the foundation.
Charlie LeBlanc:It says, bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ, which I think the law of Christ is love based on everything I've I've, I've researched. And so, you know, you we need to, as a body of Christ, come together and surround those who are hurting. Surround those who have had a loss. You know, what the Scripture says to help widows, help the poor, help our orphans.
Jill LeBlanc:That's true religion is helping widows. And I just want to stop there for a second.
Charlie LeBlanc:Go for it. I mean, no. I mean, as far as, and orphans, it says, but we we know a whole lot more widows than we do orphans. Now, you know, we we we support different orphanages around the world. And, you know, we know a few orphans but aren't in relationship. I mean, I'm an orphan, kind of. My parents are both gone.
Charlie LeBlanc:But I have adopted you as well as Jesus.
Jill LeBlanc:And you're an orphan. But the Bible says true religion is to support widows in their distress.
Charlie LeBlanc:Wow. Yeah.
Jill LeBlanc:That's pretty heavy, isn't it?
Charlie LeBlanc:It really is. And because we're not doing that.
Jill LeBlanc:No.
Charlie LeBlanc:We're not doing it enough.
Jill LeBlanc:Mm-mm.
Charlie LeBlanc:I mean, we see this all the time where someone loses their husband, in particular losing a husband, and all of a sudden their friends disappear. The friends that used to hang out as two couples disappear. And we talk about this on this broadcast quite a bit. But, you know, all of a sudden, they're alone. And if they don't have family in town, they're really alone.
Jill LeBlanc:Right.
Charlie LeBlanc:We have a dear sister in California that live lived in California that lost her husband, and she said it was the most dreadful thing to come home after work every day to an empty house. She just wanted to be at work with around people, human beings. But that was even hard because none of them really understood-
Jill LeBlanc:Right.
Charlie LeBlanc:-what the pain but she said the hardest thing was weekends. She goes, I just I I can't even imagine. I really can't. We were just with our friend in Saint Louis, and we were at her house.
Charlie LeBlanc:We stayed at her house. She she lost Larry, our best friend, just a little over almost two years ago. And I I told her we we were out on the deck one morning having coffee, Jill and I and her, and and I told her, I said, Terry, I said, I I don't know how you're doing this. I said, everywhere you turn, there's footprints of Larry everywhere, things that he did in this house, you know, things that he fixed and and his the hot tub that he loved to get in and and so on. And, you know, and she just, you know, she just said, yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:It it's a hard it's a hard road, and we don't really grasp how hard it is for widows.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah. Right.
Charlie LeBlanc:And and and so, therefore, we as the body of Christ need to figure out ways that we can continue to be in their lives, whether it's through blessing them with something on a monthly basis, food, just a little extra. And and, you know, so many widows are challenged financially as well.
Charlie LeBlanc:Thank God for the few that the husbands left them life insurance and so forth. But but most of them, along with the grief, are challenged with financial difficulties because they just they've gotta handle everything now. You know, we have two two or at least two dear widow friends that I mean, they literally just had to pick up the pieces and figure out how to get finances into their life. So there's so many areas. And I know the church steps in at the beginning.
Charlie LeBlanc:Thank God for good pastors and so forth. But we step in and we bless them and we help them. But then it disappears. And and I just think that, you know, from that point on, all it is, is advice. You need to sell this. You need to do this. You need to move here. You need to change this. You need to do that.
Charlie LeBlanc:You know, all this kind of stuff. And, you know, thank God one widow friend of ours has a financial advisor that is doing it pro bono free through the church. Mhmm. That's huge.
Charlie LeBlanc:Anyways, so this is a big subject.
Jill LeBlanc:And this is why we're talking about this, because things get overlooked and, you know, widows get overlooked, but just this whole subject gets overlooked.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah.
Jill LeBlanc:And we want to help people be better examples of Jesus' hands and Jesus' mouth and his heart. And and it just needs to be talked about.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. I mean, Jesus walked around, and he saw hurting people. And I've said this before. He he's he's he's close to the brokenhearted, the Bible says. And I've said this before, that he never rebuked someone with a broken heart.
Charlie LeBlanc:And I think that needs to be said over and over again because so often, like you said in our most recent newsletter, you said that, you know, people think you should get over this quicker. You know? And I told you even yesterday, was playing the piano a little bit and worshiping, and I looked up at a picture that we have above above the piano. And, you know, it was like he was looking at me smiling, which I praise the Lord for, that he's in heaven and that he's delighted in in us worshiping the Lord. And yet it's still it's still that that hurt, that pain of of missing him and of the loss.
Charlie LeBlanc:So we we talk about this stuff a lot. Sometimes we're having coffee in the morning and prayer time. And we just talk about just how hard it is to get through. Yeah. And you don't really get through...
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah, you never get through to the other side. You just get continue to get through these difficult times.
Jill LeBlanc:You just learn how to move forward. Yeah. Yeah. And God is so good. His grace is sufficient. His love, his mercies. You know, we we we live in that. We live in his grace. There's no other way, you know, to live. And and yet, you know, it's still it's still hard. And so I just I guess we just really need, we want to encourage you to be aware of your friends who have had losses now. You know, you may see them at church with their hands lifted and think they're all well, they're all good now.
Charlie LeBlanc:You know, we even had some people have the audacity to come up to us and say, I think I can tell you're about 80% through this.
Jill LeBlanc:That was early on. Stuff like that. You know, I'm like, you don't know anything. You don't know a doggone thing about how I'm feeling when I'm home alone. You know, in fact, you you read a blog once about that that someone expressed how, you know, they people think they're fine, but they don't know what it's like when they get home alone. So, yeah, it's just it's just the whole journey of understanding grief, understanding what people are going through. Even if you don't fully understand, you know, just realize that it's real. And that it's something that you as a loving believer need to we as loving believers need to be more sensitive to people who have been through losses.
Jill LeBlanc:I I would like to read a little portion that we have in our book, and it's a story of a woman who experienced loss on a few levels. And, it's from the the it's from the chapter called just move on because that is something that people expect after a little while.
Charlie LeBlanc:Right.
Jill LeBlanc:You experienced loss, you know, you're allowed maybe a few weeks to grieve.
Charlie LeBlanc:Right. Or maybe a month, maybe two months.
Jill LeBlanc:But after that, they just expect you to kind of get back to normal, get back to the way you used to be.
Charlie LeBlanc:Right. We had that in our life.
Jill LeBlanc:It doesn't go that way. So the people we worked with, in ministry, we heard later that they were talking behind our backs saying, Charlie and Jill really should be over this by now. Your son's in heaven. Praise the lord. And they're you know, they should be rejoicing. He's not suffering anyway. Yeah. And we're so glad he's not suffering anymore. Oh my gosh. You know? Because he really did suffer at the end.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. Oh my lord.
Jill LeBlanc:Oh my gosh.
Charlie LeBlanc:I'm so glad he's with Jesus.
Jill LeBlanc:So he is he's awesome. He is so awesome now. does In the presence of God.
Charlie LeBlanc:And that does bring a lot of so comfort as the Scripture says, grieve not as those who have no hope.
Jill LeBlanc:Right.
Charlie LeBlanc:You know, we, we do have hope. So we don't grieve like an unbeliever.
Jill LeBlanc:And we'll be together again.
Charlie LeBlanc:Right.
Jill LeBlanc:It's a temporary separation, but you're still left with the memories of his suffering, and you're left with the fact that he died in your home, in our home, and we just miss the heck out of him.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. And how many years has it been?
Jill LeBlanc:Sixteen. It's been over 16 years.
Charlie LeBlanc:Sixteen, sixteen years, and here, we're still you know, we still get this this pain, these tears, and these things that well up. And and that's okay. It's it's it's just part of the journey, and and we have become, in a sense, okay with understanding where things are at and what we have to live with. But I just think it's healthy for us to communicate this. You know, Paul the apostle even said, I think it's good for you to let you know what I've been through.
Charlie LeBlanc:And he lists all the difficulties that he had been through. When I saw that, I thought, okay, I'm not weird by telling people we've been through. And I'm not looking I'm not saying it for sympathy. And I don't think he was either. It wasn't for sympathy that we share these things. It's so that we can educate.
Jill LeBlanc:Exactly.
Charlie LeBlanc:Educate the body of Christ, educate people about what this is like so we can all be better helpers
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:To people who have been through difficult times.
Jill LeBlanc:And it helps those that are walking through it know that they're not going crazy.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yes.
Jill LeBlanc:Because this is it's common. People that are walking through grief from loss, it's common to just get you know, you just cry so much or you get this heaviness or this paralysis where you just can't think straight or it's it's common.
Charlie LeBlanc:Well, recently, and I think we mentioned this before, but we had a a couple that lost their daughter. And and, and we were they were neighbors of ours years ago, thirty, forty years ago. And and, and they text us and said that their other daughter, their surviving daughter, they only had two daughters, was so embittered and so hurt. And she finally read a portion of your book, our book, and she said, wow. When I saw that Jill was angry, that she was transparent enough to put that in the book that she was so angry with God at first, she goes, it set me free.
Charlie LeBlanc:Because I saw that I know Jill's a Godly woman. I know she's in ministry. And to know that she even had that difficulty, that level of difficulty in her life helped helped that young girl to say, you know, I'm okay, and God still loves me. And I can fill that relationship with God even while I'm in this pain.
Jill LeBlanc:And, you know, and I just wanna add to that, and I I talk about this in the book, that all that time that I dealt with all that anger towards the Lord, he still held me close. And carried he carried me when I couldn't walk, you know, so to speak, when I was so crippled in my heart.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah.
Jill LeBlanc:He held me and carried me and surrounded me with his love. And that's what he does. He he is a big God. And he doesn't operate on our standards. So he understands.
Charlie LeBlanc:He does. He's touched with the feelings of our infirmities, it says.
Jill LeBlanc:And we need to try to understand better.
Charlie LeBlanc:Right. I love that line in Stephen Curtis Chapman's song. You just kinda said it almost. He'll carry us when we can't carry on.
Jill LeBlanc:Yes.
Charlie LeBlanc:That's beautiful.
Jill LeBlanc:That's what he does.
Charlie LeBlanc:That beautiful line.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah. Let me read this. This was a, Cherry, our daughter, had actually come across this TED Talk from this woman. And it's really powerful and poignant.
Charlie LeBlanc:A little bit long, but but-
Jill LeBlanc:It'll just take a minute. 2014 was a big year for me. It went like this. October 3, I lost my second pregnancy. And then October 8, my dad died of cancer. And then November 25th, my husband Aaron died after three years with brain cancer. Now since 2014 I will tell you that I have remarried a very handsome man named Matthew. We have four children in our blended family, and by any measure, life now is really, really good.
Charlie LeBlanc:Wow.
Jill LeBlanc:But I have not moved on. I haven't moved on, and I hate that phrase so much, and I understand why other people do. Because what it says is that Aaron's life and death and love are just moments that I can leave behind me and that I probably should. And when I talk about Aaron, I slip so easily into the present tense and I always thought that made me weird. And then I noticed that everybody does it. And it's not because we're forgetful or in denial, but it's because the people we love who we've lost are still so present in us.
Charlie LeBlanc:Wow.
Jill LeBlanc:These are the experiences that mark us and make us just as much as the joyful ones and just as permanently long after you get your last sympathy card or last hot dish. We don't look at the people around us experiencing life's joys and wonders and tell them to move on, do we? We don't send a card like, congratulations on your beautiful baby. And then five years later think like, Another birthday party? Get over it.
Jill LeBlanc:But grief is kind of one of those things like falling in love or having a baby where you don't get it until you get it or until you do it. And once you do it, once it's your love or your baby, once it's your grief and your front row at the funeral, you get it. You understand that what you're experiencing is not a moment in time, It's not a bone that will mend but that will reset. But what you've been touched by is something chronic, something incurable. It's not fatal, but sometimes it feels like it could be.
Jill LeBlanc:And if we can't prevent it in one another, what can we do? We need each other to remember, to help each other remember that grief is this multitasking emotion that you can and will be sad and happy. You'll be grieving and able to love in the same year or week or the same breath. We need to remember that a grieving person is going to laugh again and smile again. If they're lucky, they'll even find love again.
Jill LeBlanc:But yes, absolutely. They're going to move forward. But that doesn't mean that they've moved on.
Charlie LeBlanc:Wow. That's great.
Jill LeBlanc:Yes.
Charlie LeBlanc:I broke down many times, at least once when you were reading that, but I never read it so many times. It's been in our book. You know, one thing that jumped out at me when you just read it, which it hadn't jumped out at me before was the fact that we rejoice when we have a child born, and we celebrate every year their birth birth days every year.
Jill LeBlanc:Mhmm.
Charlie LeBlanc:And yet, a child dies.
Jill LeBlanc:Mhmm.
Charlie LeBlanc:Birth and then there's death. A child dies, and we are some in some camps condemned for remembering like we remember a child when he's born, but we're condemned for remembering a child or a person when they die, as you and I do every year on the memorial on the day of Bo's death, we get together with our daughters, and we we go out to dinner together, and and we remember. And it's not always tears and cries. Sometimes it's laughter, remembering the good things, the fun things about Beau, but there's nothing wrong with that.
Jill LeBlanc:Absolutely.
Charlie LeBlanc:It just hit me even clearer. If we celebrate birth, why don't we celebrate or at least memorialize and remember death? And we do that with Veterans Day. We do that with so many other special days of that nature. In fact, we just saw today that there is a national
Jill LeBlanc:Grief Awareness Day.
Charlie LeBlanc:Grief Awareness Day on August 30, I think, every year. We thought, well, yeah. Why not? You know, there's all these other celebrations of certain special days.
Charlie LeBlanc:But grief and the pain of a loss is so huge and it's hidden. It it everybody wants to cover that part of it up. Everybody wants to hide that, you know? You know? Okay. They're they're they're gone. You know, that's fine. Now move on. You know? They just wanna hide that. But, no, it's it's an awareness that is with the bereaved, and they're embarrassed to talk about it. They're embarrassed to say that they still hurt, that they still miss because it's not accepted. In general public.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah. And there are even some, you know, people in ministry, they say it's wrong.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. They say it's wrong to grieve, which is totally absurd.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:It's not biblical at all.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah. The Bible doesn't say don't grieve. It just says don't grieve like people in the world that have no hope. And so we can grieve, but we don't we but we can grieve with hope.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah.
Jill LeBlanc:We will see them again.
Charlie LeBlanc:And we can grieve with Jesus. Like you said, he carried you when you couldn't carry on. He he held you tight. He he brought you through as as he did me.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:Well, listen. We we sure love you guys, and we should do appreciate you listening to the podcast. And we wanna remind you of our book, When Loss Comes Close to Home. It's a very, very powerful book.
Charlie LeBlanc:In fact, I think I have a little a little testimony here that I I wanna read. She said, I just finished reading your book in only 24 hours. She says, I can't thank you enough for writing it. Thank you for letting me in on your grief. I've tried to understand what you've been through.
Charlie LeBlanc:This is a person who's been a friend of ours for a while. And she said, I've tried to understand what you've been through and how you've managed to get through this difficult time. Reading your advice to those who know and are close to a person who has suffered a loss, I found myself in those empty phrases they addressed to me as well. So anyway, she was just saying how much the book helped her. And, and we've seen her since and talked to her in person and she just said, you know, it just blessed her so much.
Charlie LeBlanc:And we get countless, countless testimonies like this of people that have read our- We were just in England and in Holland or Netherlands doing big conferences, speaking in churches, singing and leading worship. We get many, many people come up to us and say, Thank you for your book, it's helped me so much. So remember the book, go on our website, charlieandjill.com, and don't forget our new USB, The God of All Comfort. Beautiful, lots of really beautiful things in there that we know will bless you a lot.
Jill LeBlanc:That's right.
Charlie LeBlanc:Amen. So until next time, we will thank you for joining us and we will, uh...
Jill LeBlanc:Hope to see you then!
Charlie LeBlanc:There you go! Thank you! Love you all, bye bye now!