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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, and welcome to the Finding Hope Podcast. We're Charlie and Jill LeBlanc, and we have a great message for you today. We have five points to help you get through your grief journey with a little more grace. So stay tuned, and we will be right back.
Charlie:Yes, Jill mentioned, we have five points that we're hoping to get through. You pray for us because you know how we like to talk or especially I like to talk about each And it might be a long video, but here we go. We're gonna dive in from the very beginning. And, you know, as we all know, going through this difficult time of losing a loved one is is harder than most people think. We were just with a friend of ours, that just lost his wife less than a year ago.
Charlie:We were with him at dinner the other night, And he used the word, he said, he said, Charlie, it's brutal. It's brutal. Mhmm. And it really broke my heart. But it was it was one of the many words that we've seen that really, explain how hard it is going through loss.
Charlie:You know, a lot of people, you know, well, I shouldn't say a lot of people, but some people experience grief in a different way. Everybody grieves differently, and a lot of it depends on your relationship with a loved one, A lot of it depends on your personality and how you walk, just how you're made up. But we know for us, it was brutal. Yeah. It was brutal.
Charlie:Interestingly, just this week, I've stumbled upon some old journals of me just a year out from Bovee, after losing Bovee. Just one year. One of them was about a year and a month, and the other one was about a year and a half. And both of them were basically saying the same thing. And this one, I'm not going to read the whole thing, but this is a year and a half after I lost Paul.
Charlie:I just stumbled onto this. I said this, I had a really rough day today. Grief, depression, it was hard to function. Today I have to make some decisions. Am I gonna live in sorrow and disappointment and anger the rest of my life?
Charlie:Or am I gonna allow what happened to me to work together for my good? I could go on and on about it. But the point is, is a year and a half later, I said, I had a really rough day today. And a lot of people today, when they go through grief, especially in our circles, they feel like they don't have permission to grieve. They feel like, you know, what's wrong with me?
Charlie:Is it godly, you know, for me to grieve? And the first point is give yourself permission to grieve.
Jill:That's right. You know, there's no rule book for walking a grief journey. And sometimes it's not always in a straight line. You just get through each day and do what you have to do. And that's okay.
Charlie:That's right. And, you know, we see it in scripture. I've done a lot of studying. We have a lot of it in our book. When Lost Comes Close to Home, throwing a little advertisement there.
Charlie:But we have it in our book. I went through a lot of pains to study and to look at great men and women of God that wept and mourned over the lot. In fact, it was normal. You are normal to grieve over the loss of your loved one. Don't let anyone tell you differently.
Charlie:That's right. And, you know, scripture acts eight to Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. And, you know, the scripture tells us that he's close to the brokenhearted. That is one of my favorite scriptures.
Jill:Yeah. It's the The fact
Charlie:that he's close to us. Sometimes we think, well, if I grieve, god doesn't like it or or, you know, God's want... Rebuking me, or God's telling me, come on, jump out of that. You know? No.
Charlie:He's close to you when you're hurting. And in fact, it says he keeps track of our sorrows, and he collects our tears in his bottle. It shows how precious our grieving time can be with the Lord. So that's the first thing we just wanted to reiterate and just put in your heart that God loves you, and grief is normal. Sorrow is normal.
Charlie:It's all over scripture, and you are not ungodly to grieve over the loss of your precious loved one. I can't imagine doing anything, more holy than that. And that is to simply grieve and love your loved one and let your heart begin to heal.
Jill:Yeah. You know, and grief has so many different faces. You know, they're obviously crying is one of them. Yeah. Sometimes numbness.
Jill:Sometimes you're... You just sit there and and you just can't really do anything. You you can't move forward. You just have to sit there and maybe you stare out the window. Maybe you stare at a picture of the one who just passed.
Jill:Maybe you you can't get out of bed. Maybe you can't sleep even though you're in bed. There's just just so many different faces of loss. And we just want you to know that you are normal. It is not unheard of what you're walking through.
Jill:You are absolutely normal. Is just part of it. Your soul has been crushed. And these are things that happen.
Charlie:That's right. And you know, Jill, when you said that about, you know, having difficulty sleeping, reminded me of our step two, a thought two, is take small steps to care for your body. This is interesting because when you go through grief, it affects more than just your heart. It affects your body. It affects your brain.
Charlie:You're... You've been traumatized. It's... You know, people talk about PTSD. You know?
Charlie:I mean, you have just been through a traumatic experience, and and your whole body can be affected. We have a dear close friend of ours who lost her husband suddenly by a heart attack in their own home. And she was so mortified, so shocked that within a week or so, her her jaw locked up. Yeah. And and she could hardly eat because the the tension, the pain, the the stress.
Charlie:And and I... I've heard other friends say that they they, not only could they not sleep, but they were having anxiety attacks. Yeah. Anxiety attacks in the room, like freaking out, you know? And this can happen.
Charlie:So you said, you know, people who can't sleep. I know for us, that was one of the issues. Was having a hard time. Both of us were having a hard time sleeping because when we'd lay in bed at night, we'd start remembering and thinking about those moments of our son's death. And it just was horrifying.
Charlie:And it made us toss and turn. Caused nightmares and just you couldn't sleep. So we went to our doctor and we said, Hey, can you help us sleep? And, you know, was wise enough, to not give me antidepressants, but he said, Charlie, he said, Grief is normal, but he said, You do need a good night's sleep. And that's my opinion Absolutely.
Charlie:To We do need a good night's sleep. So he gave us some really sleeping pills that he managed very carefully with us. There'd be no addiction or anything, but we just needed a good night's sleep. And if you're tired and the grief is gonna be worse, you're not gonna be able to make sense out of anything. You're not gonna be able to, be healthy at all.
Charlie:And and sleep is is very important in personal health care.
Jill:You know, grief is a lot of work. And I ran across a book early on, we would go to Barnes and Noble and just just scour all the shelves of books on grief and, and loss. And one book I saw was called Grief Work. And I thought, what? What?
Jill:It just didn't make sense. But, you know, it's talking about working on, you know, just kind of like what we're doing here today, trying to give you some some thoughts to help you in your journey. And that's what this book was about. But grief itself is a lot of work, and it takes a lot of energy. And so, you know, our pastor told us early on, he said, just eat a lot of comfort food.
Jill:Mean, not like not that that's the only thing you do. But, you know, and so we took him took his word, and we ate a lot of comfort food and and it, you know, we put
Charlie:And I keep a weight a weight journal. And that was the heaviest I was... Have ever been in my life was that year.
Jill:Yeah. Oh my gosh.
Charlie:I ate a lot of comfort food.
Jill:Yeah. But but it it was comforting. There is a connection between your soul and your body in that way. And, you know, just that satisfaction that comes from eating something you like. And, and, you know, maybe, maybe don't overindulge that But,
Charlie:know, absolutely,
Jill:I know that, like, if I get hit with with a cold or something, the last thing I want to do is get up and take a shower and just get dressed and go for a walk and all these things just because I feel so and thank God it doesn't happen that often. But, but when you're grieving, it's kind of like you don't want to do any of that. But it does make you feel better. Yeah, to just get out in the sunshine, get some sun in your eyes. That's where the vitamin D takes place is when you actually don't wear glasses and sunglasses and contacts.
Jill:And you just get that not that you're staring at the sun, but just getting sunlight in your eyes. It helps your body be able to process things that are going to help you. And taking a shower and just moving around a little bit. All these things help. They just help help your body be able to survive a little better.
Charlie:Yeah. If you can take a walk, you know, something like that to help you just get yourself moving a little bit even though your heart and your mind is just grieving and hurting. You don't know what to do. But, you know, just taking a little walk sometimes outside can just refresh you Mhmm. And and help you.
Charlie:So, you know, I remember the scripture that says Jesus, when he heard that his cousin John the Baptist, had been beheaded by Herod. It says, Jesus in Matthew fourteen thirteen, when he heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. And, you know, there's... There there is a a place for being alone. There's a place for...
Charlie:You know, you've... Especially after you've been through the funeral and you've been with so many people and and everybody, you know, has has been affirming you and loving you and and, you know, all this kind of stuff. Then sometimes you just wanna get alone. I don't believe in isolation in any way because we need friends. We need fellowship.
Charlie:We need companionship. But there's different times for different things. For everything, there's a season. And and, you know, there is a moment... There are times when you just need to be alone.
Charlie:I know for me, when Jill and I were walking through that first year or so, I would just say, Jill, I... I'm sorry. Nothing personal, but I just need to go in my office. I need to be alone. I'm getting I'm getting...
Charlie:This creep thing is building up. I'm starting to get, what do you call, bitey or... I don't know how to say that. You know? That that works.
Charlie:Edgy. And and I could tell that I just needed to be alone with God, and I needed to cry. Actually, To be honest, I just needed to sit on my chair or get on my knees and just cry it out. And sometimes that crying just helped me to be healthier, but that was that private time that I needed. So, that's really important.
Charlie:And then number three, lean on safe people, which you need time alone, you need to take care of yourself. But one of the ways you take care of yourself is not being around people that don't understand. Right. That is not a good thing to do.
Jill:That's... And it really adds to the stress of the situation. And it it... It's hard on your soul to be around people that don't understand. And we had some of that.
Jill:We would do everything in our power to stay away from people we didn't feel were safe. But we did have others that were very safe. And, and we were with them as much as we could be. And that is crucial. Just keeping your soul from being agitated.
Jill:And it's it's kinda like festering when you're around people that add stress to you.
Charlie:It's it's creating boundaries really Mhmm. To protect yourself from from certain people that don't understand. You know, not everybody does understand, and you need... You owe it to yourself to to not make yourself vulnerable around people that don't understand and that that would say the wrong things and hurt you. And, you know, like, it's like, come on.
Charlie:He's in heaven. Praise the lord anyway. Or, you know, you're doing good. Praise the lord. You know, stuff like this.
Charlie:You know, just protect yourself. And I know a lot of people, you know, like even me, you know, going to church after we lost Bovee. You know, I, I I had to be really careful because I didn't wanna walk in and everybody just starting to come up and hug me and shake my hand and say, how are you doing? How are doing? How you doing?
Charlie:Because of course, all you can say is, I'm fine. Thank you. I'm fine. Thank you. Because they really...
Charlie:Service is about to start. They really don't want to know how you're doing because they don't have time for it right then. And most people really don't want to take the time to know how you're really doing. It's like, How are doing? What you really want to know?
Charlie:Sit down. No. But, you know, people care, and and everyone's trying their best to love you, but but you do need to find people that you feel safe about. And we've shared many times about John Donnelly in in England and how he sat down with us and and just held my hand and said, how are you really doing, Charlie? And and he...
Charlie:You know, I wept and broke down in tears because he did understand. And he let me cry, he let me let me grieve in front of him, which is a real a real gift
Jill:Mhmm.
Charlie:That people let you grieve. We would just
Jill:He's a pastor.
Charlie:Yeah. He is, and he understands that. We were just with our... A dear friend recently, and we're out to dinner with him, and and he he broke down at dinner just for a moment, remembering we were talking about his loss, and he just... He...
Charlie:We broke it down and started crying just for a second, put himself back together, kept going. But he knew he was around safe friends. He knew that we understood that, and we've experienced it many times. So he felt very comfortable to be able to grieve that way. So that's important.
Charlie:Be around safe friends. Yep. Amen. So number four, create space, for not only grief, but for a little bit of joy. I know that sounds a little funny.
Charlie:But
Jill:You can have both at the same time.
Charlie:You can. And and, you know, like, even being around friends, before and after the funeral and around our house, you know, someone would say something that they remembered about Bovee, and it would just make me laugh so much. Know, it was so it was such refreshing. And some of his friends would come out, you know, I never told you this, but Bovee did this and this and this. And we were like, oh my gosh, that is so funny.
Charlie:Hilarious. And we laughed. But now it didn't take away the grief altogether, but it was okay to laugh. And I think people sometimes feel a little guilty about when they have a little bit of joy, a little bit of, you know, laughter in a situation like this because they feel like they're betraying their loved one, because they're not supposed to be happy right now. But then the other side of people are saying, you're not supposed to be sad right now.
Charlie:So it's a very confusing one.
Jill:Well, in Proverbs fourteen thirteen, it says, laughter can conceal a heavy heart. But when laughter ends the grief remains. So right there in the Bible, it says exactly what we were just talking about.
Charlie:Exactly. Yeah. And you know, and we talked I think a couple weeks ago somewhere on a podcast recently about the fact that, you know, we've been with this funeral and we see everybody looks like they're doing so well. And and and, you know, the the the the the grieving family is is sweet and they're... They get up and they share testimony of thinking about their loved one.
Charlie:But then when they go home within a few weeks, oh my gosh, it crashes, you know?
Jill:It does.
Charlie:But but at the same time, again, you know, it doesn't really it doesn't really matter what people think. It doesn't really matter what people are saying about us. What's important is that you allow yourself to be yourself. And if someone says something that makes you laugh for a moment about your loved one, that's beautiful and that's healthy. But at the same time, you know, it's okay.
Charlie:Don't think you're crazy if one moment you're laughing or smiling about something. The next moment you're sad again because like Jill just read that scripture. That's normal. You can have both.
Jill:You can.
Charlie:You can have hope for your future without betraying your loved one.
Jill:That's right.
Charlie:Because, and I don't... I say this cautiously, but and I know you don't want me to say it probably, but your loved one would want you to have hope for your future. But you gotta be careful with that because there's a time for that. If someone walks up to you at the at the funeral and says, no. Don't mourn.
Charlie:Your loved one would want you to be happy. No. No. No. No.
Charlie:That's not the time for it. No. But in your own heart, you can know that your loved one wants you to move forward.
Jill:Mhmm.
Charlie:And like our friend said, the more we move forward, the closer we get to our loved one. Yeah. Every day. Yeah. And I'm a lot closer than I was seventeen years ago.
Jill:Right.
Charlie:Closer to seeing Bovee in heaven and giving him a great big hug. Hallelujah. Can't wait for that.
Jill:You know, just in light of couple things you just said, also in Proverbs 14, that's a powerful passage, a powerful proverb chapter. But also in verse 10, we were in four in 13.
Charlie:I got these references right.
Jill:I think I think you do.
Charlie:They were that close.
Jill:Yeah, I know. Yeah, I was reading Proverbs 14 the other day, just not, you know, I just happened to land there and I saw, oh my gosh, that's where that scripture is and a little bit down. Oh my gosh. And that's where that scripture is too. So you're good.
Jill:But it says in the passion translation, says, don't expect anyone else to fully understand both the bitterness and the joys of all you experience in your life. So it really doesn't matter what anybody else thinks. You just need to look out for yourself and walk this journey that you have before you now. And the Lord will be there to help you to carry you like we opened with he is close to the brokenhearted. You know, Jesus came to heal the brokenhearted.
Jill:And that was one of his main missions and restore recovery of sight to the blind and to preach the gospel and all the different things that he came to do. That was one of his main objectives was to heal the brokenhearted. So praise God, you're in a good place. I mean, it's... It may be very painful.
Jill:It... And I know that, you know, it's it's different every day. Here and there, you have seasons where it's just different every day. And then might you might come into a time where you're a little more stable. But then all of a sudden out of the blue, you'll get hit with another wave of grief for that might last for a day or two or three or a week.
Jill:But it's it's not like you've lost ground, you will continue to move forward eventually again, you just got to let the Lord hold you and carry you through those times because he is there for you. You do not have to walk this alone.
Charlie:Amen. Praise God for that. You know, number five, and I think we're getting through these pretty good. Mhmm. Allow time for healing.
Charlie:Give yourself grace. Give yourself some time. It could be slow. It could take longer. Some people, it takes longer than others.
Charlie:You know, I know that we journaled a lot, and we can see different moments in our journal where, you know, we're starting to feel a little better, and then boom, we start hurting again really bad. Mhmm. But, you know, healing a broken heart just takes time. There's no timetable for grief, and it's not about moving on and leaving your past behind. It's about taking tiny baby steps forward.
Charlie:It's it's like just beginning to dream again, possibly beginning to hope again. But give yourself time. You don't you don't... There's no pressure. There's no, formula for this, not just because someone else got through it faster than you're expected to get through it faster.
Charlie:You know, it's that whole thing again of of, you know, oh, your husband passed, so clean out your closet. Get all of his clothes out of there. Well, no. If you don't want to, don't. There's no timetable for that.
Charlie:You know, we still have boxes and boxes of some of Bovee's belongings and some of his clothes. We got rid of a lot of it. Seventeen years later, we got rid of a lot of it. We gave it to friends. We gave it to people, our children and different ones that worked, that fit and so forth.
Charlie:But, hey, we still have six or seven boxes of this stuff, and that's okay. You know, there's just some things we just don't really wanna part with. And so they can they can bury me with with those if they want to, you know, but but but you know, that's just something between you you and the Lord and healing can be slow. And it... But it's it's can be slow, and, obviously, healing is very, very personal.
Jill:Yes. It is. Yeah. And in in Ecclesiastes chapter three, it talks about all the things that there is a time for in life. And it says, a time for everything is the name of that section.
Jill:Verse one says, for everything there's a season, a time for every activity under heaven. The beginning of verse two says, There's a time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. Verse three says, A time to kill and a time to heal. Yes.
Jill:There is a time for healing and yours will come. Comes on in layers. Yeah. And it'll be for the rest of your life because you've been through a life altering situation. But there is a time to heal.
Jill:And the Lord has allowed that for all all of us. But he's the one that helps it happen the right way.
Charlie:That's right. You know, and I remember that you said that that our friend Paul Clark told us one night. He said, Charlie, he said... He told our family, he said, you know, god may give you, some manna and some bread for today. And he said, you eat it, you receive it.
Charlie:In other words, some... Something to hope, something to help you get through the grief of that day. And he said, you eat it, you enjoy it, you praise God for it. But don't be deceived to think, okay, Now I'm healed. Now everything is fine.
Charlie:He said, because tomorrow you wake up and you're gonna need manna again. You know? You're gonna need something again to help you get through that day. So Yeah. We do need to...
Charlie:Every day, every season, every every moment is the time for healing, and healing is gradual, like you said, Jill. Mhmm. Yeah.
Jill:Then in verse four, a time to cry and a time to laugh, a time to grieve and a time to dance. So you have permission. You have permission to cry. You have permission to grieve.
Charlie:That's right.
Jill:And healing will come in layers. And there you go. That's the word of God.
Charlie:And that goes with... It reminded me of, you know, weep with those who weep and and rejoice with those who rejoice. There's a time for rejoicing. There's a time for weeping. There's a time for mourning.
Charlie:And and and that's okay. You know, just just take it. It's your personal time. It's something that's personal between you and the Lord, and and he loves... I love I love...
Charlie:Back to that scripture, he is close to the brokenhearted. And, you know, it's a very holy, beautiful thing in in a sense to see Jesus doing heart surgery on someone. Mhmm. Mhmm. Jesus is the great physician.
Charlie:And when our hearts are torn, broken, distraught, Jesus takes a lot of care that he's close to you. He's... He heals broken hearts. And so he's in the process of doing something very special inside of you. And, you know, in a way, we need to protect that.
Charlie:Yeah. Because people can try to start getting involved. We we have the old saying, you know, we've said it for years now, you know, you do the love and let God do the fixing. But we're always trying to fix somebody. We're always trying to be the doctor to fix people's hearts when they're mourning or grieving, to try to fix them.
Charlie:And, but, you know, only Jesus can really heal a broken heart. We can be used by him and help... And be part of that helping agent, but he's the one that heals the broken heart. And your grief is personal. Mhmm.
Charlie:It's holy. You're... It's it's it's a relationship that Jesus has with you in loving you and holding you and weeping with you, and it's just a really beautiful thing. And a good friend of ours, said it this way. He lost his wife, and he grieved really hard over it.
Charlie:And and he said, which kinda threw me off, he said, don't give dogs what is sacred. Do not throw your pearls before pigs. You know, the the scripture said, don't throw your pearls before swine. And he said, you know, what he meant by that is what you have between you and Jesus is a beautiful pearl that that that that relationship, that grief that you're dealing with. So you wanna be careful not to expose it to just anyone.
Charlie:Mhmm. You wanna protect it so that God can heal you. You don't go around telling everybody, you know, how you feel all the time. As Jill said, some of these things are personal. Some of these things are just between you and God.
Charlie:And sometimes if you tell the wrong person, they can destroy it. You know? Mhmm. So keep it holy. Mhmm.
Charlie:Keep it between you and the
Jill:Lord. Yes. Yeah. And then there's the serenity prayer.
Charlie:Well, yeah. And that's an interesting thing because, you know, and we talked about this on on one of the podcasts recently just about having to face the reality
Jill:Mhmm.
Charlie:Of it. You know? And and part of that aspect of of healing is actually accepting. Mhmm. And that's tough.
Charlie:That's probably the hardest part is to really just come to a place where you go. This is it. This is this is where I'm at. Yeah. And and and I can't change it.
Charlie:And that's what the serenity prayer says. It says, you know, to help me, Lord, to to to change the thing I can, but to accept the things I cannot change and to not have the wisdom between the two. Mhmm. And, obviously, this is one of those things that we cannot change, and that's so hard. It makes me weep beyond words to think about that as I...
Charlie:As my brain goes through all these different friends of mine right now that have just lost their loved ones. And, you know, they've they've had to wake up every day and like you have and just just accept the the thing they cannot change. And you know, we would just did another Zoom with another ministry and they were asking a lot of questions about grief and mourning and and you know, and and I was just telling them that you know, there's the Lord told us to embrace this new season that we had in this ministry. But I also turned it around and and said, you know, in a sense, I had to embrace the loss that we had, and that... That's hard to put it in those terms.
Charlie:But in a sense, I had to just accept it. And once I fully accepted it and knew that I couldn't change a thing, then the Lord began to build things in my heart to help me, to heal me, and and to bring me into new places in my heart and and new places in my thought thinking and so forth. So, you know, it is an important thing that we come to a place of accepting. And and I wanna go back and and read again this journal that, that I got, that I ran into accidentally, from just a year and a half after we had lost... Well, I I read a little bit at the beginning.
Charlie:I said I had a really rough day to day grief, depression. It was hard to function. Today, I said, I have to make some decisions. So here I was a year and a half out, and I was journaling and talking to myself and saying, you know, being honest about how hard it was that day, but I had to make a choice. I said, am I gonna live in sorrow, disappointment, and anger for the rest of my life?
Charlie:Or am I gonna allow what happened to me to work together for my good. And I I like that I like that scripture when it's put in the right context, that God will will will will take, you know, terrible things in our life. And if we'll allow him, he'll turn it around, and we will be a better person from that pain and from that loss. And rather than God doesn't put it on you so that you'll be better, but as a result of painful and difficult things happening, we can be better. But here in my journal, said, I have to allow what happened to me, to work together for my good.
Charlie:I had to make that decision. And it says here in my journal, it is ultimately up to me. I realize there is a grieving process that's healthy to go through, and I realized that even back a year and a half after. But there is a fine line between the good and the bad. I know that the enemy would love to keep us in a funk and make us depressed and angry asking the same questions for the rest of my life.
Charlie:And I think that's part of the problem we were caught in these questions.
Jill:Mhmm.
Charlie:How did this happen? How could... Because in our case, we had nine months to pray for our son and believe God for his healing. And, you know, the old saying, there's faith to move mountains, and there's faith to stand when the mountain doesn't move. And and that's where we were at.
Charlie:But it's like, this broke us in two areas. We we were broken with the loss of our dear son, but we're also... Our faith in god, our our understanding of him was was just just demolished. We didn't understand anything that we had always believed and read in his word. And so I...
Charlie:And so the questions were constantly... I was always trying to figure out where did we miss it? Where did Bovee say? How did we do it? We didn't pray right.
Charlie:Why didn't God answer our prayer? Do I have sin in my life? What... What's all going wrong with me? Why did...
Charlie:You know, all these things which a lot of us battle. And I just said in my journal, I said, you know, am I gonna let the enemy keep me in this depressed and angry state asking the same questions over and over again for the rest of my life? I said, no, I'm just not gonna do that. And I've said that many times on the podcast that I had to live in what I knew and not what I didn't know. I had to find things that I really believed and understood about God's love and about him being healing of the broken heart, about comforting those who mourn.
Charlie:And I just said, I'm gonna live in that. I'm gonna move forward with those healthy thoughts, and I'm gonna cast down imaginations and anything that exalts itself against the knowledge of Christ. I'm gonna bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. I had to do that. And I didn't mean that I still didn't give room for tears and mourning and grieving, which I did.
Charlie:But you do... There is a fine line between letting that thing take a hold of you and you not get out of it. You know? And so at the end of my prayer was Lord help me today to look forward and not let the past pain and disappointments hold me back from the fruitful days ahead that you have planned for me. And I said, thank you, Lord.
Charlie:And, you know, that was a little revelation a year and a half out that, yeah, I was hurting, and, yeah, I was crying, and, yeah, I was grieving. But I felt like I needed to make a decision. Charlie, what are you gonna live in? What are you gonna is every day... Are you just gonna be sad and sorrowful, and are you just gonna be, you know, distraught every day of your life from here on?
Charlie:And even though I made the decision at that moment that, Lord, I'm gonna move forward, I still had terrible days. We're seventeen years out. And, of course, we don't have those kind of days as often, but there can be a moment where I just start questioning. But I know I know I'm careful not to go down some of those same rabbit holes, you know, that that just put me into deep depression and put me into questioning everything. Although I gotta admit, sometimes sometimes my mind wants to go there.
Charlie:But, but I just have to really, you know, put a guard on my heart, put a guard on my heart, on my mind rather, and a guard on my words and and think good thoughts. You know, think in Philippians, think upon those things that are good and lovely and a good report. And, you know, again, Jill said it earlier in Ecclesiastes, there is a time for grieving, is a time for mourning, and we need to be respect those times and give allow ourselves time to heal. And you know, we didn't get here overnight where we're at today, where we're speaking from. It took us
Jill:That's for
Charlie:sure. Seventeen years to get here. And, yes, we're better, but we have compassion beyond words for those of you who are in the beginning days of this grief journey because it is hard, very hard. So our hearts really go out to you.
Jill:Yes. They do. And we hope that this today has been helpful to you. It's it's not an easy road that you're walking, but but we're hoping to share some things along the way that that'll just make it a little easier. So a lot of what we shared today is in a new book that we're coming out with this year.
Jill:It's called You Are Not Alone. And it's a companion for the early days and difficult days of grief. And it's just a little under 100 pages, a little book that'll just be there for you to help just when you need encouragement, just to help you along. And also, we're coming out. It might be out by the time this airs.
Jill:I'm not sure. But later this month, we are launching a brand new video course that we've put together. And it's eight lessons, and you can watch it online, and it's called walking through loss. What's the subtitle? Grieving Honestly and Knowing the God of all comfort.
Jill:Job. Something like that. It's real close to that. But that launches at the end of September. So please make sure you're on our email list.
Jill:And we'll let you know when these are available. And we just want to help you. So stay in touch with us and share this with someone you believe it would be a help to and, sign up to subscribe, check the little the little bell so you don't miss a podcast. And it's just been our honor to share with you today and and be a part of your journey of recovery from a life altering loss.
Charlie:Yes, it has. And don't forget our book. This still has the one that we have out. It still has been such a help to so many people. It's packed with powerful, powerful things to help you get through your loss.
Charlie:We have a lot of music CDs, of course, on our website and another Resource. Yeah. Resource that's called the god of all comfort. It's a USB that has a powerful teaching on it. It has a song on it that we did called the god of all comfort, the lyrics, a down...
Charlie:Lots of downloadable things on here, scriptures, and just a lot of encouraging things in this god of all comfort USB. So we encourage you to just go to our website and see all the free resources we have there just to encourage you, videos and blogs, and, we believe it'll really encourage you.
Jill:And all those links will be down below so you can check them out.
Charlie:Yes. So God bless you. We sure do love you. We're praying for you regularly. Thanks so much, and we'll see you next time.