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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 there, thanks again for joining us for the Finding Hope podcast. We're Charlie and Jill LeBlanc and we have come to talk about getting through what you've never asked for. That's right. Yeah, you know, we love doing this podcast because there's a lot of hurting people out there that you know that maybe you're in the middle of something, but there's a lot of hurting people in the world and
things come to us that we don't expect, things that we never asked for, that we don't want. And we have to figure out a way to get through these difficult times. Of course, we look to the Lord with all of our heart. We look to Jesus. He is our help in time of need. But at the same time, when you have a loss of a loved one, not only do you need his loving care, but you also need time.
You need patients from loved ones and friends around you. You need people you can talk with. You need people that understand. That's a big issue. most people just don't understand. And that brings us to some of the things we want to talk about today. Even I this morning was chatting with a friend and he's 20 years out.
on his death, 20 on the death of his spouse. And he was talking and talking about how difficult it still can be at times. But he actually let me read some of the posts that he did back shortly after his wife passed. And oh, my gosh, it was so heart wrenching to hear the pain that he's going through.
Went through I should say but not so much going through as much now 20 something years later but the beautiful thing is that he's reaching out to another friend of ours who just lost his wife and No one can comfort you like someone who understands. Yeah someone that's been through it. It's been through it That's right. And so I really applaud him for jumping in the middle We've actually tried to reach out and we stay close in touch with our friend as well that lost his wife
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But at the same time, someone who has lost a spouse can relate even better than we can because we lost the son and that's horrible. And so we have a lot in common in that sense because we understand grief, we understand loss, but the absence of your spouse brings about a whole nother realm of difficulties.
that we've learned. We're learning more as we minister to so many widow and widowers. But that whole aspect is unique. And one of the things that we chatted about this morning, this friend of mine and I, was that how that the awkwardness of when you lose your spouse and you've been getting together with other couples all the time.
I mean, that was your go to. had three or four couples that you always hung out with and all of a sudden you're alone. And so being with them magnifies the loss that you've had. And one of the things he talked about was what was the word he said? Amputation. Yeah. Yeah. He said his life feels like he's he's has an amputation and that he and so when he gets around others that
You know, if you get around others, have two legs and you only have one you you you you. Of course, you know every day that you've got a peg as Theus Lewis puts it so well in his book, A Grief Observed, which is very powerful book when he lost his wife. But yeah, it's so it's a it's a hard thing to balance because as we talked about, we have a sister who lost her husband, a good friend of ours. And and yet she has said
you know, my friends aren't wanting to be with me anymore. We used to always hang out all four, but they never call me anymore. And that's horrible. But then we have this other friend that says, when I get with couples, it magnifies my loss. Right. So everyone's different. You know, just our observation seems like it's the women who lose their husband who
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who miss getting with their friends, you know? But it kind of seems like the men that lose their wives, it's harder for them to get with the couples. And that's just in our small world of connection, the people that we've been in touch with. But it's just different for everyone. And...
It's a hard road and one of the things we wanted to do today is affirm you who are walking on the road of loss. You've lost either your spouse or a parent that you're close with, a child you're close with, a sibling, a friend, and you're struggling. And we just want to affirm you to say that it's,
I was going to say, it's okay. I mean, it's not okay. We hate that you are struggling. Yes. But you are normal and it's okay to struggle. Yes. You don't have to feel guilty about it. Yeah, for sure. I just want to say that I've had a day today already. my gosh. my gosh. We got a text from someone who met a really close friend of our son.
and just hearing about their meeting each other, it just, mean, here we are 17 years out, and it's pretty rare for me to get hit with tears. I guess you can call it mourning, whatever. But boy, when I heard that and the way it was worded, I just lost it.
And it was out of nowhere. didn't wake up with any kind of heaviness on me this morning. Matter of fact, since I got up, just been praying about this podcast today and the things we were gonna share with you. And I was stable and doing fine. Yeah, drinking your coffee. Yes. Morning devotional. Waking up. And then I saw that on a text and it just...
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It just opened up the grief door that I hadn't really personally experienced in quite a while. Yeah, I was I was quite surprised and yeah, and yet it was a very touching moment that I didn't want to touch. Just it that way. I wanted to let you, you know, do what you needed to do in grief and in pain there, which is an interesting thing that we need to also might want to just.
throw in real quickly is when people are crying, when people are grieving, it's not always a time to go and grab them, hold them, touch them. Sometimes, many times, it's such a thing of the Holy Spirit. You got to be led. But bottom line is we do need to not try to fix someone. We need to let them grieve. If you are gonna hug them, don't.
Pat them on the back and say, oh, no, no, it's okay. It's okay. You don't have to cry. You don't have to cry. Don't do that kind of thing. If you are going to hug them, then do what Romans 12 says, and that is weep with those who weep. And I know those of you out there that are listening that have had losses, you're saying a big amen to this because we don't like people to try to fix us. We like people to love us and weep with us and understand.
So that's very important. But yeah, this friend of Bo's, I won't go into all the details, but he made the comment in the text that Bo was his best friend. And my gosh, this friend that we know very well, who was a friend of Bo's, was a dear friend to us. And whenever we see him, there is a special connection. He's like a son to us as well, because he was so close.
to bow. But you know, these are the seasons of grief. These are the waves that we've talked about in other podcasts and in other podcasts, the waves of grief. These are the things that happen to us and it's normal and it will happen for the rest of our lives. that's, know, people think, well, you're going to finally get over it. Well, no, you don't get over it. You move forward in life as
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as our dear friend David who we're talking about who's a close friend of Bo's, said, this is the furthest you'll ever be away from Bo. Because now every day you're getting closer and closer to being with him in heaven. And we just thought that was a real beautiful statement. said that to us the day that Bo passed. Yeah. That was just a word from the Lord through him to us. And it was just so sweet. But yeah. Yeah.
So yeah, it just happens. And, you know, and so I hope that you're not listening thinking, my gosh, are you kidding me? This will never be over. I'll never be done mourning. I'll never be done grieving. That's really not what we're saying. What we're saying is there's it's not a finish. There's not a finished work of grieving. It's just something that will accompany you the rest of your life.
on and off. And really what it exposes is how much you loved the person that you don't have in your life now, know, walking daily, you know, living life. yeah, for me, was very, it was, I want to almost, I want to say it was almost comforting to me to know that that part of me was still alive. Because
I don't cry as much as Charlie does. But it touched my heart that I am still tender and my love is still very much alive. Tears, as we've said before, are like a part of love. You mourn and grieve because you love them. And it is nice.
I know many times in interviews when I'm being interviewed, especially that I'll I'll break down in tears. And and and then you have this whole philosophy of people think, well, I don't want to mention to Charlie and Jill about the loss of their son, because I don't want them to grieve. I don't want them to to cry in front of me or whatever. But it's that that's kind of a myth, because in reality, when you do mention the loss.
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the loved one that someone has lost. really does minister to them. Yeah. totally. And we've been so ministered to by people that mentioned his name. And like even today is a perfect example. Yes, you cried and you mourned deeply for about five minutes or 10 minutes, whatever it was. But it wasn't bad. Right. It was, as you just said, it was a blessing. It was it was a remembering. was
a place in your heart that you were able to feel again that really, really blessed you. And so that's really an important lesson is to realize that these things that happen on the inside of us that the Lord allows for us to just continually mourn or grieve. And like Jill said, it's not like it's gonna be forever in the sense that you're never gonna be able to function again. When you first have a loss, you...
you have a hard time functioning. And yet here we are 17 years later and we are functioning. We're busy, we're doing our ministry, we're doing everything that God has called us to do, but it doesn't mean that we still don't have that sweet spot in our hearts for our dear son. And we will always love him and always miss him. But you will get better, let's put it that way.
you will get better. It will get easier. As we've mentioned before on the podcast, a dear sister who lost her son said, I've been one year. So what can I expect in the second year? And we basically said, well, more of the same. But but it will get slightly easier as you move forward. And, know, back to this thought, you know, we've had people come up to us in the first few years. One one set up.
a silly statement. They said something like, I can tell you're better. You're about 80%. You're about 80 % there. 80 % through this. Something like that. You're about 80 % through this thing. And we're like, what, what, what? You know, kind of, okay. So they're saying you lose a loved one and you hurt and you cry and then you get over it. And then all of a sudden you're back to normal and everything's fine.
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So you're about 80 % there, you know, and that's that's silly. It's it's not correct and it's silly thinking because when you lose a loved one, you lose a part of yourself, you know, and we're so connected as family and close dear friends. You know, we we recently did a podcast with Nancy who lost her sister. And if you haven't seen that one, go back to Nancy Lukoff. It's just very, very powerful.
And she just expresses the pain of the loss and the connection that she had so deeply with her sister growing up. so when you I remember I remember I blogged that, you when you've when you've been that close to someone, you know, you just don't get over it that easy. And you never get over it, put it that way. But you don't even get to a place where you can function well for quite a while. And how long has it been for Nancy?
Five, six. It was 2019. So it's been about six years. Six and a half years. yeah. And like we have our friends going on 23 years, we're going on 17. We have others that, well, we just got a message yesterday that a close friend of ours lost his wife just this week. And it's horrifying. Shocking. And we're texting them, we're loving on them, we're doing the best we can.
to love on people, but there's not a percentage of how much better you're doing. know? It's a journey. It is. It's like being on water, you know? Right. You just got to flow with it and you can't fight it. Right. And the end of it will be when we get to heaven. That'll be the end. Which will be awesome. Yeah, it'll be wonderful. Praise God. Matter of fact, I wanted to read
I was texting with the sister-in-law of this woman who just passed. And she said the sweetest thing to me. Of course, they were really hurting, but she sent me the scripture, 1 Thessalonians 4, verses 15 to 18 in the message translation. Now, I don't read a lot of message translation, so I don't think I've ever read this, but it was so powerful.
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It says, then this, can tell you with complete confidence, we have the master's word on it, that when the master comes again to get us, those of us who are still alive will not get a jump on the dead and leave them behind. In actual fact, they'll be ahead of us. The master himself will give the command, arc, angel, thunder, God's trumpet blast.
He'll come down from heaven and the dead in Christ will rise. They'll go first. Then the rest of us who are still alive at the time will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the master. we'll be walking on air and then there'll be one huge family reunion with the master. So reassure one another with these words. Yeah, so.
It's gonna be awesome. Yeah. When we thank God for heaven. mean, mean, thank God for heaven. We were talking about that with, I think, Janet recently who interviewed us and just about, you know, this eternal life that we have and how, you know, like even, even Bo, you know, one, one day I kicked a wall and said, Bo, why did you die? And
And I heard from heaven, I heard this thing in my spirit immediately say, Dad, don't ever say I died. I'm more alive than I've ever been. And that is so beautiful of a lesson to remember is that our loved ones are fully alive. They're more alive than they've ever been. And we can only envy them. We can only envy the life, the eternal life, the abundant life that our loved ones are experiencing.
right now and I know that really ministers to me and ministers to us in this stage of our journey, you know, but at the beginning it didn't. Someone would say, well, praise the Lord, he's in heaven. And we would go, yeah, well, great. I'm happy for him, but I am broken. And you know, this thing of, it's not just a mental thing. A lot of people think that it's just mentally you have to pull it together. Well, there are places where the enemy will try to destroy you by thinking the wrong things and you do have to
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you know, set your affection on things above, not on the things of the earth. There's a place where to bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. But at the beginning of grief and mourning, need to grieve. You need to cry. You need those moments of solace, of lamenting, to pour your heart out to God, to cry, to allow this thing. You got to allow it to do what it needs to do in you.
And loss changes us. It certainly does. We're different. We're different people. We always have people say, we want the old Charlie and Jill back. Well, the old Charlie and Jill is no longer there. mean, we we the Christ and us have always the same, never changes. But our souls have been changed because we have now experienced the pain and suffering of losing a son. And, know, when you experience
that are losing a spouse or losing a mom or dad or brother or sister. my children miss their brother so much. And, you know, or your dearest friend, when you experience that, when you really go through that, it's almost like a birthing. Something changes on the inside of you. You're giving the groaning and the the suffering and the the grieving. It actually produces a better you.
Yeah. Because you're more tender. Yes. You're more compassionate. Amen. You understand pain. I mean, I can't tell when people tell me someone's past or someone is, you know, had a tragedy, an accident, whatever. I can tell you what goes on, what goes off on the inside of me. I just go, because I've been touched in that area.
with loss and we see it all the time and we hear about it. You were telling me just yesterday about a young boy, a 12 year old boy. Was in a crosswalk in a in a neighborhood nearest the school had just gotten out. a 17 year old. Didn't stop and hit and killed the 12 year old boy.
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and all these students saw it, and this is right here in our town. And so, my gosh, to think about that family, and then all the people that saw it, and the 17-year-old. mean, the news report said that he's cooperating with authorities, but he's gonna live with that the rest of his life. the pain of it, the pain of it. We have a friend who...
who I haven't seen her in a long time, but she shared with us years ago, way before Beau was even born. She said, when I was young, I ran over an elderly man that was crossing the street and killed him. my goodness. And I didn't know that. You don't even know who I'm talking about. I haven't heard this story. It's awful. It's been a while, but that image.
only Jesus was able to help her get to a place where she could move forward again and carry on with, you know, a normal life and, you know, bring healing to her heart. Yes. Because she was just young. I think she was maybe late teens, early 20s. But yeah, she had to live with that. Just like this 17 year old boy. Our our oldest grandson is will be 17 this year. So I mean, don't even want to think about that.
I know. And we have friends whose loved grandsons and their hearts were shattered, shattered. Yeah. Well, listen, before we get too far, I want to just turn this unless you have something else. I just wanted to say, if you don't have our book yet, I really want to encourage you to get it. It's when loss comes close to home and there there's links in the description and at the end of this, if you're watching on YouTube.
There's a link, you can get it, charlieandjill.com. in the book, there's a chapter called Understanding Grief. It's chapter six. And it's a lot of what we've been talking about because someone that's especially new in the grief journey, they just don't know what's wrong with them. I remember when our friend Nancy that we recently interviewed, I remember
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She and her husband were our missionaries in the Philippines. And when she went back to the Philippines after her sister died, I remember texting with her a lot. And she said, I'm just in such a funk. I can't do anything. I can hardly sleep. And then during the days, I'm just a zombie. And I said, Nancy, it's grief. And she didn't realize that that was grief. I remember that. And yeah. And another friend who lost her
her little grandson, she read our book and she said, thank you for helping me know that I'm normal. And so there's a lot that a person experiences when they lose someone that's been ripped out of their life that they were extremely close to. And so we just want to help you. Yes. If you're walking through a grief journey and you just there are just things that you
you just can't get past. And so that chapter understanding grief is there for you to just to help you know that you are normal. You're not weird for feeling the way you're feeling. You don't need necessarily to go get on some antidepressant drugs or or drink your pain away, anything like that. Yeah, that's right. It's a season. Yeah.
Yeah, and that brings me to what I wanted to say. You don't have to drink this away. You don't have to take sleep, you know, I was going to say sleep aids, we did actually take some sleep aids when we first had a loss of both because we just weren't sleeping. It was horrific. was was nightmares. So we did. Our doctor did give us some sleep aids, thankfully, but not antidepressants and things like that.
But I just want to take a moment, and I don't want this to be religious, but I want to magnify the Lord in this. He is the healer of broken hearts. And he comforts those who mourn. And without him, we would have never made it. And this is the truth. It's like there is a refuge in God. He is our refuge. He is our strength. so I want to, you know, we always want to relate.
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to you and to people that are grieving and hurting and love them and not try to fix them. But at the same time, have to continue to put forth the element of Jesus comforting the brokenhearted, Jesus being touched with the feelings of our infirmities. He's touched with our pain. He suffers when we suffer. He weeps with us. And so I always like to put this in to help us all.
to continue to turn to Him because we know people that haven't turned to Him in their grief and their hearts are hardened a little bit and they haven't been able to reconcile the death of their loved one. And that's, we can't fully reconcile it, but we at least turn to God and say, God, we give it to you. We give the unknowns to you. We give this part of us that is the mystery of not understanding why, the anger.
of not understanding right, the hurt, the pain, the disappointment of not understanding. You know, we've at least been able to give it to Jesus and say, Lord, we know that you understand and we know that you will help us get through this. know, even though we walk through the valley, the shadow of death, He is with us and He is with us and will never forsake us in everything that we go through. So we just want to encourage you that God loves you.
He is with you, you know that, but I just wanted to say let's keep our eyes on him. We would have never made it 17 years. We'd be in a trash heap without, we wouldn't have made it without the love of God and without the compassion and the comfort of the Holy Spirit. So we do pray that you would open your heart, turn to him, be transparent with him. If you're upset, be upset in his presence, talk to him.
Let Him talk back to you. Let Him love you back in Jesus' name. Father, we just pray that your comfort, your blessing, your help for each one in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well, God bless you. Share this with someone that you feel it would be a help to and be sure to subscribe if you haven't yet. And we've got some great shows.
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Coming up, we hope you've enjoyed some of the recent guests we've had on. We've got more to come. And it's just been a joy to be with you today. And we just, we are just expecting you to experience the Lord in your life, in your journey. We'll see you next episode. God bless you.