Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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.
Welcome to the Finding Hope podcast, Getting Through What You Never Asked For. We're Charlie and Jill LeBlanc, and we're so glad you've joined us again today. We have some things to share with you that we believe will be a blessing. Yeah, you know, today, if speaking of getting through what you never asked for, you know, there's a lot of people that suffer grief in different ways. And we're going to look at the grief that no one sees.
And it's such a heartbreaking but but truth. And that is when when you suffer loss, there are a lot of people around you that are grieving desperately, but they're not seen like you are. And I know that when we lost our son, I was so devastated and so broken and and in a way like I was selfish. But that's
But that's okay. That's normal. In other words, I felt this whole thing's happened to me and I didn't even see what was going on around me. And I mean, my son's best friends were devastated. Obviously my son's daughter, sisters were devastated, which we, knew that of course, but cousins, aunts, uncles, my mom and dad, you know, my, my brothers and sisters, everyone was.
devastated. And again, I was hurting so bad that I couldn't see past my own pain at first. And it took me a while and then I began to notice it and I thought, Oh gosh, how selfish have I been? You know, one of his best friends, you know, he was just crying every day, you know, missing Bo, Kyle, you know, and others and Tony. so yeah.
So we're gonna talk about the grief that no one sees and that falls into that category, sorry. The sorrow and the pain, it's very deep for everyone around us. I think it's good for us who have been through difficulties to be aware of how others hurt too. Right. Yeah. Some of the deepest grief happens in silence.
you just don't even realize, like he was saying, there were so many in our situation who were on the periphery and like people would come up to our daughters and ask, are your parents? But they wouldn't acknowledge our daughter's pain and ask about them, how are they doing? And there's a lot of people that...
that are that way, they're there, they're hurting, they're there to support the ones that are in the central picture, know, the parents, family, and, you know, or that kind of thing. But there are so many that are, they're bleeding and no one knows. Yeah. Yeah. And we, you know, we obviously were very aware of our children.
and how much they were hurting. In fact, we've talked a lot about the fact of how we were all kind of uncomfortable and didn't know whether we should bring it up because we didn't want to cause each other to go into mourning or grief. But we found out later that it was healthy to talk about our son and their brother. And it really helped to bind us more together to just say, hey, this is the elephant in the room. We need to talk about it, you know.
We recently visited a dear friend of ours who just lost his, his wife. And, you know, again, it's the elephant in the room. We're not just going to go, how's your grandkids? how's this? how's this? How's your job? no. You know, how, how, how are you doing? You know, we miss your wife so much. We miss her. She was a dear friend of ours. You know, we can't imagine every day. And then he opened up and said, yeah, every morning when I have my coffee, she's not there. She made coffee for me every morning.
You know, things like this. So now this, you know, this was just a very important thing to know that people, you know, you just like you, like, you know, if you've had a loss, you need people to be comfortable with you, to be able to talk about your loss. And that, that is so important for us. And, know, as Jill and I's mandate, part of our mandate is not only to comfort others with the same comfort that we've received from the Lord, but part of our mandate is also to train and teach.
the body of Christ, how important it is for them to be better comforters. As Job said, miserable comforters are you all, or you are to these three friends of his. You know, we're trying to teach the body of Christ in general as the Lord gives us opportunity to be a better comforter. And I think that's so important. But you know, back to our daughters, you know, we knew they were hurting.
And we did our best to love on them, but we had no idea until we started seeing some posts on Facebook, the depth of their pain and how much they articulated it. Yeah, they would bleed on Facebook. Yeah. I think because it's you, you feel like no one else. It kind of gives you a safe space to express yourself, but really you're opening yourself up to for everyone to see. lot. Yeah.
You telling what people are going to say. Yeah, I don't. hate to even say this, but it's it's no relevance. But but we were we're trying to rehome a German shepherd of my daughters because she can't she can't have it anymore. And and and Joe put out a post on on this social media neighborhood social media post next door and said.
You told her about the need, you know, that we had to rehome. And one lady said, well, and I, you know, I made the ad very, very juicy and, I would just put all the good qualities about how sweet he is and everything. And, know, just went on about, you know, how would he be such a great companion for a single person and or an elderly couple, you know, all this went on and just.
And I was honest, you know, he has few issues. Yeah. anyway, this lady, the first person that responded to it said, why would you get rid of a dog that showed you so much unconditional love? Yeah. I'm like, it's like it turned on her. I made him seem so angelic, know, saint like. Yeah. And that's the kind of thing that happens when you go on social and.
Yeah, and so, you know, the girls were brave to go and share their hearts and we didn't look at all their comments, you know, so God knows some may say, it's okay, it's in heaven, you know, or it's okay, you'll get over this eventually, you know, who knows what they may have said. And then, you know, we don't want to prejudge people because they may have been very mature and very compassionate with our daughters. but yeah, Jill, read, I know we've got a couple of these that,
paraphrases of some of the things that they wrote. Yeah. Our daughter, Camille wrote on one of Bo's birthdays. I don't know which one it was, but his 24th birthday was shortly after he passed away. And she said, happy birthday, sweet baby bro. Loving you, missing your handsome face, your hugs, your humor, your style, your spirit.
your presence and your voice. And she also wrote, your beautiful life, my dear brother, was a blessing, a gift full of inexhaustible passion and joy. The memories of you will forever be my treasure. And then years later, she wrote, where there is deep grief, there is great love. Yeah, beautiful statement.
You know, as you were sharing that, Jill, my heart was just breaking for some good friends of ours, one who just lost his son a little over a year ago and another one who just lost their daughter. And my gosh, you know, my heart almost broke down here in tears because we know how the pain that they're having and also their siblings. I mean, there are other children are having with with the loss of their.
their sister and their brother. So, man, you've gone through something like this, we want you to know we love you, we're praying for you, and we understand, and we're standing with you, even through this podcast and in any other way that we can. So yeah, that line where there is deep grief, there is great love. It's something we've heard in a lot of different ways and different contexts.
But, know, some people feel like grief is wrong and, know, oh, don't grieve, you know, like others grieve, don't grieve like the world grieves, you know, because we have Jesus and we have eternal life, you know, don't grieve, don't grieve, don't grieve, afraid of grief. Well, grief equals love. If you loved, you will mourn for your loved one. And that's part of normal, healthy, spirit filled.
Godly Christianity is to mourn your loved ones and to grieve them. Mourn and grieve, the little bit I've studied it are the same word, because it says weep with those who weep. It means mourn those who mourn, grieve with those who grieve. yeah, you mourn deeply because you loved.
Deeply and that's the bottom line, you know So it's okay for you to mourn and to grieve over the loss of your loved one. That's right. It's right and it's so right. It's it's just So right that you do there's nothing to be ashamed of ever. Yes Something else that Camille wrote this was on Bo's 34th birthday. So this was ten years later. Yeah, she wrote
The older I get, the more I'm reckoning with the realization that the beauty and loss in this life will forever be beyond my ability to comprehend, at least on this side of heaven. And so, that's wisdom that grief often teaches. Some things are never fully explained. And we just have to roll with it. I remember early on,
saying to a minister friend of ours, I mean, this was very early on, probably within the first four or five months, we were writing back from having dinner with this couple and I remember sitting in the backseat saying, I just cannot move forward unless I understand what the heck happened. What happened that our son, was allowed to die, you know, and and and, know, he was just real humble and he said, well, some things we just won't know till we get to heaven. And I said, no, I need to know. And they were so sweet. And his wife was just, you know, just always tearing up because she her heart was so broken for us. But, know, we we there's just some things we.
can't explain. I've gotten to where I accept that now. I couldn't early on, but now I know it. the Bible is very clear about that. There's a scripture in the Old Testament that says that the secret things belong to the Lord. And the things that are revealed are for us. And that's one thing that hasn't been revealed yet. I'll find out in heaven. And 1 Corinthians 13, about the whole love chapter, it also says that, you know,
that there are some things we can't understand that we see in darkness. We see through a glass darkly and then we'll see face to face. And it talks about things that you can't really fully understand always on this side. And like you said, Jill, think it is maturity. We saw that in one of our daughter's posts here that
It's maturity to just go ahead and say, you know what? I can't figure it out. And to be perfectly honest with you, all of Christianity, all of God has a lot of mystery and a lot of unknowns. I mean, yes, we praise God for the Bible and all that it reveals and all the understanding that we get and all the wisdom that we get. And we know that Jesus has become unto us wisdom, righteousness and sanctification.
And we know that we have the mind of Christ so we can know all things, these kinds of things. But there are still tons that theologians and the most spiritual men would say, hey, we got so much, the deeper we get, the more we don't know, the more we can't understand. And I think these guys that went up.
to and went around the moon recently. I think they're probably saying the same thing to say, wow, we got to the moon, but it just showed us how much we don't know about the universe. And the more we see about stars and planets and universes, the more we realize that there's a big God out there that we can't fully understand. And I don't want to say that as a cowpout because
There are things we do understand and we do need to stand on what we understand. And you know, like for instance, and I know this is a touchy subject for some of you and we love you and you know, everyone needs to walk in the belief system that they've grown up with and whatever brings you comfort, we're not in any way gonna challenge you or hurt you in any way, but you know.
We personally believe that God did not take our son. We personally believe that that God is a God of love and that he wanted our son to live. you say, well, Charlie, if he wanted your son to live, then why didn't he live? God can do anything. Well, that's another whole big theological thing that we could debate and discuss. But just just one simple scripture that Jesus could do no mighty works in his own hometown because of their unbelief. So Jesus
was limited, God desires for all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. That's his desire, that's his will. His will is for all men to be saved, but not all men are being saved. So there's a lot of things and you can look throughout the entire Bible where God's will was something, but men turned against his will and therefore did not walk in his blessings. So I don't understand all this stuff about, you know, why boat it and...
didn't get healed and all these different things. I mean, these are very, very deep, difficult subjects that we've wrestled with for years until we came to this place where we said, you know what, we're gonna live in what we do know. We're not gonna live bound up in what we don't know. And the only way to move forward in life is to find truth that you can hang on to.
that you do understand and to put the things you don't understand on a shelf with God and trust that when you get to heaven, if you're even interested in the answers, they'll be there very clearly. You will know all things when you get to heaven. But, again, we will, we will not know all things now. That's right. So sorry to go into all that so deeply so quickly, but you know, I think it's the way the Lord led us here for a moment. Yeah.
for sure. Amen. So you just need to be comfortable with that. And you say, well, Charlie, I'm not comfortable. And Joe would have said the same thing. I want to know. And you even have someone tell you said, Joe, you need to know you need to figure this out. You need to go to God and get an answer on this. And and, know, we never could get complete answers as to what happened and why. I mean, we have hunches, we have thoughts. But, know, at this point,
It's we just leave these secret things to the Lord. We leave these things to Him. If He wants to reveal them to us and we know, you know, fine. Otherwise, you know what? We leave it to Him and we're OK with that. We're OK with moving forward in life with mysteries that we can't solve. Because, like I say, we all live in a big, big mystery of God and the universe and and creation. And so it's there's a lot to not understand.
Anyway, I'll get off of this. Sorry. You were going to forgive me for how much I got into it. But when I went back into it, is when you said, I'm OK, so anyway. So one thing we've we've discovered through the years is how much the general populace minimizes certain losses. author who lost her brother wrote something really profound.
She said, when an adult loses a sibling, society often fails to recognize the depth of that loss. And think about that. I think about our daughters losing their brother. And like we said earlier, how people would go to them and ask how we were, but they wouldn't acknowledge their loss. And that is pretty common.
People say things like, well, at least it wasn't your child, like to the sibling, at least it wasn't your child, it was your brother. But you lived in different states, so you probably weren't that close. Or how are your parents, like what we said? They're all well-meaning words, but they're very painful words.
Because they imply that your grief matters less than your parents' grief or someone else who is generally perceived as a more costly loss. That your grief matters less because people are trying to minimize the depth of your loss. And we did a podcast with a good friend of ours, Nancy Lukoff.
just recently and you can go back and find it. I don't know the title of it, but put in Charlie and Jill LeBlanc and Nancy. I think it had to do with siblings. And you can find that. Tondra probably put it in the notes. yeah, and you know, here she was. This was her only sister. They were like twins. They grew up together. They were the best and best of friends. They're both amazingly creative people, beautiful people.
smart, you know, all kinds of degrees. And she lost her sister and her heart was devastated and still is to this day. She misses her best friend. She misses her sister. It'll be seven years this. it's been six and a half years now. Right. And we were honored to get to do a podcast with her because to help us all see just how important it is.
to recognize the other losses, not just her mom and dad losing a daughter, but her losing- Well, they were already deceased. They were, okay, but yeah, but her losing her best friend, so it was just horrible. So someone else's heartbreak does not become smaller because another loss seems larger to us. It's like...
It was like our daughters, you know, it's a larger loss maybe for us to have, it may seem to lose a child, but it was a large loss for our daughters to lose their brothers. And, you know, it was hard for them. And to recognize that as important. And we have a dear friend of ours who lost a father-in-law and she seemed invisible to people.
Her father-in-law was the pastor of a church. She was married to the pastor's son. And of course, when his loss was kind of sudden, he was in the hospital for maybe a week before he passed, and no one thought it was gonna go that way. So was like a sudden loss. so she's devastated. She really loved her father-in-law.
And yet people at church, they would never try to console her or ask anything about her. They would say, how's your husband? How's your mother-in-law? And no one would ever recognize her grief. But she was in deep mourning. But we mustn't rank grief as being
horrible for one and tolerable for another. That is not our judgment to be had. That is every individual has their own journey and we must honor them and acknowledge theirs and let them lead the way. You can ask,
If you have a time with them, not just in passing, like when you're passing each other, leaving or coming, but if you have time with a person, can inquire how are they and then let them. You can follow their lead. If they're doing pretty good and you can say, this was really hard on the family. I'm doing pretty good though, whatever their response would be.
or the response might be, yeah, this is really hard on the family and my gosh, I am just brokenhearted. And so then you know how to respond to them according to what they share with you. But we cannot give a predisposed comprehension of what they're walking through. It's because of the relationship. I'm thinking about a dear friend of ours whose grandson was murdered.
And we just happened to be in their area and said, we're coming over. And we just happened to love on them and meet and be able to weep with them. But they were devastated. And, we've got four grandchildren now. If one of them died. It would break, break us.
I feel like almost as bad as every loss in Bo losing our own son. mean, we're so close to these four little boys. I mean, but what's weird, and again, that's what we're trying to look at today. It's what's weird is when Bo died, I didn't think about my mom and dad as hurting as bad as I was. Yeah, they had 16 other grandchildren. nonetheless,
they were devastated. They were devastated for losing their grandson and devastated for how we were doing as well. But it's a terrible loss to lose a grandchild. And I didn't even recognize that until I started having grandkids and started putting myself in that position. I'm like, my gosh, I don't think, you know, that would be as hard to get through as anything.
And I remember our daughter saying, we got together on the first anniversary of Bo's passing. And she was pregnant with her first child when Bo died. But by the time the first anniversary came around, she was a mother then. She had her own child. And I remember her sharing with me that evening just how hard it was on her
to think of losing her baby. And she said, you've lost your baby and I cannot even begin to comprehend what you walked through. And they don't until they are in that same position. that gives a person another level of understanding once they walk through a similar...
situation now they are in a situation where they could be in my situation you know because of relationship right but yeah and we have another dear friend who lost his grandson that he helped raise as well for a while and then and his grandson committed suicide after they had poured their life into him
And what a devastation. And again, it's weird. Even for me, when I first heard that, my heart broke for him. But at the same time, I did what we're preaching against right now. I did, I thought, well, it wasn't his son, it was his grandson. But how ridiculous. it was a step-grandson. True, yeah. So he didn't even...
know that child as a little guy. but then they upraise him for many, many years and he became like a son to them. then he committed suicide. so, again, I couldn't comprehend what kind of pain that is. But as I look at my grandsons, regardless of whether step grandsons or not, I love them like my own children. And it would it would devastate me. So we're all guilty.
of this situation where we don't see some losses as bad as others. And you know, there's a list here that we wrote and we, I think we have a lot of them in our book as well. It says there's so many life altering losses people carry that sometimes we make a little less, more light of them. Like for instance, a miscarriage. They're so common. Yeah, they're so common. And so, you know, they,
you had a miscarriage. we're sorry. You know, but we don't realize to them it could have been they've been working, trying back, you know, really seeking God, praying, praying, praying. They get they get pregnant. They're the happiest people in the world. They may even find out the gender and then they have a miscarriage. and their their lives are shattered. But people around them are like, OK, it was a miscarriage. Well, you can have another baby, you know.
It we don't realize the grief that people experience and even them, they may have felt, well, I know my friend lost his son at 14 years old, so I better not say how I'm feeling bad about this miscarriage because I didn't even get to see this, you know, compared to them. So it was a lot of mind games and a lot of weird stuff that goes on. It's complicated.
Yeah, it's very is and stillbirth. You know, we have a niece that has I mean, she carried it nine months, had the baby and it was dead. And we've heard that many, many times now. And the devastation that she went through and my brother and sister-in-law. my God. The grandparents. my gosh. I mean, they they held the baby. They were there. And it just is terrible.
And then we talked about suicide already or someone who has an overdose, murders. We talked about that. We said this friend of ours, their grandson was murdered and to fight the anger. And I think they know obviously they caught the person who did it and he's in jail. And, you know, to get over that, to forgive them, to walk in love toward them with the God kind of love that that's so hard.
And so, you know, a loss that we don't talk about a lot and we've mentioned it on our podcast is the grief of having a wayward son or a daughter, you know. We hold a lot of that in and we don't realize that when, sometimes when I've mentioned about the loss of Bo to some people, they have said,
You know, I haven't experienced what you've experienced, but we have a child that has gone astray and we don't even get to hardly speak with them. And, you know, I know I don't mean to compare it because you lost it, but I feel like I've lost my child. You know, I don't even get to talk to them. They won't even talk to me. We've got a good friend right now that that his son won't even talk to him at all. And that's a major form.
of grief and pain and it breaks my heart. One statement we read was a chronic estrangement as long-term family rifts or disconnections. And we run into that all the time where we were talking with people and they say, no, I don't talk to my brother. We don't talk. Why not? You need to talk to him. I try. I reach out. I love on him. I do everything I know to do.
He will not talk to me. He has cut me off. Why? For whatever reason, these reasons are just as complicated as why did we lose Bo? Some of these reasons and dissensions within rifts within families are so deep rooted and so confusing. And what's heartbreaking is sometimes after there's a loss in a family, it happens. my goodness, I've heard, I mean,
I've heard families that were so tight and close when mom and dad were alive, when mom and dad died, and then maybe there was a little bit of an inheritance that needed to be split properly and so on and so forth. And all of a sudden, all the siblings are now fighting at each other because they don't feel like things were separated fairly of mom and dads and
you mean dad left you that or mom left you that? so he, she loved you more than me. my goodness. I just, I'm glad when my, when my mom and dad died, they didn't have much. I'm kind of glad because we have, I have five brothers and sisters and we were all sitting in their house. The house was going to have to be sold and we, and my oldest brother looked at me and he goes, well, I just thank God that we're staying really tight and close together.
As a family, he said, because I know a lot of family siblings, they separate after mom and dad died. And I, and I didn't say it at the time, but I thought, man, if mom and dad left millions and we were all fighting over it, it might be a different story. Excuse me. we out of time. Oh my God. We're way out of time. went really late. No, we want to continue this, uh, for next week and.
Thank you for joining us today. We hope that you've been able to grasp some little nuggets from today's talk. And we're gonna continue sharing on this subject of just what it's, a loss that's not seen. It's unseen grief. So join with us again next time. In the meantime, share this with someone that you believe will be a blessing too.
Be sure to join our email list and get our book, When Lost Comes Close to Home. This book has been a huge help to so many people and we know it will be for you or for someone that you know that's walking through. And thanks so much for joining us today. We appreciate you and we just pray for God's blessings on your life. Amen. God bless.