Welcome back to the Finding Hope podcast we're Charlie and Jill and we have some really great things to share with you today. Things that have helped us when we were early in our grief journey, and some things that help us even today.
Yeah, you know, as you go through these difficult times, as many of you know, you're groping for help.
For sure.
Your heart is broken, you've had a loss, you're just looking for any kind of help you can find. And I know that I did a lot of things to try to find help. I emailed friends of mine, I text friends of mine who had lost loved ones because I needed to talk to someone who had had a loss.
Right.
Because, like I say, no one wants to join that club.
Right, yeah.
But when you've had a loss, become part of a club that you never wanted. And so I actually emailed several ministers and pastors that I knew that had lost a child. And I said, how did you get through this? And I said, please help me. I said, because I don't know. I don't know how to make it through this. And plus I said, I don't wanna drown and I don't wanna be a statistic of someone burned out and
Right.
Never made it. And, you know, so if you have anything to share with me, I'm open.
And that's so crucial. And for those of you listening, it's you have a tendency to want to re, become a recluse. Some people do. And you don't wanna talk to anyone because you're afraid they won't understand, and they'll say something hurtful. And it'll totally make you feel like your grief is is carnal, irrelevant, that it you just need to pull it together. And and so some people don't ever talk to anyone. They just keep it all on the inside.
Yeah.
And then there's other people like you who who did reach out
Yeah.
And got some help. And I remember some of those meetings we had back to this day.
Right.
They were they were so helpful. Yeah. And so this
That pastor and his wife in Phoenix, we lived in Phoenix for three years. And I remember when that tragic accident happened where a young man was drowned in a float trip, I guess, with the singles of the youth. And he was the pastor's son. He drowned, I think, actually saving somebody.
Yes, saving someone.
And it was tragic. And we lived there, we were younger, we were just starting out in ministry, and of course our hearts were saddened and broken over it. And, you know, I think we may have went to the funeral, I don't remember. But twenty years later maybe, we lost Beau at least, and we were on a journey in Phoenix for we had a funeral, we had two funerals, we had one here in St. Louis, not here, we don't live in St. Louis anymore, but we had one in St. Louis and then we had a second one in Phoenix because of my parents and family, my parents were elderly and needed, you know, we wanted to respect them, so we put ourselves last because it was so hard to go through this a second time. But while we were there, during this period, we did meet with that pastor and his wife.
Yes, we did. It was twenty years later. Because almost twenty. Because I remember we were talking with his wife and she began crying just at you know, just remembering all of that. But she says, I can't believe I'm crying. It's been almost twenty years, but this just happens to me. It just comes up, and I never know when I just it's when I least expect it or you know? And and, boy, I can say the same thing.
Right.
It, I mean, I just there'll be certain things that that'll just spark either a memory or will spark something that the Lord brought comfort in. Like, for instance, that song
That we did.
That song. You know? That song?
We did at Beau's funeral?
No. No. It's one we sing a lot. It's a current song.
We were talking about Oh, All My Life You Have Been Faithful.
Yeah. So the second verse of that says, I love your voice. You have led me through the fire in the darkest night, and here I go.
Yeah.
You are close like no other.
Yeah. Wow.
Every time I sing that line, if if I'm really connected to it, I it it chokes me up. Even if I'm leading, I have to just kinda shut it down so I can sing it with quality. Yeah. And But there's some things that just
Trigger it.
Yeah.
And it's not always something bad. It's not a bad thing to get triggered. And I think even in that conversation we were having with that couple, they were pastors, when she broke down. It wasn't like she felt bad about it in any way.
No, no.
It was a precious thing.
She was explaining to us...
Yeah, and tears can be very precious when you're remembering your loved one.
Absolutely. They're precious in the sight of God.
They are. And scripture also says precious in the sight of God is the death of his saints. And it's a precious thing when we cry even years later.
Yeah.
And, you know, I know for me as well, you talked about that song, I know sometimes you I hear you kind of singing it and all of a sudden I hear you shaking. As you're singing that line, I'm going, oops.
And if we have background singers with us at the time, I will just let them carry
that line
sometimes because
That's smart.
Ay yai yai.
Yeah.
But yeah.
But yeah. But, again, tears are and we talk about this a lot, but tears are precious to God. He keeps them in his bottle and he stores them, they're very precious to him.
They are precious to him.
And there's nothing wrong with crying. But you know, just to go along a little more with your thought, Jill, about that song, You know, it's interesting, even to this day, I'll hear songs that really touch me too. And I recently heard a song by Toby Mac that, you know, Toby lost his son. And I don't know how many years now. Should know.
Just oh gosh.
But, uh...
A couple maybe.
Yeah, it's been a-
Maybe a year and a half. It hasn't been very long.
Yeah hasn't been long.
Yeah at the time of this recording.
Yeah. But he you know, one of the things that blessed me about the song was that he was raw and honest about his pain and about the journey. You know, when you're an artist like he is out in front of thousands of people all the time doing these mega concerts, doing hip hop, and you're the one, you're on top of things, and Toby's a great man of God. He's always been a man of God first and then a musician second. You feel like, okay, I gotta come back and I can't show all of my grief.
I can't show all of my sorrow. And we experienced that too, once we started leading worship again, because we were on a public stage of leading worship for Andrew Womack. We also had to kinda hide our grief a little bit and do our job, in a sense. But thankfully our job was spiritual in that we worshiped the Lord and we could do our best to reconnect with him in intimate ways. But you talk about that song that touched you because it's raw and it's honest.
And there's something about transparency and honesty when you're in a journey of grief that's so very important. And like you said, Joe, hiding just festers and it just It's like you said that on the last podcast, a couple podcasts ago, mentioned if you have a wound and you expose it to the light, hide it away and you don't get help and you don't get it healed, you don't put the right ointment on or whatever, you said it
Festers, yeah.
-It gets infected more. It's the same thing with our grief journey. So that's why these songs that are transparent and honest about the journey really help me. You know, they bless me. And if you don't mind, I think I'm gonna read just a couple little lines here. He said this, he said, It's been a long year. It almost took me down, I swear. I appreciate that line right there. It's been a long year. Wow.
You want me to read?
He said, It almost took me down. He said, Life was good. I'm not sure we knew what we had. You know? And we didn't either. We didn't realize how good life was with Beau. But anyway, he said, I'll never you may may need to read it. He said, I'll never be the same man, which I can say, amen. I'll never feel like I felt before, which is true.
It's been a hard year, it almost took me down. And let me just say a comment about, I'll never be the same man. There's no doubt that when you have a loss that's this traumatic in your life, you're changed forever. You're different.
Your heart is broken and so therefore it expands in some ways to be compassionate for others, thus why we're doing this podcast, is because our hearts have tasted that pain. I'm not gonna get through this podcast very good. We've taped that pain, so therefore we have compassion and a heart for those who have been through it. So he goes on to say in this thing, he says in the chorus, he said, But when my world broke into pieces, you, talking about Jesus, were there faithfully. When I cried out to you, Jesus, you made a way for me.
I may never be the same man, but I'm a man who still believes. When I cried out to you, Jesus, you were there faithfully. I just appreciate that chorus, because even though it seems, you mentioned in a couple podcasts ago as well, you said, when we're faithless, he's faithful. And it's like, we had lost all of our faith at times to even survive, or our faith in God, we didn't know what to believe anymore because we had laid it out on the line. But he remained faithful.
Thank God. He remained faithful to us, like you've said so often, he carried us. Let me read one more verse, I hate to keep going with this, but it's so beautiful. He said, I've had a hard time finding the blue in the skies above me and I'm keeping it real. If I'm keeping it real.
Yeah, he said, And if I'm keeping it real, I've been half faking the happy that they see. Wow. For a mega artist to be that honest and to say, If I'm keeping it real, I've been half faking the happy face that they see. Wow.
Thank you, Toby, for being so honest, because we understand that kind of situation. He says, I may look like the same man, but I'm half the man I was. It's been a hard year, it almost took me down. So, I could go on, this song is a great song, it touched me. The bridge is beautiful too. In my darkest hour you met me so quietly, so gently. You said you'd never leave me, and you stood by your words so quietly, so gently. So transparency of your pain helps others in pain.
It does, it certainly does.
And so I just think that we all need to realize that when we're hurting, we need to find, like we talk so often about a safe friend, we need to find a safe friend, a friend that won't judge us, but we need to be able to talk about our situation. We need to talk about our hurt. You know, therapists and counselors that, you know, by the multimillions of them that make a living just listening to people share their grief and their sorrow over a marriage loss, over a loss of a child, over a business, over the loss of a relationship that they're in the middle of, and it's very helpful. And whether the counselor has amazing things to share or not, just them being able to share their own personal grief is so very helpful.
It sure is. There's nothing that compares to that. You have to be able to talk about it to someone.
That's right. You know, Jill, you've written some amazing songs. I know that you were so raw and so real and so broken and honest about your lyrics. You know, some people write poetry, some people write a journal when they're hurting. You wrote a song, you wrote songs, and, there was one that you wrote that, you know, that we do, that put on our album, My Strength, my song with a no with Your Love Remains. And why don't you talk a little bit about about this one?
You know, you're so thankful. You know, I love I love the verses. They're they're deep, they're dark, but they're real.
Yeah. Well, I'm not really sure what to say about it
Mhmm.
Because we can just read the lyrics. I mean, that just expresses where where I came to.
Right.
It wasn't this way in the beginning. Right. But this was a couple years down the road.
Yeah. We lost Beau in 2009. This album was released.
It was recorded in 2013.
2013.
So but the songs were written before then.
Right.
You know, before we got
So it took us a while to start really writing songs again.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
But we were trying to express the reality of our pain in these songs and be real about it. You know?
Yeah. So so the first verse says, you walk with me through valleys when I'm overwhelmed. You carry me when my heart is faint. You understand my weakness and cover me with strength. With love, you surround me again. You've carried me through trial, and you've carried me through pain. And in my darkest hour, you gave strength to me again.
Yeah.
And the chorus says, I am so thankful, Lord, for all you are to me.
Yeah. I think it's beautiful that, you know, you just you just talking about your weakness and how he gave you strength, your heart was faint, you were overwhelmed. You know, I think there's just something about being, being transparent.
Yeah. You know? I love it. The second verse says, you cover me with mercy when no one understands. My bleeding heart in your loving hands. You gather all of my tears in a holy place. What would I do without your embrace? You've carried me through trial, and you've carried me through pain.
And in my darkest hour, you gave strength to me again. I am so thankful, Lord, for all you are to me. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I appreciate you saying my bleeding heart, you know, because that's what we've all experienced. We have lost loved ones. Our hearts are bleeding. Yep.
They're cut. They're broken. And Jesus came to heal broken hearts. And then He did. The bridge is simple but beautiful.
Yeah. It just said it just repeats a few times the the lines, you send grace to help in my time of need and strength to overcome. And that's so true. He does. You know, we may feel weak. We may feel faithless. We may feel like no one understands, no one really cares because they don't get it. And you might even feel like God doesn't even really understand. But he does, and he covers you with his grace and carries you even when you don't realize it. So we're just so grateful.
That's right. You know, I'm thinking of one of the first songs you wrote that says, I have a friend who loves me.
Mhmm.
And you were talking about Jesus. And I remember you were 17 years old hearing you sing that song, and it was so cute. I think we even recorded it on that church album, didn't Yeah. It's a beautiful thing. I always said, you're talking about me. I have a friend who loves
Oh, right.
You're talking about Jesus for sure. But but, yeah, you know, God's love and his faithfulness and, you know, like, I just love the fact that what you said has just been blowing up in my heart that when we're faithless, he's faithful. I just love that, because he never lets us go. He goes after us. We talked about this in the other podcast, Psalm 139, even if I go down to the depths of hell, there you are. He follows us. He goes, You can't run from God. I love that. You can't run from him.
Yeah.
And and he does care, Jill. I love that, what you said, you know, he he cares for us. We talk about the scripture in Isaiah so often that when we suffer, he suffers. When we weep, he weeps. And I'm reminded of of, you know, just Jesus wept.
He he saw Mary and Martha, he loved them, he loved Lazarus, Lazarus was in the tomb, he knew he would he would, raise Lazarus from the dead, but he saw the Jews crying, he saw Mary and Martha, the ones he loved, crying, and it says, and Jesus wept. Beautiful. Beautiful. He wept with those who wept. Who wept. So that's that's a great thought.
Jesus- I was thinking about that this morning.
Were you?
Jesus was very humble in heart, and and he was so compassionate to the hurting. You know, we we've already said that he heals broken hearts. And he he is just so full of love and mercy and compassion towards hurting people even if they lash out towards him.
Right.
He he just knows you know, he he knows the condition of the human heart, and he knows that when we're hurting, we do things and say things that maybe we don't really mean. But regardless, he he's so compassionate and humble and gentle towards us.
Right. He never lets us go. I'm thinking about when you said that, I thought about Jonah running from God saying I won't do it.
You know? But God had compassion on him, gave him a second chance. I think about Peter, when he denied Jesus, you know, three times, I think, before the cock crowed, and, you know, he was running and hiding and afraid, and yet, you know, Jesus pursued him and loved him through that, got him through that, and then he has those three times in John, do you love me? Peter, do you love me? Peter, do you love me?
You know? But that's the love of Jesus. There's nothing like God's love, and we could talk for ages theme, on but nothing, Paul said, could ever separate us from the love of God that's in Christ Jesus. And then he begins to listen, in fact, I happen to have the Bible open on that, so I might as well read it. He said, shall anything separate us from the love of Christ?
And the New Living says, does it mean that he no longer loves us if we have tribulation and distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril or sword, and he says, Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. Again, loved us. We're not just more than conquerors, we're more than conquerors through his love and patience and kindness. The Bible says that he's long suffering.
He's amazing.
And so, he suffers through a lot of our disobedience, he suffers through our, you know, when we're angry. Carnal. Carnal, angry at him, whatever.
In sin.
He's long suffering.
Yes.
And you know, I remember a biker friend, Jack Harris, looked at me the day after Beau died and he grabbed my shoulders and he just said, Charlie, he said, God is big enough to handle whatever you wanna say to him. He said, don't be afraid to be honest with God about your pain because he can handle it.
Yeah.
And that really helped me.
Yeah.
Because people are afraid sometimes that they're gonna get struck by lightning from heaven if they're too honest with God. But when we don't have conversation with God, when we don't open up and cry out in honesty, he's not able to really help us. Like you said, we keep it bogged in. And that's why the Psalmist David, we see him pouring out his heart and crying out with like, God, my enemies are surrounding me, I'll never make it. I feel like I'm thirsty, I can't drink, I'm broken.
My bones are broken. I'll never make it through this. But then he turns it around and he says, But you are faithful. You are a loving father. And I feel like he got that through the lament and through the complaining, is where his heart was He was in communion with God, even in that, and God was able to then speak back to him.
It's like Habakkuk says, I will stand on my rampart and I will see what God will say to me, but he says, My complaint before you, actually, in some instances. And so he complained and shared his grief, and then God spoke to him, you know, Write the vision, make it plain. So there's just a communion that's so important that we do, and I know we don't have a lot of time, but I just wanna hit on something just for a minute on this thing of complaining and bearing your heart. You know, in our circles, we know the power of words, and we know that the enemy will use words against us, So therefore, we're really afraid sometimes to say anything negative. Now, me saying negative things to you is not healthy, but sometimes I have to bear my heart to you and not to say, Jill, I'm struggling.
This is hurting me, this is bugging me, not something you did necessarily, but just what we're going through. I'm still struggling with it. And you may have a word to help me, but at the same time, me just getting it out seemed to help me. And sometimes the more people just talk and share what's going on in their heart, it turns around with answers. Sometimes they answer their own questions after they talk it out more out loud, rather than just letting it fester on the So inside of there's a balance.
We know the power of words. We know we wanna say the right things. We know we wanna pray, but when you're praying, my gosh, you can't fool God. Now if you need to rebuke the devil, that's something different. But if you're grieving and hurting, you can say, oh, I'm blessed, I'm healed. I don't have grief because I have hope in Jesus. You could say all that, and the Lord's saying, Really? Okay, I know your heart. I know what's going on deep inside. I hear your words.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable into thy sight, Lord. So, the Lord knows the meditation of our hearts. So, if we're struggling on the inside, I say, and I think scripturally says, it's okay to say to the Lord, knowing that he loves you, knowing that he's gonna protect you, knowing he's not gonna let the enemy get in on you, share what's on your heart with the Lord and let him speak back to you, let him help you.
Absolutely.
He's a present help in time of need.
He is, and he's so he's a father. He is our father and our friend. And there's nothing that we can say that that he number one, that he hasn't heard before.
Why haven't we heard that before? You can say he hasn't heard before. It sounds like a song or something.
Well yeah. And and and nothing comes as as a surprise to him from your heart because he knows your heart.
Thank you, Lord.
And he's just that loving and that patient and kind and merciful. Don't we all need his mercy?
Mhmm. Yeah.
Hallelujah. Well, we're out of time. So we just wanted to tell you quickly the song that we talked about of mine called So Thankful is on this album called Your Love Remains. This is the album that we recorded, the first album of original songs after Beau passed away. We we did a couple of other collections of other things, compilations, but this is the first one of original songs.
And so it's got that song on it. It's got another song that I wrote called Choose To Believe. That's another one of these raw ones that just that's how I was that was very therapeutic for me to write songs with with the things I was learning and hearing and experiencing from the lord. You know, Charlie listened to a lot of people's songs that that really helped him but, I I I didn't have too many that would do that for me, but I was able to write. So that's what we did.
It's also on this USB, called Six Pack Plus, which is, it's almost 100 songs. So it's, this whole album is on this collection as well, for those who don't buy albums anymore. And if you just want this, you can also purchase the download. So all that all those links will be in the, down below in the description. And, we just encourage you to get a hold of some music that are full of God's word because God's word is what makes the difference-
Amen.
In our lives. And, so
One other thing I wanna say, Jill, is, if they wanna join our mailing list, you can, go to our website and sign up, charlieandjill.com. We have a partnership, program there if you'd like to help us. And more than, and equally important, thumbs up on this, right?
Yeah, give it a like and share it with people you believe it would be a blessing to.
That would encourage us so leave a comment if you can, that would also bless us from this.
Yes, we appreciate it.
So again, thank you so much. God bless you all. We'll talk to you next time.