Episode 83
Every Journey Is Different, Part 1: Shared Loss, Separate Paths

Jill:
00:10

Hi. We’re Charlie and Jill LeBlanc, and this is the Finding Hope podcast, Getting Through What You Never Asked For. And we’re so grateful that you’ve joined us here today. We’ve got a a really great, recording that we wanna share with you.

Charlie:
00:24

Yeah. We, we had the privilege of being on Butch and Julianne Hartman’s weekly show. Actually, they have a daily show. It’s called Healing Journeys Today. And they asked us to minister on Fridays for four times within a month.

Charlie:
00:41

And so we’ve already shared with you healing journeys, the first one that we did, the second one what we did, and this is the third one. And we’re going to break it up into two, actually, because they’re about an hour long. But, this one we talked about each journey being different. Grief is very unique. And when you go through it, everybody’s journey is just a little bit different.

Charlie:
01:04

And we have to respect those differences.

Jill:
01:07

Right. There are commonalities.

Charlie:
01:09

Yeah.

Jill:
01:09

But just like each person is different, we all have different fingerprints. The iris is in our eye. There are no two alike. And a grief journey is different because our souls are unique to us, and they’ve all experienced different things in life. So someone’s grief journey will also be unique or different.

Jill:
01:33

So we want to talk about some of these things.

Charlie:
01:35

Yeah. So just go ahead and get yourself ready, whether you’re on EarPods or in your car or watching on YouTube, whatever. We just pray that this really does minister to you. Thanks so much for listening.

Jill:
01:50

Hello, everyone. Hi. We’ve got a series we’ve been teaching for the last couple weeks. This is episode three and it’s all about Jesus healing broken hearts.

Charlie:
02:02

Amen. You know the scripture tells us in Psalms one forty seven:three, it says He heals broken hearts and He binds up their wounds.

Jill:
02:13

Yeah, thank God.

Charlie:
02:14

And then we see in Psalm 34 that the Lord is close to the broken hearted. People think, well God doesn’t like you when you’re not happy. No, when you’re broken hearted he’s very close to you. And then also everyone’s familiar with Luke four eighteen and Isaiah 61 where Jesus quotes Isaiah and he says, I’ve come to bring good news to the poor and he includes in there healing the broken hearted and then of course he goes on to say in Isaiah 61 that he comforts those who mourn. As we said last week, you know, the ministry of Jesus includes not only physical healing which we’re so grateful for but it also includes inner healing.

Charlie:
02:58

It includes the healing of broken hearts which is really an amazing thing. Know, I was thinking as I was reading over the notes that if your heart is broken, then your body will be broken.

Jill:
03:14

That’s so true.

Charlie:
03:15

And you know we know all medically speaking that if you have stress and if you’re broken hearted and you’re beat down all the time, that that affects your physical body like crazy.

Jill:
03:28

It affects your immune system. It affects just your… You know, when we have a positive outlook, it energizes our cellular structure. And when we have broken, you know, broken emotions and we’re overcome with sadness, grief, anger, stress, it just shuts all the life flow down.

Charlie:
03:53

Yes.

Jill:
03:53

I mean, it’s been proven over and over again.

Charlie:
03:56

Yeah. It sure has. But however, we know that the scripture also tells us that there is a time to weep and there is a time to rejoice. There’s a time to mourn and there’s a time to be okay. And so this is some of the things that we’re addressing.

Charlie:
04:13

Although we realize mourning and grieving is part of what happens to you when you lose a loved one, but also we know the importance of not staying there. So that’s why we’re teaching this series on how god heals broken hearts and the importance of it and a lot of it is simply allowing people to walk through it with love and patience. Yes. And also you know, everyone does it differently. We’re going to talk a lot about that but just not pressuring people and loving people.

Charlie:
04:47

As they go through these painful separations of their children or their mother or their father, brother, spouse, dad, mom. We ran across a young man just this last weekend. We were in the Dallas area ministering. I went to a funeral and also ministered on Sunday morning. This young man, lung worship leader, we’re just setting up and tearing down and talking.

Charlie:
05:09

All of a sudden, he tells me that he lost his dad in 2020. And I was just like, Oh my gosh, it broke my heart. And his heart was broken and he said, It’s really tough, Charlie. This was four years later, he just said, still really tough. We remember three, four years, five years out, now we’re 15, but we remember how hard it was in those early days.

Charlie:
05:34

I mean, if you haven’t been there, it’s hard to comprehend comprehend it. It. Okay. It’s hard to understand unless you’ve been there. Yeah.

Charlie:
05:43

But the important thing of our time here is to let you know that Jesus will heal a broken heart. That’s He will heal your broken heart and if you’re someone who doesn’t need your heart healed, I wanna encourage you that that you can be a blessing to others and help. That’s right. Help them heal but if you’re listening today, it’s probably because you have some sort of a need whether it be physical healing or a heart healing or something. Proverbs four tells us out of the abundance of the heart, actually I’m I’m getting them those are mixed up.

Charlie:
06:16

It says, it says, for out of your, out of your heart flows the issues of life and so your heart needs to be whole and healthy for your life to flow out of it in abundance. Amen. God doesn’t withhold but many times we stop him from doing all that he wants to do in our lives. So, praise god. Yeah.

Charlie:
06:40

So, I wanted to read a scripture. I’ve read it before. Was second Corinthians three-four, a banner scripture, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. So this is something that want, our heart is to encourage the body of Christ in general to really see God as a God of compassion and a God of comfort. I don’t think we always see Him that way.

Charlie:
07:10

Sometimes we see him as stern. We see him as rebuking and we see him as straighten up and you know, where’s your faith and so forth but he’s a god of compassion and the god of all comfort who comforts us in all of our tribulations so that we can comfort others with the same comfort where we’re in. Thank you lord. We have been comforted of god. So.

Jill:
07:31

So powerful.

Charlie:
07:32

Jill and I, you know, fifteen years later, we can say that god has been healing our heart. We’re stronger than we’ve ever been after losing our son fifteen years ago to cancer after a nine month battle. You know, know many of you were saying, what happened? Because you just tuned in and you weren’t maybe on the last episodes but we lost our son to cancer. Nine months of praying and believing hoping and expecting and yet we lost him and he’s in heaven right now and and yes, that’s good news but man, was it hard.

Charlie:
08:01

It was a hard journey. Yeah. But I do thank god that god was close to us as it says, he’s close to the brokenhearted and he rescues those who are crushed in spirit and that’s another, you know, great scripture that we talk about so often is that a bruised reed, he will not break and a dimly burning wick, he will not put out. Praise god.

Jill:
08:25

Thank god.

Charlie:
08:25

That you know, when you’re bruised, when you’re hurting, when your flame is just barely hanging in there, trust me, god won’t blow it out. He’ll sit there and just love on you and nurture you until you become stronger and more whole and your heart becomes healed.

Jill:
08:43

I wanted to say something about that. We wrote a song from that scripture in Isaiah forty two three way before we ever lost our son.

Charlie:
08:53

Right.

Jill:
08:53

I mean, probably ten years before or Right. Or… Yeah. Probably something like that. Mhmm.

Jill:
09:00

And because it’s true for everyone. It’s it’s true in any kind of situation that you have faced. God will… He is walking with you. He is carrying you through those hard times.

Charlie:
09:12

Yeah.

Jill:
09:13

And he will not let you down. He will hold you close and bring you through. He’s just so faithful.

Charlie:
09:20

Praise

Jill:
09:21

God. You can trust him.

Charlie:
09:22

Yes.

Jill:
09:23

Even though you might think it’s like, oh gosh, how am I ever gonna get through this? It might not be anything physical. It might be a relationship or, you know, something with your career or God knows whatever it is you’re facing. But he will be there with you and carry you and not let you fail, not let you fall. He’s holding you close.

Charlie:
09:50

That’s right. You know, we’re grateful to god and how he helped us through our journey. Mhmm. But we are aware that everybody’s journey is different.

Jill:
10:02

It’s

Charlie:
10:02

true. Everybody’s healing journey is different. Even in physical healing as well as in spiritual. I mean we know that it all is through Jesus. That’s all in common.

Charlie:
10:13

But the way we get there is unique. In fact I’ve studied physical healing quite a bit and listened to some of the testimonies here on Healing Journeys and I’m thinking, Wow, they did this and they did that. I mean there are some commonalities amongst them.

Jill:
10:31

Yeah.

Charlie:
10:31

But they all went through a different journey.

Jill:
10:34

Mhmm.

Charlie:
10:34

And in the same way, when god is healing your broken heart, we’ve seen so many. We know what our experience was but we’ve seen so many have a have a very

Jill:
10:44

unique Excuse me. I just need walk a Sorry. God bless you.

Charlie:
10:50

They all walk a different path for sure. Yeah. You know, this is important that we that we look at that.

Jill:
10:58

Totally. Yeah. I mean, like in our situation, you know, we both lost a son, but our relationships, his and mine were different from each other’s. And so his loss of the same person was different than my loss because the relationships are different. Right.

Jill:
11:20

And then our personalities are different.

Charlie:
11:22

Right.

Jill:
11:23

And so you you can’t just just put everyone into the same mold and this is how it goes when someone loses a loved one or someone goes through a really hard time. This is how, you know, if they’re not acting like this then they’re fine or whatever. There are so many different unique journeys Yeah. For people walking through hard times.

Charlie:
11:44

And having said that, a lot of people hide how they really feel.

Jill:
11:48

Yeah. That’s true too.

Charlie:
11:49

Most people do actually in reality. So… Yeah. But, yeah, you know, a scripture that blesses me is Psalm fifty six eight where the Lord says, you… It says, you keep track of my sorrows, and you have collected all my tears in your bottle.

Charlie:
12:06

You’ve recorded each one in your book. I just love that thought because it says, you keep track of my sorrows. So like, I may not understand your journey, and your journey is gonna be different than mine, but guess who knows? Hallelujah. He he keeps one of your tears, everyone of your sorrows.

Charlie:
12:23

He keeps track of them, and he keeps your tears in a bottle. So that’s a real encouraging scripture.

Jill:
12:30

Yeah. Yeah. So much.

Charlie:
12:31

Rabbi Gromman, I I don’t know if you you

Jill:
12:35

We probably haven’t mentioned him much yet.

Charlie:
12:37

No. Yeah. Tell a little

Jill:
12:38

So rabbi. Rabbi Earl Grohlman, he was an amazing man of god. And I don’t know for sure that he was born again before he passed away, but I can’t imagine that he wasn’t. He was so in touch and in tune with the Lord,

Charlie:
12:52

with the

Jill:
12:53

voice of the Lord speaking to him. He kind of got thrusted into grief ministry when he was just getting started as a rabbi. He was living in New York, and I think it was the bombing that took place in the World Trade Center years ago. And and he… All of a sudden, he’s he’s just helping all these people that lost loved ones, and and it just kinda kept going from there.

Jill:
13:20

And so he he wrote a fabulous book that really helped us early on. It’s called… Living

Charlie:
13:29

When a Loved One Dies.

Jill:
13:32

Has died.

Charlie:
13:32

Yeah. Living When a Loved One Has Died. It was a great book. You know, in our loss and in a lot of people who go into shock when they lose a loved one, not everyone does, but when you lose someone like we did, a child in his prime and so many dear people have lost their children and our hearts break, break for those who have. But you’re kind of in shock, and well meaning people will give you these big thick books on heaven, or all these big things.

Charlie:
14:08

Thing that we liked about Rabbi Earl Grumman’s book was that it was thin and it was real spacious.

Jill:
14:17

Yeah, not a lot of words

Charlie:
14:18

on a when page. You’re hurting that bad and when you’re in such trauma, you just need little spoonfuls, little teaspoons of love and help. And so that really blessed us. But he said this, and I really appreciated some of his sayings in the book. We quote a number of them in our book, but it says, There’s no way to predict how you will feel.

Charlie:
14:43

The reactions of grief are not like recipes with given ingredients and certain results. Each person mourns in a different way. Grief is universal, at the same time it is extremely personal. I just love that because, you know, I know what’s going on in my heart when I’m in pain, but I don’t know all that’s going on in Jill’s heart. Vice versa, know.

Charlie:
15:09

We feel we know, we want to know, we want to help each other, but we just can’t understand the depths of the pain. In fact that just keeps pulling me to a scripture that I was going to say later, but I’m going to try to find it now because it’s really, really a good one. I hope I can find it without taking too much time. But it basically says that no one can understand the depths of your pain. So don’t even try to make them understand it.

Charlie:
15:44

There you go. Thank you. Five verse fourteen ten in the new… In the TPT rather, the the the Passion Translation. He says, don’t expect anyone else to fully understand both the bitterness and the joys of all you experience in your life.

Charlie:
16:01

Yeah. It’s just an amazing thought to me is is don’t don’t expect people to fully understand you. Mhmm. It’s okay that they don’t. God does.

Charlie:
16:11

Hallelujah. Yeah. That’s what’s so important. And you know, yes, you want to be understood and you want people to understand your pain but you know what? You know, it’s okay.

Charlie:
16:19

Just know that god holds you in the palm of his hand. And that he cares and he understands the fact the scripture says, he’s touched with the feelings of our infirmities. I love that New King James version. Touched with the feelings of our infirmities. He’s touched with our weaknesses.

Charlie:
16:39

He feels our weaknesses. Mhmm. I just love that thought.

Jill:
16:44

Yeah. And I I wanted to

Charlie:
16:45

god knows.

Jill:
16:46

Yeah. It’s so true. And I was just thinking of, you know, there’s so many people that that have a long… Like, couples that have a long life together. And then one becomes ill, and the other one takes care of them over the months and sometimes much more than that.

Jill:
17:05

And then finally, they pass away. And it’s it’s such a mixed bag of emotions because the one that’s been caring for their spouse that they love dearly, it’s a… You know, all of a sudden they’re gone and so there… There’s… On one hand, there’s a relief because you don’t have to just care for them constantly and just wonder and you know it’s so, it’s very difficult on the primary caregivers.

Jill:
17:32

And so that’s been lifted off of you all of a sudden. And so you’re not sure if you should be happy or not. And then… But then on the flip side, they love them… So they’re they’re glad they’re gone for them, for their loved one because they’re not suffering anymore.

Jill:
17:51

And then they don’t have to just spend all of their waking moments and all of their energies caring for them, which they would do it in a heartbeat, you know, if if they could could could continue on one hand, know, it’s just so mixed up and then and then then they miss them after they’re gone. All of a sudden they’re alone, you know, maybe they were just, you know, empty nesters and and and now that person is gone completely and they go home to an empty house except for the Lord being there with them. And so if you’re in that condition, we just want you to know first of all, you’re not going crazy.

Charlie:
18:31

Yeah.

Jill:
18:31

You are normal and the Lord is walking with you through this time and it is difficult because there’s so many different sides of the coin you can be looking on and and… Yeah. But Jesus is right there with you to heal your broken heart and to help you through this time. Yeah. I’m thinking of one friend of ours in particular whose husband died, I think, about two and a half years ago now.

Jill:
18:57

And she had been caring for him for, gosh, years. He had been in and out with with sarcoma cancer, and and there were times that he was much better, but there were times that he was much worse. And so… But near the end, it was pretty bad. And and so once he was gone, it was a relief for him especially, but a relief for her.

Jill:
19:20

But then she missed him so much and she called us like, I forget, six to eight months after he passed away and she was a strong believer and she said, I just can’t stop crying. What’s wrong with me? I know he’s in heaven and I know God is is here with me but I just can’t stop crying. And it’s because we love them and we miss them and that’s just another another way to express grief is through tears. And it’s not wrong to miss your loved one that you lived with for almost fifty years.

Jill:
19:55

You know, there’s nothing wrong with that at all. So I just wanted to affirm some of you that may be walking through that that that you you will get stronger. You will heal more as the time goes on, but just be kind to yourself and know that Jesus is walking with you, and he doesn’t condemn you. Right. He’s there with you through all this.

Charlie:
20:23

Amen. And, you know, we’re gonna get into a lot more of this as we go into these teachings, but it’s like there’s no rush. As Jill said, take your time. As we said last week, Andrew, Womack, and Jamie were so kind to us to say take as much time as you need because we don’t want you coming back to lead worship until you’re ready, until you have this healing of your heart, your brokenness is better. So that was such a blessing.

Charlie:
20:55

Found this quote from Stephanie Sarkis and she said, No timetable… There is no. There’s no timetable for grief. Anyone that tells you there is doesn’t know grief.

Jill:
21:09

Doesn’t know your grief.

Charlie:
21:10

Yeah. Doesn’t know your grief. Right. And that’s back to what we were talking about before about, you know, your journeys. And yeah, you know, it’s like there’s a little timetable.

Charlie:
21:19

Like some people get over it quickly. I see some men, they lose their spouse and within a year they’ve got a date. Some of them make a joke and say…

Jill:
21:27

Some of are married within

Charlie:
21:28

a year. Know. Some of them make a joke and say they come to their wife’s funeral with their date, you know, and stuff like this. Everybody’s different in the way they process things, we can’t judge people for that, their journeys. But at the same time, we’ve seen people really grieve for a long time, as we did, and I’m just being transparent.

Charlie:
21:52

We grieved, we hurt, we had broken hearts for a long time and still, if I just sit here and think about Bovee and think about what we missed, I think about how wonderful he is. My heart just begins to weep and I could I could easily cry. I cry quite often still. But you know, there’s no timetable for it, know. In fact, we will take Bovee with us to our grave.

Charlie:
22:15

I mean, we… And then we’ll see him face to face. But, you know, it’s like…

Jill:
22:19

In our hearts.

Charlie:
22:19

He’s with us. He’s part of us, you know. I mean… And he’s in our hearts at all times. So so, you know, there’s

Jill:
22:27

no longer get spooky. We’re not, you know, it’s not like… It’s… Yeah. It’s not weird.

Jill:
22:32

But

Charlie:
22:32

Yeah. Yeah.

Jill:
22:33

He’s just in our… He’s in our heart.

Charlie:
22:36

Part of our lives. Yes. It just… He’s…

Jill:
22:38

Yeah. As as your loved one Sure. Is as well.

Charlie:
22:41

Would be. Yeah. So So, anyway, yeah, you know, you know, everybody grieves differently. And and, you know, one thing that we forget quite often often is that our loved ones grieve. Had two daughters that were just the life was sucked out of them.

Charlie:
23:01

The pain was beyond words. I talked a little bit a couple of weeks ago about how they cried and wept and wailed when they lost their brother. And the pain continues to live on and on. Their journey is different than our journey. And we respect their journeys.

Charlie:
23:23

I had to respect Jill’s journey. She had to respect my journey. There were some things that Jill loved that I didn’t understand that were hard for me. We’re going to talk more about our daughters here in a minute, there were things that she experienced that would minister to her like looking at certain pictures of that when I looked at them it just made me more and more, it made me hurt more. I just didn’t want to see those pictures because it just amplified how great of a kid he was and he was.

Charlie:
23:55

And yet that really ministered just a lot of peace and a lot of love to Jill. Now today I love looking at pictures of Bovee, but at the beginning it was hard for me to look. But I would respect Jill’s journey, and Jill and Tammy would sometimes look at pictures, I would just sit back and go praise God, you know. But I wouldn’t necessarily get involved because

Jill:
24:17

And Cherry was more like you were too in the beginning.

Charlie:
24:21

Yeah. She

Jill:
24:22

didn’t like to look at the pictures.

Charlie:
24:24

Yeah. Exactly. Hello again, everybody. This is Charlie, and Jill and I just wanna say a special thank you for joining us on this latest podcast episode. And we want to remind you, we actually have a new episode every Tuesday.

Charlie:
24:39

So come and join us on all of these. And if you could, share them with your friends, give us a thumbs up, follow us, however you can. It’ll help us reach more people, and that’s our heart. And we also wanna encourage you that we have a website that will really help you. We have grief resources.

Charlie:
24:58

We have music, lots of music that’ll really bless you. So we encourage you to sign up on our mailing list, and, there’s free resources if you do, free songs, lots of good stuff there as well. So God bless you, and thanks again for joining us.