Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick out the darkness until it bleeds daylight. This is Bleeding Daylight with your host Rodney Olsen.
Welcome. Please connect with us on social media, you'll find links at bleedingdaylight.net, where you'll also find many more Bleeding Daylight episodes. You can also help kick out the darkness by sharing Bleeding Daylight with others. My guest today felt unwanted by her family and suffered at the hand of someone she should have been able to trust. We'll hear her story in a moment.
Today's guest is a wife, mother of two and a crazy dog lady, Lisa May LeBlanc has finally found the voice and courage to tell the stories that marked her life for many years. Her book The ninth child is a raw and revealing memoir, which uncovers growing up as the youngest child in our large farm family. She tells how she was impacted by religious legalism and abuse, leading to a struggle with depression for most of
her life. It's an honor to welcome her to pleading daylight today. Lisa, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you. It is an honor to be here.
Lisa, there are some parts that are very hard to your life story. But I'm wondering if you can take me back to some of your earliest memories, Paint me a bit of a picture of what family life was like for you in those early days.
Early days, busy, so many people, just being the youngest of nine was sometimes overwhelming. But it was also really great sometimes because I always had a playmate, my next sibling was four years older than me. So when I got old enough to play with, for her, then we were we were good playmates for quite some time. There was always someone to read to me, there was always somebody's lap to sit on.
In the very, very early days, I felt loved. And I felt like I belonged. And I felt like there was a place for me in the world.
So that's the very early years but there was still something going on, I guess in the background and and a lot of that had to do with the church that your family was a part of.
That's correct.
Tell me a little bit about that church.
I grew up IFB, if you know the acronym Independent Fundamental Baptist in rural Minnesota, in the United States in the Upper Midwest. Fundamental culture is very isolating, and it's very demanding. It basically requires you to follow all the rules and to do everything, right. There's a lot of emphasis placed on believing the right things, saying the right thing, thinking the right
thing acting the right way. If you don't act or believe or do things the right way. There's certainly society disapproval, you gain
support and approval, and the right kind of attention from your religious society, from our church community. If you see and do everything that everybody else doesn't does, and it's strict in terms of women never wear pants to church, unless it's cleaning day, then you of course, you're wearing pants because you're crawling around on the floor in your air washing floors and, and things like that,
and you're working hard. So that is allowed, I was allowed to wear jeans to youth group activities, but never ever to a worship service.
So it is quite strict. And it really seems to be based on rules. And we should be quite clear that as people of faith, we expect to behave in certain ways and to try and live to a certain standard. But this is something that goes way beyond that. It's what many might call legalism, isn't it?
Yes, it was very legalistic. That is the correct word for it. Rodney, there wasn't room for grace. There wasn't a lot of room for people to be welcomed. Where they are in the journey that they're at with whatever background that they come from, with whatever their story is, and then have room to learn to change to grow. People got judged. I remember a woman showing up and visiting one of our
services and she was wearing a pantsuit. It was very attractive and it was lovely and it was dressy but it was pants. Everybody just rounded her and walked past her she was not welcomed, or if a man showed up and visited and didn't have the right approved kind of haircut. Maybe he had tattoos. Maybe he had long hair. I remember that happening. He sat in the back, nobody talked to him. We don't approve of you. Because you
look different than us, you dress different than us. They would not be welcomed, and they certainly wouldn't come back. There wasn't space to say, This is me, this is who I am. These are my experiences. And I want to become part of a community. And I want to learn, and I want to grow in my faith, you had to be already grown in your faith in order to fit into our religious community, and the right kind of faith, you had to be the right kind of Baptist.
And I know that the scriptures, we read about Jesus being frowned upon for mixing with the wrong sort of people. It sounds like the people at this church would never be accused of hanging with the wrong sort of people at all.
No, no, in fact, I know of one man, his wife was a member of the church, he came back from war, and he wanted to become an official member of the church. But he was denied because he was seen going into the Legion, the local Veterans Club, where many of the veterans I guess would go, they would play pool, they would drink beer, this man did not drink. He did not swear he didn't do any of those
things. But he went to hang out with his war buddies, his veteran buddies, but because he was seen walking into that establishment, his church membership was denied.
We should say that there would be many well intentioned people there that believe that this is the correct way. And I suppose that your family was there for that reason, believing that? Well, this is the correct way.
Yes, this was our family's church, this was our grandparents church, this is the correct way. This is what they had grown up believing to be true by parents who are raising their children in the same way that they were raised to embrace the same
faith that they embraced, which is normal, I guess, in a way, which is the same thing that I did. So there are a lot of parallels there. But when you lose space for grace, and when people are just expected to follow the rules, and there are no questions asked as to why you might think or say or believe or do something differently. When those questions don't get asked. And the expectations remain. That's when a culture arises that fosters abuse.
There's this very demanding culture that you have in your church. How did that demonstrate itself? How did it spill over into your family life?
Things at home are very different than things when we were at church or in public, which I guess to a certain extent, that's true of all of us, right? An extreme example would be my mother's mental health was not good. When I was young. I was her ninth pregnancy. And the first eight were born in 10 years. So that tells you a lot about what that did to my mother on a physical and mental health and
neurological level. When she found out she was pregnant with me, it basically broke her that her mental health was never the same. So I grew up with a very different mother, I grew up with an angry mother. She was verbally abusive is physically abusive. There were some Sunday mornings when I had to pick a dress to wear to church, I had to be careful to make sure the sleeves were long enough to cover bruises.
Not every time but sometimes, because people can't know what goes on behind closed doors.
Did you have any understanding that, as you say, When your mother was pregnant for the ninth time, that was the thing that broke her and really started to change her? Was that a sense for you that you were part of that? Did you have any understanding? Or was it passed down to you that hey, you're the reason that Mums the way she is?
I did not come to that understanding. Until I became a mother myself. I became a mother through adoption, understanding my own hormonal imbalances, and then looking back and thinking, Oh, my goodness, my poor mom, how difficult this must have been for her. leaning into my friend's pregnancy stories of Oh, my goodness, yeah. This is what a pregnancy does to you. It became pretty clear. On a relational
level, it became my core truth early on, that the family was fine as it was before I came along. I was just not wanted. I wasn't necessarily welcome in the family. My Existence caused disruption to the family. My Existence certainly caused disruption to my mom. It wasn't explicitly said other than just you know, your typical siblings saying, oh, you know, you you're only here because the police dropped you off
on our doorstep and told us that they would arrest it, all of us if we don't keep you kind of thing. Now, these are the kinds of silly things that siblings tell to the youngest all the time. When I was about eight years old, I was fascinated with all things baby Jesus, all things, Mary around Christmas time. And I foolishly asked my mom, what she thought and how she felt when she found out she
was pregnant with me. She was in the middle of doing something in the kitchen. And she turned her head to me and looked at me and said, How do you think I felt the last thing I needed was one more mouth to feed. That was all I needed to hear. That was okay. Enough said I understand everything that my siblings have been telling me that they don't want me okay, I get that. I had hoped that my mom still wanted me. And
there was a piece of me that was crying out for that there was a piece of me that wanted her to say something different. And that kind of killed that hope in me. I have to say the minute that my mom said those words, the look on her face was like, Oh, my goodness, what did I just say? And she tried to backpedal. There was the Oh, with the minute the doctor put you in my arms. And he said, You were the
prettiest of all my babies. And she went on and on. But the damage had already been done. I didn't believe anything that she said after that. And that damaged my core truth about God.
And of course, there's another layer that's going on at this stage, which you really didn't come to terms with AND TO YOU are much older. And that was, as a young child, there was something that went on within that church wasn't there.
Yes, there was a pedophile in our church. Unbeknownst to everybody. He had been grooming and molesting little girls. Nobody knew what that was back, then nobody knew how to spot it. But because of the neglect, emotional neglect that I was feeling at home, I was ripe for a predator. This Deacon would bypass my sisters to get to me to pay attention to me, and to give me special attention and be obvious
about giving me that special attention. And that fed my heart in a way that nothing else had. And at six years old, he created a situation where I ended up going home with them after Sunday service in the morning, spent the afternoon at their house. And he molested me that afternoon.
And I imagine that these predators are actually looking out for the signs of someone who is wanting something deeper, yes, and actually taking advantage of that. And that's what this man was doing.
Pedophiles are actually typically quite intelligent. They look for patterns, and they replicate those patterns. So the pattern that he saw in my family with the older children, was something that had happened before I was born that I had no idea about my grandparents, as I said, also went to that church. So when my older siblings were much younger, and my father's three sisters were still at
home as teenagers, they would keep track of whose turn was it to go to grandma's house today. And on Sundays after church, they would take one of the kids home with them, give my parents a bit of a break, give that child some extra special attention from the onsen from grandpa and grandma. But because of so many children and because my aunt's had since graduated and gone on to college, my grandparents
weren't doing that anymore. That made it plausible that when I went to my mother and said this man, I got invited to go with them this afternoon, spend the afternoon at their house and they will bring me back for the evening service. Please, please, please can I go? And that clicked a familiarity in my mom that Oh, yeah. Which I guess she never got to do that with grandpa and grandmas. So this is kind of the
same thing. And he's a deacon and his wife is there. Pedophiles know how to make themselves very unassuming and very unthreatening. And just because there's a spouse present in the home does not mean it's necessarily a safe situation.
Was there any understanding Do you think from his spouse that this was going on? Was this something that she was just putting up with? Or do you think that she didn't know what was happening?
That's such a good question, Rodney. This is complete speculation. I believe she knew. And I believe that she could not process it, and that her survival as a housewife was tied to her husband. And his ability to provide for her to question it to threaten it would have been a marriage Ender. And then where does she live and how does she survive without a man to provide for her? So I think she just turned
away, turned a blind eye. I think she knew and I think it damaged her. There was something about her that was just always off She was never quite plugged in to reality. I
mentioned that you had buried the remembrance of this event of what happened way back then as a six year old for many years. And then at the age of 23, the memories came back to me about that.
I was newly married, we were poor and in love. And I was waiting for my husband to come home from work. And I was preparing a supper of macaroni and cheese and hot dogs. The TV was on in the other room, it's the really the only thing we owned, besides a
car table and some chairs in our bed and our TV. And that's about all that was in the apartment at the time. The TV was on in the other room, and it was airing the Oprah show, she was doing a show on childhood sexual abuse, what it is what it isn't what it that it includes much more than people had allowed it to include. Up until that point, she was really breaking barriers about talking about these
things that no media personalities had ever talked about before. Something in that story broke open my story. Somehow I had the presence of mind to turn off the stove. I wandered into the living room and watch the rest of the show. I remember just standing there, I
didn't even sit down it was just standing there still just like a zombie taking this in. All the memories just flooded back. It just boom, it just came at me like a firehose, it overwhelmed me, my husband came home from work, and found me in the corner, curled up in a fetal position, rocking myself and chanting again and self soothing. It didn't happen. It didn't happen. It didn't happen. It didn't happen. And I was right back to being six years old, again, trying to make it go away.
Help me understand a little of that. Was it the case that there was absolutely no memory for you of that occasion? Or was it just that anytime that came up in your mind? You just dismissed it as Oh, well, look, that doesn't matter. What was it for you? Was it that complete forgetting, or was it that dismissing?
It was both it started out with a dismissal of every time the memory came back and it threatened me and that was overwhelming and I couldn't deal with it. I was so little I didn't have language I there's no way for me to process this. In the book, of course, I describe it in more detail. But the chanting started with that was just how I made it go away. It didn't happen. It didn't
happen. It didn't happen. And I would chant and self soothe until I forgot about I forgot what I was chanting about. And then I would just get up and continue on with my day. Bye. But over time, I taught my brain to forget. And I didn't need to grab my teddy bear and and sit in the corner and rock and chant anymore. I literally was able to go to church and smile and shake this man's hand. And he served communion
to me. And he served the community to my parents. And I was able to smile and interact with him and talk to him. As if nothing had happened because I had taught my brain to forget that piece. And it was buried deep in my psyche. And I literally did not remember.
As children, we have this remarkable ability to block things out to put up walls that will protect us. But of course, if those things that go on are not dealt with, it can cause a lot of harm later on. So how did you go about dealing with this as those memories flooded back? And you realize, well, actually, this did happen? What did you do with that?
I talked to my husband freaked him out. He wasn't sure what to do with it. He was worried about me. Of course. On one hand, it was almost a relief that the memory came back because now I had an explanation that made sense for all the trauma responses that I had been living with my whole life, trauma responses and mental illnesses that had developed in me, including depression, and anxiety
and PTSD and suicidal ideation. I didn't have names for all those things yet. It would be several years until I was actually diagnosed, being able to attach the trauma to these are all the things about me and my personality that don't make sense that don't fit with
the rest of my family. Oh, that's why now it makes sense. My first move was to go home to the farm and talk to my parents. I did remember telling my mom and there was a moment when I did tell my mother a couple of years after the molestation happened, but my memory of how that actually played out was very different than how my mom said it played out. And that was a very interesting and enlightening
conversation. My memory was we were standing in the farm kitchen. I told my mom I'm what happened to me. And she looked at me and said, I don't have time for this, I have to go finish the laundry and she walked away. When the memories came back to me of the abuse, that memory was attached to it. And that memory came back to. So when I thought about going back and telling my mom, I thought, what's the point she walked
away from me, she didn't care. That that was actually a false memory that my brain created. That made sense to my core belief that my family never want to be anyway. So of course, that's how my mom would react. When I talked to my mother about it, she said, that's not what happened. I took you out to the flowerbed to weed the flowers, because on a busy farm with all those kids, if we bugged her when
she was waiting, she would make us weed. And we didn't want to do that. That was her one place to not be disturbed by anyone. So she took me out to weed flowers. She said, the whole story came out. According to her, Rodney, I clung to her and I begged her please, Mommy, don't ever make me talk about it again. I just want to forget, she said she went to dad and told him and dad said, if that's what she wants, then maybe
that's what we should do. In the courts. Children aren't believed when they say things like this anyway, maybe the kindest thing to do for her is to just let her forget. And we'll never talk about it again. This is coming from my mother. When I went to my dad and talk to him about it. He didn't remember any of that he didn't remember my mom telling him about that. He didn't remember that that
had ever happened to me. And when I asked mom about that, she said, Oh, you know, your father out of sight out of mind. And I asked her why was nothing done? I know I was little. And I asked you please don't make me talk about it again. But I was little. I didn't have the capacity to make that kind of decision. She said, Well, we couldn't let it get out. We couldn't chance. Having the reputation of the church damaged. We
couldn't chance the family reputation being damaged. That afternoon, sitting there having coffee with my mom. That made sense to me. Like Well, of course, of course, of course you would sacrifice me why wouldn't you? Just in a matter of fact, way, not in an angry way. That made perfect sense to me. But years later working through the trauma, do a significant work on trauma recovery. And through
therapy, and through finally being brave enough to talk about it. I was speaking with one of my niece's. She said no, absolutely not, she said at least said that she didn't tell him. Grandpa didn't know. Because you know him. And you know how he loves me. And you know how he loves kids. My dad was crazy about kids crazy about babies, babies always sat at the end of the table during mealtimes, and he would feed the
babies. He was a man of integrity. And he proved that integrity time and time again. And my niece reminded me you know that about him? Does that make sense that he would know this about you and not go scorched earth for you knowing what somebody had done to his kid, knowing how he loves us, knowing how important integrity is to Him, knowing how important justices to him. And that reframed it in a whole
new way. He didn't know. He didn't know. And my mom was operating, I believe now out of a place of shame and fear, out of trauma responses from her own early childhood trauma, her own experiences of being young farm life and being judged by the community. And I go into my mom's back story to explain that more. She was pregnant when they were first married and came to that community and she was judged and she was
shamed over and over and over again. Every new pregnancy was a shame. So she was used to responding to things that felt shameful and fearful by just covering them up and ignoring them and pretending they didn't exist. But it damaged me. And it reinforced my core belief that this family had never loved we had never wanted me that I wasn't worth defending. And I felt that way about God too.
Do you think that this is a big part of what the enemy tries to do in infiltrating even the most sacred places like a church and actually changing our idea about who God is through the people that he sends across our path?
Absolutely. Absolutely. The enemy has no boundaries. He goes after little kids. And he goes after their minds. Children need to be communicated to implicitly and explicitly how valuable they are, how precious they are, how much they are loved by their community, because that is the only context in which they begin to believe that that is how much they are loved by God.
You've not only written this Book which tells that story but you're seeking to help others to come back from trauma to deal with trauma. You're working through something called renewing hope. Tell me a little about that.
I am very blessed to be part of a church that recognizes that the church needs to be a safe place for people who struggle with mental illness. And for people who struggle with trauma. For a long time, people like me, haven't felt safe in churches, bringing our mental illnesses and our trauma to the church. In years past, it has been something that we've been shamed for, but that is
no longer. That doesn't need to be the story any longer renewing hope is a new mental health ministry that I helped develop at my local church for science church, Calgary. It is a 14 week facilitator led peer support group. And we talk through all kinds of things. We talk through negative thought patterns, we talk about shame, we talk about grief, we talk about forgiveness. We talk about all kinds of things throughout those 14
weeks. And we lean into scriptures because God has a lot to say about woundedness. He has a lot to say about brokenness, he has a lot to say about trauma, and mental illness. Mental illness is not a sin, it's an illness. At first glance, church, Calvary, we don't treat mental illness like sin anymore. We treat it like illness. Illness is just doing what illness does. So we do a lot of work around
reframing that. Just because you're depressed and you're having trouble accessing, feeling happier. Feeling worthy, doesn't mean you're a bad Christian, it doesn't mean that God's angry with you, your anxiety is not disappointing your savior, your anxiety is an illness. An illness is doing what illness does. If we don't say it about cancer, or a thyroid imbalance, or diabetes, or a broken leg, we don't say it about mental illness.
What are the sorts of things that you're seeing happen in people's lives when they start to realize the truth about who they are especially the truth about who they are in Christ, when they're taking part in this program?
It is an amazing thing to witness someone grasping their true identity in Christ, sometimes for the first time, it sometimes takes a while for them to hang on to that and be able to hold on to my identity and Christ and that he really does love me. And he doesn't judge me for my illness. But it's an amazing thing because they reach breakthroughs. And they're able to break through to freedom and
to a level of joy that they haven't been able to access before. And understand on a new level, what grace and mercy really means. And they no longer carry around the shame of the judgement of why they are the way they are. They are the way they are because of illness not because of a moral failure, not because of sin. And when they start to really understand who they are in Christ, it changes everything.
We know that a 14 week course is not going to leave everything tied up neatly with a bow and that there's going to be work that goes on from that. And even though you're the one that is leading this course along with others, I imagine that there are still things that you're working through that the accuser still comes to you and tries to push his finger into your chest and say, Ah, yes,
but you're nothing. What do you do at those times? How do you deal with that ongoing accusation by the enemy, those thought patterns that invade your mind from time to time?
I remember that that is a lie. And I once believed that to be true of myself, but I believe it no longer and I lean into my authority, and I cast him out and I rebuke him. There's a lot of things that I don't feel confident in Rodney. I'm in the second half nearing the third act of my life. I feel so ill equipped. But God, I don't consider myself an expert. I'm just a woman with a story. But I
know how story can be so important. Story was important to me. Someone else's story helped break my story open and set me on a path to healing. And that's why it's so important for us to tell our stories. God equips us as we go. If I was completely 100% self sufficient, and perfect in everything I did. I wouldn't need God and I wouldn't be leaning on him anymore. And this would all end in a
train wreck. Giving my god my brokenness. Giving God my story, giving God my intent, giving God my desire, and then aligning with people who know more about doing this work than I do, who also have come alongside with me. And we've built a beautiful program that's working, that is helping, that we have professional psychologists eyes on that they have helped develop this. It's not me doing the work,
it's Christ doing the work. I'm the concierge, I'm opening the door, welcoming people into the space saying, knowing that they're going to meet Jesus here. We create space, we create space for stories to be told safely. And for people to feel safe sharing things that they've never felt safe to share in church before I actually had one woman say to me, I'm don't think that it's okay for me to say that I'm, and she
named her diagnosis, because I'm in a church. And it might be a sin for me To be mad at God about that. And no, honey, you are exactly why we are here. That is not a sin. That is a trauma response. And God isn't mad at you, any more than he would be mad at you. If you had cancer, or
diabetes, or thyroid imbalance, illnesses, illness, we're going to strip away the shame, we're going to strip away the stigma. And we're going to make the walls of the church a safe place to talk about that, and engage in that and allow the Holy Spirit to come and start doing work that only God can do.
Lisa, when we think back to your younger self in your early 20s, just married and there's that program on in the other room that starts to trigger some of those memories and they flood back I imagine that there could be someone listening today. And our discussion
has triggered something in them. And they wanting to say now I need to do some work. Is there a way that people can be in touch with you that they can find out more about how do I work through this where's the easiest place for people to find you?
The easiest place to find me. People message me on Facebook, I will give you all those links in your show notes.
I will definitely put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find you easily there.
We are almost ready with renewing hope it is so close to being shareable. We are working hard to make this program available to any church who wants to use it any church who wants to run it. I'm available for conversations about that as well.
I'll also put links in the show notes of where people can find your book, The ninth child, and so that people can read through your story. And I'm sure that that is going to help to bring some clarification and some healing for some people as well. Lisa, I want to thank you for being so open about your story and sharing that with us today. Thank you for your time on Bleeding daylight.
Thank you so much. It's been such an honor, I would be thrilled to offer a special discount code to your listeners.
That would be excellent. We can get that code and we'll add that in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can get on to that book with that special discount code. Lisa, thank you so much for what you're doing in the lives of so many.
Thank you so much. I appreciate the conversation and the opportunity.
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