Episode 69
Our Story. Our Song. Pt 2: Choosing to Believe

Charlie:
00:09

Hi, and welcome to another episode of Finding Hope, Getting Through What You Never Asked For. We’re honored and privileged to come into your home and to your heart to share situations in life that, that are very difficult, and we’re hoping that our ministry has helped you get through difficult times.

Jill:
00:31

Yes.

Charlie:
00:32

Yeah. And so this, episode, we’re going back into the second half of the My Story, My Song interview that we had on the GTN network with Christ Bovee. It was a very special time.

Jill:
00:48

It was. Was an incredible privilege to get to be part of that. And so last week, I hope you got to watch the first half. And if not, we encourage you to go back and see. You might have learned a couple of new things that you hadn’t heard before.

Jill:
01:06

But this time, the interview continues, and we’ll be doing some more singing and, sharing some more of our story.

Charlie:
01:15

Yeah. A couple more songs that are professionally recorded and professional video recorded. So if you do get a chance to see this on YouTube, they have a beautiful set, and, and they just did a great job of filming this. So God bless you as you sit back and listen. We pray that these words will bless you and help you.

Christi:
01:38

I was gonna ask how did this loss impact your songwriting? I mean, it obviously impacted your your faith and your belief. Absolutely. Everything was upside down

Charlie:
01:47

a Yes. Little

Christi:
01:48

So, what happened to the songwriting during that time?

Jill:
01:51

Well, it went dormant for a while, and then, just as the years went on and we began to heal a little more, the Lord would show us, again, us things in the Word, in the Bible, just as we would spend time with Him. It’s possible that one of the first songs that I wrote after that time may have been Choose To Believe. Oh, Talk about that song. And it was just, you know, it was such a hard recovery time, eventually we almost got to where we just had to choose that we were gonna press on. It’s like, you know, the Lord spoke to Charlie early on with, are you gonna lead me to, you know, and he said, no Lord, you have the words of eternal life.

Jill:
02:37

Well, that was early on, but we had to live that out.

Christi:
02:39

Right.

Jill:
02:40

And so eventually it became a place we had to decide, we’re gonna stick with Jesus, you know, and we know He’s gonna bring us through, and we don’t know a whole lot else, but we’re just gonna hang tight with Him. And he just began to drop this verse inside of me that said, I choose to believe even when my prayers seem unanswered. I choose to believe when the lies look like the truth, and the lies like, you know, God let your son die, it was the Lord’s will for for him, you know, whatever. And that was a lie, but it looked like the truth, but regardless, I know it’s a lie and I’m gonna choose to believe God, and I choose to believe when the mountain doesn’t move. In spite of the pain, oh Lord, I believe the best of you.

Jill:
04:40

And everything around Comes crashing to the ground. I’ll choose to believe In faith we believed and stood on every godly word. We thought that we would see I’ll choose to believe when my prayers seem unanswered. I’ll choose to believe when the lies

Jill:
09:47

So, the Lord put that inside of me and I wrote it out and I think that was probably one of the first songs I wrote afterwards, but it was a few years later, and then we’ve written others since then that have just been things He’s ministered to us that we knew would help other people as well.

Charlie:
10:08

When I heard her sing that song on piano one day, I mean, I went I about fell over, but I said, we have got to get this song out because it is so powerful, and and the bridge of the song says, what I experienced, they may call me a fool for not turning away from you, you know, but where else could I go, For for I know that it’s true that only you can heal a broken soul, you know, that’s the bridge of the song, and and I I was I don’t remember if I was weeping or whatever, but I was in shock when I heard her sing this song, and I knew it was gonna really minister to a lot of people. And, you know, just pouring over the word, we’ve written so many songs through our life of just just being in the word of God and it something would jump out at us, and so we would get a melody to it and just go for it. So as you said, this this changed our life forever, and really eventually, and I say eventually, the word of God begin to just become more real to us than ever, because at first I had a hard time reading the red letters about Jesus healing this person and healing this person and healing this person.

Charlie:
11:21

I was just like my brain, which, you know, the enemy, the spiritual warfare of just, you’re a loser, you’re never gonna make it, God is not faithful, you’re the man of the house, you should have gotten him healed. Oh, I mean, the bombardment of of hell on our brains and family. And early on, by the way, and I I missed saying some of this earlier, but that we were made aware that the enemy really was trying to destroy us and trying to destroy our ministry and try to destroy the rest of our kids, and we had one pastor say, Charlie, you know, a lot of couples that lose children have a hard time in their marriages and sometimes end up in divorce because, when you’re hurting, you want her to help you, and when she’s hurting, she wants me to help her, but when you’re both hurting, you can’t get the comfort you need sometimes, although God really helped us because like she said earlier, we determined to just love each other and be patient with each other. We were aware, you know, be not ignorant of the devil’s devices. We were aware that he was out to destroy us as well, and there were many times when I just had to just cast down imaginations and just fight the good fight of faith and just say, no, I rebuke you devil.

Charlie:
12:40

I will not listen to this junk. You know, God is good, and and we do have a future and a hope and, you know, things like this. But anyway, so the songs, these these scriptures begin to bounce off of the word of God. I wrote this song called God of All Comfort, coming out of that second Corinthians one, understanding pain, understanding Paul’s pain more. I’ve gotten closer to the Apostle Paul than I ever have in my life now, just to see understanding his trials and his beatings and his pain and the beautiful show that they’ve done here at Carus, you know, with to to live is Christ, to die Yes.

Charlie:
13:19

Is I mean, really seeing all the trials and tribulations that Paul went through. Because the the fallacy is to think that because because you’re a Christian and because you’re in faith and because you you love Jesus and because you know the word of God that nothing ever wrong is gonna go in your life. But that’s not necessarily true, and the apostle Paul is a perfect example. And in fact, the whole Bible is a perfect example of great men and women of God that had terrible, terrible situations happen to them. Those are the kind of things that come alive to you when you’ve been through this kind of tragedy.

Charlie:
13:53

You just see that you’re not alone.

Jill:
13:54

Yes.

Charlie:
13:55

And I like the New Living Translation in Romans eight, he says, does it mean that God no longer loves us? Paul’s writing, you know, it says, does it mean he no longer loves us if we go through trials and tribulations and beatings and shipwrecks and, you know, and starving and nakedness and peril and swords, you know? No. He said, no. You know, God is for us.

Charlie:
14:14

Who can be against us? You know, it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love us. In fact, when we go through these things, he loves us even more. He’s with us even more. He’s in the middle of our pain.

Charlie:
14:24

He comforts us. He holds us. He he walks with us, and through all these difficulties. So even when we’re weak and in pain, Jesus has become so much more real to us and become so strong in our hearts and lives as a result of this.

Christi:
18:50

Do you ever get over losing someone that you love?

Jill:
18:55

I remember early on, we we saw someone a few months afterwards and he’s and he just laid his hand on us and just prayed for us and he said, you know what, I think you guys are about 75% through the grief process. Like, what do you know? Because that that was just so silly, mean, you know, people, they mean well, they don’t want us to hurt and, you know, we, but you just don’t get over it, especially that soon, you know, and again it depends on the type of loss, if it’s an older parent that’s been ill for a long time, you know, that’s okay, let, you know, yeah, but,

Charlie:
19:39

yeah You have a whole chapter in the book about that getting over that terminology, right?

Jill:
19:45

Yeah. Yeah. Do.

Charlie:
19:46

We we go through it, but we don’t ever really fully get over it. I mean, we we never we’ll never forget Paul. Of course, God doesn’t want us to forget him. He’s a beautiful person, and we know where he is. We know but but as far as getting over it, I mean, he has a place in our heart forever.

Jill:
20:03

Yeah, I was thinking, as you were talking, I was just thinking, even before you asked the question, I thought, you know, we will never not miss him. I mean, we miss him more than ever because it’s been fifteen and a half years since we’ve seen him, and so we miss him more now, you know, we miss him so much, and then just all the memories, and you know, something that hit me early on was like, I’ll never have a daughter-in-law, I’ll never get to see his children. And I just started thinking of all these things that because he’s gone, I will never get to experience these things in my life and those were very painful just to come across those realities. But, you know, okay, so almost sixteen years later, we’re so much better than we were, but we’ll never be over it. It’s something we’re going to live with the rest of our lives, we will always live with the fact that we that our son died, but but yet, we don’t cry as much as we used to, we laugh, we can be silly, you know, we carry on, but there are those tender times that are just there, because he was a big part of our lives, and we’ve heard it said so many times, the more you loved, the more you hurt when they’re gone.

Jill:
21:26

And that’s okay. You know, we still have a wonderful relationship with our with the Lord, with Jesus, it’s very vibrant, and it’s probably closer we are probably closer with the Lord than we ever were before now.

Charlie:
21:40

Not

Jill:
21:40

not right in the beginning, but but definitely now, because we’ve learned about His love and compassion that we never experienced before. We’ll never be over it, but but we can grow through it, the Lord can show us things and make life beautiful.

Charlie:
22:02

I think we’re better. I think we’re better. We are much better than we were before, because we understand pain now. Yeah. Yeah.

Charlie:
22:11

We didn’t understand it. I think, I don’t want to keep talking about Joyce, but I remember after what she had been through, I remember her holding her Bible and saying, I could never have survived without this Bible. I can’t survive without Jesus in front of thousands of women, and and I can remember thinking, well, I love Jesus and and I love his word, but she’s just there’s something there about her that that deeper than what I’ve experienced, and I didn’t realize it was connected to the pain and the tragedy that she had been through. And so now for us, singing and worshiping and worshiping, you know, we just we have that intimacy with God because we know our son is in heaven with Jesus, you know, and and there’s just something about, you know, just just the depth that of that pain just makes the reality of his love and his and his his just his reality more real than ever. And one thing that the Lord did show Jill is that the one thing that we can still do with our son is worship.

Charlie:
23:15

And so, you know, we’re reminded of that every now and then, not not often, but but every now and then when we’re worshiping God, we’re reminded of the fact that that Bo is something we can do with him because we’d certainly know that our loved one, Beau, and others that have loved ones that that are with Jesus, that we can worship the Lord together, you know, and Beau would want us to, and we have stories we don’t have time to tell, but of of of, you know, the Lord ministering very clearly that Bo is worshipping with us.

Christi:
23:46

What do you think Bo’s legacy is? What is Bo’s legacy?

Jill:
23:53

Well, I think, you know, what the enemy meant for harm, God is turning around for good, and when we knew that Beau was called to the ministry from even before he was born, and, you know, just all through the years we’ve received confirmation over and over, and so his life was cut short, and he didn’t get to fully go into ministry. Yeah. But now he’s speaking from the grave as they say.

Charlie:
24:28

Yeah.

Jill:
24:28

We would never have gone into a ministry like this. I mean, maybe we would have if the Lord would have just arrested us and say, okay, I want you to start learning about, you know, helping people that are suffering from loss and all this, I don’t know, but I kinda don’t think we would have, but here we are. And and, you know, the Bible says, speak up for those that can’t speak up for themselves. And people get intimidated to live out their their grief, they feel like they’re unspiritual or they’re spiritually immature if they grieve, they’ve there’s just so many misconceptions in the body of Christ towards people that are hurting in these ways. And so I believe Bo’s legacy is the fact that because he is with Jesus now, and we are able to share these stories and what the Lord has done through us, that we are helping a lot of people that had no hope, that were hurting and had to hide when they wanted to grieve.

Jill:
25:42

They couldn’t grieve among friends or at church without others thinking, wow, they really need to pull it together.

Christi:
25:51

Right. We have a few minutes left, would you just look into the camera over here and talk to the people who are still watching, are just hanging on your every word, their hearts are broken right now, talk to them briefly and pray, pray for them.

Charlie:
26:07

Okay, well, I would just say that, you know, number one, we love you and God loves you, and I know that sometimes that addiction can be really trivial, but he really does, and in your pain, he understands pain, Jesus understands pain, and and he understands heartache. The scripture says that he’s touched with the feelings of our infirmities. He understands your pain, and I think that’s one of the most important things I want people to understand, and I want you to understand is that Jesus walks with you through pain, and he holds you, and your tears are precious Don’t to be afraid to pour your heart out to Jesus. I think the terrible thing is that is is to run away from God in these moments, and we want to run away from God, but don’t run away from him. Run to him, and and don’t be embarrassed to cry and and and pour your heart out to him because he cares, and he will hold you in these difficult moments of your life.

Charlie:
27:12

So there’s so much more we could share, but we just want you to know that we love you and we understand, and we’re just gonna pray. Father, we pray for these dear, precious ones, God. We know how much they hurt, God, when they lose a loved one, a child, a father, a mother, brother, sister, God, aunt or uncle, whoever they were the closest to, God. This pain, Father, is so sometimes so unbearable. But father, we know that your heart and your comfort is there to comfort them, God, to help them get through this pain, God.

Charlie:
27:46

And to help them see color again, to see light again on the other side of this dark tunnel that they may be in. Father, we pray for your comfort overcome them, for your peace to overcome them, Lord. Your your your and even your joy somehow, God, to bring joy out of this this sorrow, Father. You’ve done that for us in time, Beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning. God, we don’t expect it right away, but Lord, we know that you do turn things around as you did for us.

Charlie:
28:16

So God, we pray that you help them get through this difficult time. We know you are, we know you will, and we bless them in the name of Jesus.

Jill:
28:25

Yes. Amen. Amen.

Christi:
28:27

Charlie and Jill LeBlanc, thank you so much for just the gold that is being mined out of you, for such a time as this, when loss comes close to home, you can get this resource on their website, charlieandjill.com, as well as the beautiful songs that you’ve heard today, they have free resources for people going through loss of any kind, and you need this in your life. If you’ve continued to watch this long, loss maybe has come close to your home, and we have people standing by right now who would just be so honored to listen to your story, and to love on you just a little bit. Won’t you give us a call, (719) 635-1111. They’re standing by right now to love, not to fix, like Charlie was saying, just to love you through this very difficult time, and to remind you Jesus is near.

Jill:
29:24

We hope this was a blessing for you. We were extremely blessed to be part of it. Yes. And we know that the songs, they’re from the Lord, and we trust that He used those to minister to your heart as well.

Charlie:
29:41

Yes. And you know, you can get these songs on our CDs on our website. I say CDs, a lot of people don’t even use CDs anymore. But the last two songs, very, very powerful songs, called Choose to Believe is on our CD called Your Love Remains. And you can actually download it on our website, charlieandjill.com.

Charlie:
30:04

You can get the song, you can do one song, you can do the whole album because there’s actually another song. The last song we did was called God of All Comfort, and that’s on this CD as well. So you might as well just download the whole CD and really get blessed because it’s got some And great

Jill:
30:20

stuff

Charlie:
30:21

on the first half of the interview that we did last week, we did a song called, A Bruised Reed that was very special to me. Once after we lost our son, it became real to me. It’s on our Beautiful Hope CD. And again, you can download that one song. But again, I think you should just do the whole thing because it’ll really, really bless you.

Charlie:
30:43

And we have other music CDs. We actually have a CD interestingly called My Strength, My Song, and this of course show is called My Story, My Song, but this has a lot of very powerful songs on it. One called Glory to the Lamb Forever that people just really, really love. And so, we encourage you to get this one as well. And then, like I said, we’ve a whole library of music on our website and a lot of tools to help grieving people.

Charlie:
31:13

And, that’s our heart in this podcast is to encourage you to get through pain, get through difficulty, get through these hard, hard times, especially when we lose loved ones. People don’t understand how hard that is. And, you know, many of you know, and and Christy advertised it on the interview a lot, but this is our book, Finding Hope. Well, it’s called When Loss Comes Close to Home. The the the subtitle is Finding Hope to Carry On When Death Turns Your World Upside Down.

Charlie:
31:48

And that’s our heart, is to help you to get through the pain of loss and these difficulties. So we thank you for tuning in and being with us. And again, we look forward to next week. Every Tuesday, we drop a new podcast and we really do hope they’ve been a blessing to you. Give us a thumbs up, like it, share it with people, and, we would really appreciate it.

Charlie:
32:15

So God bless you. Have a great rest of your day.