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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.
Hi, friends, thank you for joining us. This is the Finding Hope podcast, getting through what you never asked for.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yes.
Jill LeBlanc:We have some really great things to share with you today, continuing on what we shared last time about God's faithfulness and how awesome he is to help us in our time of need.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. I think his faithfulness became more real to me after we lost Beau. You know, I was struggling with the word faithfulness, you know, when we lost Beau, because I felt like God was in a sense unfaithful to us.
Jill LeBlanc:Right. Mhmm.
Charlie LeBlanc:But faithfulness, the faithfulness of God means so much more than our circumstances and the difficulties that we go through. Paul made that very clear that, you know, he was a person that always talked about God's faithfulness and God's love, but yet he went through so many difficult things. So the word faithfulness and the attribute of God being faithful, which he is, praise you, Lord, came more alive to me after started recovering, after we lost Beau. Now I can look back sixteen years and I can say, wow, he is so faithful.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:But at the moment, it was hard for me to think of God being faithful because our son didn't get healed.
Jill LeBlanc:Right.
Charlie LeBlanc:But nonetheless, like we say in Lamentations, you know, all hope was gone, but he turned it around and he said, Yet I dare to hope again when I consider the mercies of the Lord that are new every day, and great is his faithfulness. So it's a matter of remembering.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah.
Jill LeBlanc:And just like you have shared in the past about you didn't really know the God of all comfort, like 2 Corinthians 1:3 talks about
Charlie LeBlanc:Right.
Jill LeBlanc:Until you needed to know him like that.
Charlie LeBlanc:Right.
Jill LeBlanc:He had never revealed himself to you like that before because even though you've read that Scripture all of your Christian life
Charlie LeBlanc:Right.
Jill LeBlanc:But until you needed that, you didn't really know him as the God of all comfort
Charlie LeBlanc:That's right.
Jill LeBlanc:Until then.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. If one of those scriptures you just kinda go over, you know.
Jill LeBlanc:It's like, oh, that's nice.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. Praise God. Comfort.
Jill LeBlanc:And and so it's kinda like that way with his knowing his faithfulness too because we didn't know that side of him.
Charlie LeBlanc:At least that degree of faithfulness.
Jill LeBlanc:Yes. Yes. That degree until after we were shipwrecked.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah, and as we said, we've been in ministry forty five years, we've been celebrating that this month. And as we said, we see his faithfulness through the years, through the pain, through the almost accidents on the road with our kids, raising three kids on the road, traveling from church to church, going around the world with the kids, ministering. We saw God's faithfulness very clearly through that. It wasn't this drastic of a difficulty.
Jill LeBlanc:Right.
Charlie LeBlanc:When we lost Beau, it's like the end of the world, bottom line. We just thought we'd never survive. And yet then we started seeing the footprints in the sand, you know, the footprints of Jesus helping us. We started seeing signs of the Lord ministering his grace to us, which ultimately shows us no matter what you go through, he's faithful.
Jill LeBlanc:He is so faithful. And I remember being challenged by a dear friend a few years back, several years, I guess, about my paradigm of God's rescue. And and they said, well, you obviously made a choice to get up and move forward. And I said, you know what? I did not. I did not consciously make a choice to move forward because I was, I couldn't. I was paralyzed. I was so broken.
Charlie LeBlanc:Right.
Jill LeBlanc:I was hopeless. But the Lord picked me up and carried me and brought me to a healthier place where I could begin to take steps again.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah.
Jill LeBlanc:And there's a big difference there.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. That's a good point.
Jill LeBlanc:It's not just a choice you make.
Charlie LeBlanc:Right. When you're broken that deeply and, you know, cut that deeply, you can't just make a decision, I'm gonna get up. You know, I mean, it depends on how deep the cut is. Yeah, exactly. But if you need to get to the hospital, someone carry you in an ambulance to the hospital, and you need surgery, and you need doctors to help you, and you need nurses to help you get through that.
Charlie LeBlanc:And then you wake up from the surgery and you see stitches and you see your family and then you go, Well, yeah, I think I can make this. I wanna live. I'm gonna push myself to live. But that first shock and pain, like you said, Joe, you couldn't just decide that you were gonna live again or that you were gonna move forward. In fact, interestingly, you wrote a song called I Choose to Believe When My Prayers Seem Unanswered.
Charlie LeBlanc:But clearly that song was written several years after Beau passed, several years. And so there came a point in our journey, well, yes, we had to start making some choices. We realized we were in spiritual warfare. We had to fight the good fight of faith. We had to, you know, make some decisions that, no, I'm not gonna think upon these negative things. I'm gonna think upon positive things. But again, that came later. After we were better.
Jill LeBlanc:Yes.
Charlie LeBlanc:After we were more healed.
Charlie LeBlanc:Right.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah. A few years ago, I had an accident to where a a big piece of glass went into my foot from the top of my foot.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah.
Jill LeBlanc:And I won't take the time to tell you the details, but it was crazy. Anyway, you know, it wasn't like a mortal wound or anything like that.
Jill LeBlanc:And and, you know, but it it hurt and and it was deep. But, you know, I'm kind of a a self fixer when it comes to my own health and circumstances. And and I just thought, oh, I don't know if I should go to the doctor or not. Anyway, ended up going the next day because it was a Sunday. And I took myself to the doctor.
Jill LeBlanc:You know, I've got up out of bed. I was, you know, just limping around a little bit, got out of bed, got dressed, got in the car, went to the doctor myself. I made the decision. You said, you know, sometimes it depends on how deep the wound is. And it was a good thing I did go because there was, you know, some pretty deep cuts that they had to do some internal stitches and then topical stitches, but everything is fine. But you know, that's kind of a small example of when you have to make a decision to get better or you can't.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah, again, like we talked about last episode so much, we talked about that survival mode. When these things happen, there is a place to just, you know, we have to survive.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah.
Jill LeBlanc:And so we just do whatever we can just to breathe. You know, it's like we heard that a lot, just breathe. You know, just be kind to yourself. Just take every day patiently with yourself and with the process, you know, because you really are blind. You don't really know, you know, what's gonna happen next.
Charlie LeBlanc:You don't really know how you're gonna get through this. You know, the Scripture tells us he makes a roadway in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. And we don't always see how we're gonna get to the other side.
Jill LeBlanc:Right.
Charlie LeBlanc:But the Lord is faithful, and we, as we've mentioned so much last episode, we have to trust that He is doing something.
Charlie LeBlanc:But yet, even if you don't trust, He's doing something.
Jill LeBlanc:He is, cause he's faithful.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. That's the way he is. Yeah.
Jill LeBlanc:And like I said last time, he remembers that we are that he just made us from the dust. He remembers that. He knows our makeup.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah.
Jill LeBlanc:And he is compassionate and gracious.
Charlie LeBlanc:Right, and you know, this Psalm, like I said, David and Paul and so many great men of God that we see in the Bible have experienced difficult, tough times, and they just hung on, you know, barely. Some just surviving, I'm sure, you know. But Psalm 61:2 says, When my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to a rock that is higher than I. So here's David saying, I'm so overwhelmed. God help. Lead me. Take care of me. Take me to a place where a rock that's higher than me, you know, help me. Be my rock. Pull me through this dark, dark times.
Charlie LeBlanc:And you know, I talked a little bit about my journal last time that I had written when I went through a very dark moment. This wasn't the loss of it was since the loss of Beau. But I wrote down a couple of things. He says, I will trust you in the darkness. And again, that was years after we lost Beau, but in the darkness, will trust you when I can't see, you know?
Charlie LeBlanc:And so if that could be of any encouragement to you, you know, if you can't see the forest with the trees, you don't know how you're gonna get through this. You don't know how you're gonna survive. We know we have widows that, that financially they were devastated. Their husband was the main breadwinner. Their husband left them no life insurance. They were devastated. And they didn't know how, how they were gonna get through, the next month, the next two months.
Jill LeBlanc:Right.
Charlie LeBlanc:And you know, God brought them through.
Jill LeBlanc:Yes.
Charlie LeBlanc:I mean, it's miraculous.
Jill LeBlanc:It is.
Charlie LeBlanc:And it it doesn't mean it didn't take some hard work on the part of our of our friends, but but nonetheless, God was faithful to bring them through those darkest times.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:And, I wrote in here also, I said, I will trust you the best I know how. I will lean onto you. I will lean onto your word. I will lean into prayer. I will lean into to trust the best I can because of your faithfulness, because of all you have done for me through the years.
Charlie LeBlanc:So trust, I wrote down here, trust him in the waiting. It's just kinda like, you know, because we know God has helped us all through other difficulties, We have to trust him that he'll get us through this. But again, you know, lead me Lord to a rock that's higher than I can't get there on my own. Lead me to a higher place of trust.
Charlie LeBlanc:You know, it's like good. What the scripture says, Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief. You know, we have so much darkness and unbelief when we go through tragedy like this. Our hearts are broken. Our hearts are shattered. How can we expect our heart to believe when our heart is shattered, broken into pieces? And the Lord knows that.
Jill LeBlanc:Yes He does.
Charlie LeBlanc:His kindness, His compassion never ceases. He's so amazing and he loves us so much that he would never leave us alone in the midst of this deep, dark times.
Jill LeBlanc:That's right.
Charlie LeBlanc:No question.
Jill LeBlanc:Listen to this scripture. It's in Hebrews 6. It's in The Passion Translation. I just love the passion. It says, and now we have run into his heart to hide ourselves in his faithfulness.
Jill LeBlanc:Wow. This is where we find his strength and comfort, For he empowers us to seize what has already been established ahead of time, an unshakable hope. He gives us the grace to seize an unshakable hope. It's not up to us.
Charlie LeBlanc:Right.
Jill LeBlanc:He he gives us that.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah.
Jill LeBlanc:He's so faithful. And then in verse 19, it says, we have this certain hope like a strong, unbreakable anchor holding our souls to God himself.
Charlie LeBlanc:Wow.
Jill LeBlanc:Our anchor of hope is fastened to the mercy seat in the heavenly realm beyond the sacred threshold.
Charlie LeBlanc:Wow.
Jill LeBlanc:I know.
Charlie LeBlanc:Pretty cool.
Jill LeBlanc:I know it. That's that's God's heart towards us who are struggling.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah.
Jill LeBlanc:Who feel hopeless, who feel weak, who feel damaged. That's his heart towards us.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah.
Jill LeBlanc:Our anchor of hope is fastened to the mercy seat in the heavenly realm.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah.
Jill LeBlanc:Thank you, Lord.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah.
Jill LeBlanc:He is holding our souls close to himself.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. That's really, really good, because when our souls are shattered, and when we are our souls are going crazy with grief, with pain, with tears, Thank God, that's a beautiful He holds us close to him we're going through these deep, deep, difficult things. You know, the love of God is just beyond words. The compassion of God. You know that scripture that we talk so much about in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4. But verse three, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.
Charlie LeBlanc:We talk about how that has become revelation to us, that He is a comforter in a brand new way. But I was reading the first part of it, another translation, the Father of Mercies also said the Father of Compassion. And that really jumped out of the page to me that he is the Father of compassion and he has compassion for hurting people.
Jill LeBlanc:Yes, he does.
Charlie LeBlanc:He has compassion for bruised people. We talk about the Good Samaritan a lot, which Jesus is that Good Samaritan. And that he was the one that stopped and picked up a helpless person. Mhmm. A person that couldn't take care of themself.
Charlie LeBlanc:A person that couldn't figure out how to believe, how to get through this difficult time. But God stopped and took care of the Samaritan, stopped and took care of him and bound up his wounds and put the oil on and put him on his donkey and took him to the inn and stayed overnight with him to make sure he was stable enough for him to leave and said, take care of him and anything else that you need, I'll come back and pay you for it. Now that's a picture of God and Jesus and his love and his faithfulness, that when you are bruised, when you are hurting, when you can't believe, when you can't seem to muster up enough faith to even figure out how you're gonna make it the next day, that's a picture of a loving God, a faithful God, who comes alongside, picks you up, takes care of you, takes care of your wounds, brings you to a safe place and takes care of all your needs. I think that's just a beautiful, of beautiful what we've been trying to say. It's like when we're helpless and broken, I mean, I know a lot of people are like, come on, Charlie and Jill, be strong in the Lord and power.
Charlie LeBlanc:I could quote a thousand scriptures, you know? Be strong in the Lord and the power of His might, you know? Fight the good fight of faith, you know? Don't let the devil destroy you, you know? Resist himself fast into faith.
Charlie LeBlanc:These are all powerful scriptures that we live with. We live in this realm. We know how to fight the enemy because he has certainly tried to destroy us. But again, when you are weak and broken and bruised, that's when you need, you read it in that, I think that Thessalonian scripture, that that's when you need someone to come alongside you and help you and not point their finger at you to say, you have to believe, you have to get up, you have to pull your thumb out of your mouth or whatever. This is not those instances.
Charlie LeBlanc:There are instances where we need to shake each other up and say, come on, quit being a child, get your thumb out of your mouth, know, pull up. But that's not for this.
Jill LeBlanc:Right.
Charlie LeBlanc:That's not for this kind of broadcast. This is not what we're talking about.
Charlie LeBlanc:We're talking about God helping us through one of the most difficult times of our life. And he doesn't demand anything of us. He doesn't demand our faith. No, he takes care of us. He comforts us. He loves us. He begins to heal our broken heart. He puts us on His donkey, takes us to an end and takes care of us. And I think that's just, thank God that is That's who he the faithfulness of God that we keep talking about. Faithful to come in and rescue us when we're in a very, very tough moment in life.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah. I'd like to read that scripture again that we read last time.
Charlie LeBlanc:That would be great. That was so good.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah. I know. It's 1 Thessalonians 5 starting in, I guess, it's just four verse 14. It says, we appeal to you, dear brothers and sisters, to instruct those who are not in their place of battle because they've been knocked off their horse.
Charlie LeBlanc:Right.
Jill LeBlanc:They've been damaged. Be skilled at gently encouraging those who feel themselves inadequate. Be faithful to stand your ground. Help the weak to stand again. Be quick to demonstrate patience with everyone.
Jill LeBlanc:So good.
Charlie LeBlanc:So good, yeah. Here it is right there. You know, just being compassionate to those who have fallen off their hearts, those who don't have their battle on, you know, they don't have their shield up, they're not fighting. They need some time for their brothers and sisters to help. You know, scripture tells us to bear one another's burdens.
Charlie LeBlanc:And if you're broken right now, brothers and sisters, we pray for you, we bear your burden. You know, we understand how hard this is. I mean, I had a friend of mine call me crying in tears. His daughter had just died. He knew that we had lost a son.
Charlie LeBlanc:He couldn't control the tears. And to this day, doing so much better now, but to this day, he was like, Charlie, I don't know how you got through that, but he got through it too. And we're not any Superman. We're not these big faith heroes. No, we were crushed beyond words. But the scripture, many scriptures we keep turning to, but that one out of Isaiah, A bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not put out. I love that. A flickering flame, some translations say. And really and truly, your flame may just barely be flickering. You might be thinking, Charlie, my light, my flame is going to go out here soon if I don't get some help.
Charlie LeBlanc:And we understand that. We felt the same way. But the Lord says he will not abandon you. You know, He will help you in your deepest broken pain. He will be there. And I know that, that He's with you right now.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:Absolutely.
Jill LeBlanc:And I just wanted to encourage you. We've got some resources here that we put them together to help you in your time of need. Especially if you're the one who has experienced either loss of a loved one, loss of something very dear in your life, a tragic situation.
Jill LeBlanc:And our newest resource is called the God of all comfort. And there is a collection of scriptures in here that will help you. It'll build your faith in our faithful father. You'll just hopefully be able to see him in a new light of of not your enemy who not not even working with your enemy. He's not your enemy and he doesn't even work with their your enemy.
Jill LeBlanc:We knew someone that would say, has a devil on a leash. They don't work together. They're completely different entities, but this talks about the God of all comfort. We've got a collection of scriptures in there. We have some teaching about the God of all comfort.
Jill LeBlanc:We have some some stories, some music videos. It's just a lot of enriching things that will help to talk more about God's faithfulness and encourage you about how faithful He really
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah, and including in this, it is like Jill said, a USB. There's a little USB in there that you can pull out and you can pop it into your computer or into your car even, think. Yeah, it works in most anything.
Charlie LeBlanc:And you know, the back of your TV and you can get the resources off there. But one thing that you mentioned, Jill, but we have the song that it's based on, the God of all comfort, is a powerful song of ministry, and that alone is worth it. You'll get all these other resources. And we're just, again, just trying to put things together that'll help people get through tough times, and we believe that will help you.
Jill LeBlanc:And if you don't want to do a USB, you can get it just as a download and get it straight into your device. So don't let the USB thing stop you from purchasing.
Jill LeBlanc:That's true. And then we have our book, which we talk about more often, but this book is available as an audio download as well. Can buy it on Amazon, or a lot of Christian book online stores that are, it's available in audio that way too. Is it? Okay. Yeah, different ones, yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:So the audio is available, the digital download, if you have a Kindle or a Apple book, you wanna look at it that way, or this, or right here, a nice hardback or a paperback. But again, we're not salesman, That's not our heart.
Jill LeBlanc:Right.
Charlie LeBlanc:We never wrote the book to be salesman or to or to, you know, to try to make money off of it. That was never our intention. We wrote the book, to be honest, out of pain, out of brokenness, and we wrote it out of compassion for you, for those who have been bruised, those who have been broken because we went through it and we understood. And we also wrote it with a mandate to preach this message to others that don't understand what many of us have been through because people are just blind to understanding what grief is about, what the pain of loss is about, and so that we had a mandate from God to do all of this. And so we we have so many testimonies of people that this book has helped them dramatically.
Charlie LeBlanc:And so we encourage you to get these materials. We also have, obviously, our whole catalog of music that one particular CD I wanna mention called Your Love Remains. I don't have it with me right now, but it's
Jill LeBlanc:It is on there.
Charlie LeBlanc:USB, That's isn't right, you were gonna mention that. There's 97 songs on this little USB.
Jill LeBlanc:And that album is in there.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah, the album Your Love Remains is on here. But Your Love Remains is the first album that we did a brand new recording of after we lost Beau, and it was released in 2014, wasn't it? And so we lost Bo in 2009, and then by 2014, we were starting to record a new album. We actually released another album before then called Beautiful Hope, but we didn't write new songs on it. We wrote several of the songs on it, but we had written them years before and recorded them years before.
Charlie LeBlanc:So we came back on Beautiful Hope, and we very carefully chose songs that we felt would minister to people who had had broken hearts. So that one, Beautiful Hope, and Your Love Remains. And while we're doing advertising, we might as well mention we have Spotify lists.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of music. There's a comfort list on Spotify.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yep.
Jill LeBlanc:There is
Charlie LeBlanc:Finding hope list,
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah. I Soon to be, I think.
Jill LeBlanc:Is it being pulled together or no. You're you're right. It's already on there.
Charlie LeBlanc:Mhmm.
Jill LeBlanc:We have a list a a song list of songs about redemption, all the things that the Lord has done for us since, you know, just since his resurrection. And we also have what's another list? Anyway, there's several different
Charlie LeBlanc:Several different
Jill LeBlanc:playlists on Spotify that, you know, you can listen for free.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. And don't forget to visit our website, charlieandjill.com. All kinds of resources on there, videos of us preaching and ministering this message under the inspire page and under our grief page. So there's lots of stuff we wanna help you and you can point your friends to them as well. And if you join our mailing list, we have, what is that called?
Jill LeBlanc:The nine step, it's a document containing nine steps for the bereaved and their supporters. It's just some just little nuggets of helpful tips Yeah. In the process.
Charlie LeBlanc:It's part of our book actually.
Jill LeBlanc:Right. And just recently, we recorded two online video courses. And they're going to be eight part courses. So there will be eight videos in each course. And those will be coming out this fall.
Jill LeBlanc:And they are to help, say, your church has a grief support group that they meet weekly. These will be for them or a small group that meets together. And then we also, so we have one for the bereaved and then we have one to help people understand how to be a better helper. It's taken from our book. It's all the, a lot of the same information and guides in our book.
Jill LeBlanc:Mhmm. So, we're hoping bible colleges will get ahold of of the second course so they can equip all these people coming through bible schools to be a better representative of the Lord in situations where someone is hurting and experienced loss. So those will be coming out soon. So please stay in touch. Follow our social media outlets. Yes. Give this show a thumbs up if you like, If it touched you and we'd love if you could share it. Yeah. Sign up for subscribe to the notifications so you don't miss an episode.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yes.
Jill LeBlanc:And it's just been a delight to continue to come to you like this and share these things that the Lord has shared with us.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yes. So God bless you, and we'll look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Bye bye now.