Welcome to Finding Hope, Getting Through What You've Never Asked For. We're Charlie and Jill LeBlanc, and we're so glad you've joined us today.
Yeah. Today, we're actually going into a second half of a previously recorded video that we did with Julianne and Butch Hartman, some dear friends of ours that we've known for many years now. And they have a healing ministry, and God has healed her body in a miraculous way. And she has met several others who have had physical healings. And so she does a daily broadcast called Healing Journeys Today, that we encourage you to go see, especially if you need physical healing.
But, we just love the fact that she helped us finish our book and she saw the importance of the heart being healed. Lots of people have been through a lot of traumatic things, not just the loss of loved ones, which we discuss, because we lost our son, but also other traumas in life. And people, need their hearts healed. Jesus heals broken hearts.
That's right.
So, yeah.
So we're going into part two of the first episode we did with them, about Jesus understanding what takes place with someone that has sustained a loss, whether it was physical, losing a loved one or something else, you know, they lost a career, they lost their estate, maybe their house burned down. Just so many ways that loss comes. But Jesus is the healer of broken hearts. So we're going to be talking more about that in this episode.
Yes. Jesus loves people who are hurting. He's close as we said in the scripture, he is close to the brokenhearted. Psalm 3four 18, Jesus is close to brokenhearted people, so how about you and me? Why don't we get in the boat with them too?
Amen? You know, we should get in the boat with broken hearted people, not condemn them, not rebuke them, not try to fix them, not try to tell them what the Bible says. No, we're to get in the boat with them and hold them until they get better, okay? Pray with them, hold them, weep with them as we've said and I'm going to keep wearing that scripture out in Romans, weep with those who weep. So yeah, just you know, let's be a comfort to those who are mourning.
Let's be let's be Jesus with skin on as Jesus said. Yeah. As Jesus. Said.
Jesus. I am Jesus with skin on.
You are. You are definitely.
That's what Jesus did say. Yeah. Psalm thirty four eighteen is the scripture that he was quoting, the Lord is close to the brokenhearted. He rescues those whose spirits are crushed. That was us. In the passion translation, it says, the lord is close to all whose hearts are crushed by pain. It happens. Mhmm. It's it's a real deal. And then it goes on in verse 19.
It says, even, listen to this. Even when bad things happen to the good and godly ones, the lord will save them and not let them be defeated by what they face. Wow. That was us Wow. For sure.
That's a good one.
I know. This this thing could have so easily taken us out. Yeah. But God carried us. It was like the good Samaritan.
He took us and held us and he poured his his oil and his wine of love and cleansing into our hearts and into our souls and our and just loved us and carried us until we could begin to take baby steps again. And he has continued to be right there with us as we've just continued to move forward looking to him and trusting him. Now I couldn't look to him in the very beginning. I was so mad. When we decided to stop praying after five hours and decided to let him go, I was so disillusioned.
I was furious. I couldn't even cry. I was so mad. And Yeah. And and I just decided I wasn't gonna talk to God anymore because we had it all on the line. We were trusting him completely, and yet here, our son dies. And, yeah, he's in heaven, and we'll see him again, and I'm so excited for that. But living here without him has been hard, and it was really, really hard in the beginning. So I didn't speak to the Lord for for weeks, but you know what? He was carrying me.
Yeah. But he was cloaked just like Starship Enterprise. He was cloaked. He wouldn't let me see him. Mhmm. But he was carrying me because he loved me so much. And he just knew I was crippled right then. Yeah. And he was patient and loving and he didn't rebuke me for not trusting him or not speaking to him or for doubting him, you know, doubting his power. Right.
He was just patient and loving and kind. Yeah. And and little by little, he began to win my heart back. And he was just so awesome. Yeah. So Yeah. You know, it's
like Jill said at first, it's like we didn't know what to do. Know, I remember I I didn't I didn't want anything to do with god or the word because I put everything on the line as well just like Jill. We had our own journeys but they were very they were similar in a lot of ways but one of the scriptures that spoke to me was was the one that the disciples when they told Jesus said, are you going to leave me too? And and the disciples said, where else can we go, lord Jesus? You have the words of eternal life.
Where else can we go? And that kind of jumped in my heart one day shortly after Bow Pass. I thought, you know, I don't I wanted to run. I wanted to hide. I wanted to get out of this whole thing.
But, but, you know, he had the words of eternal life and I knew as a 19 year old young man that I was gloriously saved. I met Jesus. I knew he was real. I didn't understand all this and still don't understand all of it but all I know is I was hurting and I was broken and I didn't want to totally lose my life and so I knew like we've been saying he heals broken hearts and he comforts those who mourn. And so I ran slowly, I shouldn't say ran, I slowly crawled and limped.
Cautiously. Yeah, cautiously back to God because I didn't know that I could ever trust him again. But you know, here we are fifteen and a half years later and we're fully engaged in his word. His word has become life to us again. His word is alive on the inside of us. We're praying all the time. We're worshiping him, leading worship. We're rebuking devils. We're praying for people to be healed. In fact, we're, I mean, when when someone is sick, man, we're in the middle of that battle.
We fight and fight. So, that's that's an amazing miracle. That's a healing journey. Huge. That our hearts.
It's a miracle, it really is, because our hearts, you know, we're so hurt, so broken. You know, Proverbs four says, I think it's four twenty, it says, you know, to guard your heart above all else for out of it flows the issues of life, to guard your heart. And like, and to be honest, we didn't know how to do that at the time, you know, but we know the truth of it that because your life flows out of your heart and when your heart is shattered and your heart is broken, the most important thing to do is to get healed. Yeah. Is to take time and allow your heart to heal.
Andrew Womack even, before he came to our house, him and Jamie, and after Bowie passed and spent some time with us, and, know, one
of It's not like we lived down the street either. No. No. He They took a flight
Colorado
to the next the day Yeah. And came.
Yeah. They were there. Us. They they stood with they stood with us during the whole journey and when it when it went south, they stood with us continue and have stood with us to this day, I might add. To this day, they have been Jesus with skin on in a lot of ways and you might say, well, Charlie, what did they say? What did he what did he minister to you? What did he say? Guess what? He didn't say anything. They just loved me.
Amen. They loved Jill and I and gave us an opportunity to lead worship in their conferences even when they knew we were still hurting. Even when they knew we were in pain. Yeah. But they just lovingly allowed us to do that which they knew would be part of our healing process as worshiping the lord and and praising god, you know, which was very hard to do at first.
Yeah. But we we learned to do that. But but you know, just I just wanted to say that that one of the things Andrew when he came to our house, him and Jamie, one of the things they said, they said, take as much time off as you need because we know that your heart is is broken and we want we want you back obviously to help us in worship and so forth but they said, we don't want you broken. We want you healed. So, whatever it takes for you to find the lord and find your healing journey, you know, he he gave us that freedom to do.
Yeah. To do that, to take off because we had three three more conferences in a row planned out. Mean we were, did we do the Phoenix? We didn't do the Phoenix one in January because Bojai January 14.
So it was the weekend like two weeks before.
Yeah, so we asked one of our friends to leave worship It at that
was Cami and Doug.
That came in, could have been. Then a couple weeks, about a month later we had another couple lead worship for us in February, another couple lead worship for us in March. And he was fine with it because he knew that we were praying, seeking, crying, broken, you know, getting through all those feelings and all those disappointments and and trying to reconcile this whole thing. But guess what? A preacher friend of mine, pastor Rick Shelton said to me the day after Bo passed, he said, Charlie, there's a faith to move mountains which we all know and we agree according to Mark eleven twenty three and twenty four, there's a faith to move mountains.
He said, but there's also a faith to stand when the mountain doesn't move. Brothers and sisters, that's a word of the lord for you. Some of you have been through some difficult situations, some some painful disappointments in your life where you believed god, you stood, and you spoke the word and you prayed and things did not turn out the way you expected. Well listen, we understand that and God understands that. He loves you.
But I'm telling you what, there's a faith to stand when the mountain doesn't move and that's an important part of your faith is to be able to stand. Listen Paul faced some of the most difficult things in his life. You know he was believing God to have a fruitful ministry and to run the world and preach the gospel over but then he would be stopped, he would be beaten, He'd be thrown in jail. He would have a shipwreck. He would have one disappointment after another.
One brokenness, one beating, one persecution after another but yet he never gave up on god. He never, you know, he he he had that faith to stand when the mountain didn't move. And that's what Romans eight, you know, the middle of that chapter is all about. He says, God be for me, who can be against me? He said, if I, you know, if I'm beaten, if I'm struggling, whatever it might be, he says, you know, I'm more than a conqueror through him who loved me.
So Paul understood this kind of faith, people. That's the thing we need to understand is faith is more than just, you know, seeing the results immediately all the time. It's faith to stand when the mountain doesn't move and we see that in Hebrews the twelfth chapter, all the great miracles and then at the end people were sawn in two, people were burned at the stake. That was faith to be able to stand. Tyndale, he was burned at the stake, that was amazing, great faith.
So we need to redefine sometimes this whole faith thing, what it really means. And if you've been disappointed, god has faith for you, faith for you to stand in the midst of that disappointment and there's so much more I could share about that. Yeah. But I'll hold that for now. Praise god.
Yeah. I wanted to share my bracelet story. Charlie referred to it earlier. And
I think that's beautiful.
Yeah. I meant to bring a couple in here to show you, but someone a real close friend of Bow's during his journey, during his time with us, a friend of his had some, you know, those those silicone bracelets, the reminder bracelets, or, you know, they've got all different kinds of names now. But he had some made and everyone was just loving them and we were all wearing them and and more and more people kept asking for them and so we ran out. So I didn't wanna go to him to bother him to get more, so I thought well, I'll just order more. And so I went ahead and placed an order, found a a website, and ordered three different colors, I think.
And there it goes. And so ordered the bracelets. Three days later, Bo dies and completely forgot about the bracelets until about three days after he died, this box shows up at the at the at the house. So I'm like, what in the world is this thing? I'm in the kitchen. I'm just sitting at the island, and I open it up, and I see the it's bracelets. Oh my gosh. You know, and we're just we're just in pieces anyway.
Yeah.
But, oh my gosh, I just begin to just sob, and I just put my head down just sobbing, sobbing like Yeah.
The braces were were a token of victory. They were they were like, you know, everyone wore them because Bo's gonna get through this.
Yeah. You know? And sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Important point.
Right.
Our dear friend, Linda Parr, love you, Linda. When Beau was first Beau was first diagnosed, she sent him a scripture. It was Isaiah forty three two. And that what was so cool about that scripture is it is they were getting ready they were talking about radiation for Bo's neck region. And and our friend who had some medical training, he said radiation is like setting off a fire bomb on the inside of you.
I mean, it just it's no fun. And so, you know, we're like, well, hey, that's that's really all they're offering us and we didn't feel like we shouldn't do it. So we were moving in that direction. So then Linda sends him this scripture, Isaiah 42. 43. Forty three two that says, you shall walk through the fire and not be burned. I don't think she knew anything of this conversation that we had been having.
Right.
But she sent that scripture and it was all like, wow. Thank you, Jesus. So, we were all wearing these bracelets that had Isaiah forty
Three two.
On them. And they were great. And so so I ordered them, opened them back up, and and so I'm just having, you know, this this just incredible water storm. Finally, got my composure, and so I'm I'm just like
You're like, what are we gonna do with these?
Let's throw
throw them away, you know, kind of thing.
Well, I I just thought, well, yeah. I'm so I'm just gonna look at them and, you know, just look at them. And I'm looking at it. Take one of them out, and I say, oh my gosh. I put the wrong scripture on there. And I start again. I'm sobbing. I'm just like, oh my gosh. This is just, you know, insult upon injury. And it was it was just a horrific time.
So I cry cry cry. Finally get my composure again. And I thought, well, I might as well look up this scripture and see what, you know, it could have been, you know, some really stupid insignificance. Something, you know, that had no relevance at all. Or yeah. Anyway, so I look it up. And instead of Isaiah forty three two, I put Isaiah forty two three. So I look up Isaiah forty two three, and here's what it says. Charlie referred to it earlier. It said, he will not crush the weakest reed.
Thank you, Jesus. You read
it. Or put out a flickering candle.
Yeah.
And then it says, in the New Living, which is what I was reading, that's the bible I had at the time, he will bring justice to all who have been wronged.
Yes. Yes.
We felt like we had been royally wronged.
That's right.
That we had been robbed.
Yes.
Our son should not have died.
Right.
He should have been on this Healing Journeys Today show giving his testimony. Right. But he did. He he died. And
He went straight to heaven.
He did. But we were wronged. Yeah. And so, you know, for a long time, I I I I grabbed onto that. It brought me so much encouragement, and it was like affirmation to my broken soul that God is gonna God is gonna vindicate this. He's gonna vindicate us. He's gonna he's going to bring justice to those who have been wronged.
Amen. Amen.
And it took a while to see what that really meant, but I'll tell you what I believe it means now. Justice is beginning to surface, and this new stream of ministry that we've stepped into as a result of writing this book and just it's just been our journey the last fifteen years.
Yeah.
So many friends have lost close loved ones since Beau died. And so we've been able to step in and be there for them Yes. Encourage them with the little bits that we had in the beginning. And and now we've got this book, and we're gonna be creating courses. And, you know, eventually, maybe we'll have a TV show. I don't know. But the Lord is is bringing justice Amen. By helping others that are that are the ones now walking the grief journey
That's right.
That don't have hope. We've been you know, like I said, we didn't know that we would survive this. Right. And oops. Had a little spill over there. So but thank God. He he he's, you know, continuing to heal our hearts. You know, there's a lot of layers, but layer upon layer, we are receiving more and more healing, and we're getting healthier and healthier all the time. Yeah. And and it's just it's such a joy to be able to help others that are walking the road that we walked.
Yeah. You know, whenever we share in churches I spilled a little water, that's why I got distracted distracted. But what's crazy is whenever we share this in churches, we were even at Caris just about three years after Bo Pass and we shared this in the general chapel on a Friday morning. This story and people came up to us you know, and and said, no one talks about this. Well, I lost my husband or I lost my daughter or whatever.
We hear it all the time, all the time. People come up to us and say, Thank you, thank you, thank you for talking about this. No one talks about this, but I still think about my loved one that I lost. I still think about my child. I still think about my husband.
And I feel condemned around people that don't understand because I still think about them. I still cry sometimes. I still miss them. And so we've had the privilege now, we know this was not God's will, but God does cause all things together to turn together for good to those who love Him. And we sure do love God.
We've done our best to hang in there with Him, and He more than anything loves us. And we love him because he first loved us. Yeah. And he has continued to reach out to us and heal our broken hearts and he'll do the same thing for you. And we just want to encourage you, man, just to really, really, if you're hurting, if you've been through pain, you may be in the middle of it, you may be in first stages of it.
Listen, it's okay. Hang in there. Just breathe. You know, sometimes all we could do is just breathe. Wake up the next day and just try to make it to the end of the day without falling apart.
That's how hard it was, people. I'm telling you and you know, and I've got another whole teaching and we'll get on to this maybe even tomorrow or the day after but or not tomorrow but the next Friday or the Friday after. We have a lot more we want to share but godly men wept their hearts out in the Bible. You know, I was thinking, I must not be godly because I'm crying. No, man.
God, Jesus wept at the at the at the tomb of Lazarus, and there's so much we want to talk about in regard to that but but we just want you to know that god loves you and he is close to the brokenhearted and he will carry us. Psalm 6,819, for each day he carries us in his arms. Hallelujah. So he will carry us. And I'll just have one more scripture. I don't know how much more you want to share but
Yeah, a little bit.
But you know, I think we've been going about forty, forty five minutes, something like that. But there's one more script that says, In all their suffering, he also suffered. Now this is a concept that jumped out of the page to me that when we suffer, God suffers. And at first I thought, Wow, that's weird. That's not true.
Yeah, of course it is. God loves us so much and when we hurt, he hurts. He reaches out with compassion for his children like any father would and it says, in all their suffering he also suffered and he personally rescued them. We're talking about Israel. And his love and mercy, he redeemed them.
He lifted them up and carried them through all the years. I tell you, the whole Bible is just a love letter from God. It really is. God seeing his children, giving them blessings beyond words and yet them turning their back on him, them running away from him, but God not forsaking them, continuing to run after them and reaching them and seeing them turn back to him and him having great fellowship with mankind and then them turning away again and running away, you know. But be assured that no matter how far you run or how much you hurt, God loves you and he's gonna heal your broken heart and he's not gonna let you go.
You may say, Charlie, I have no strength to pray. I have no strength to no strength to even get up out of bed. You know what? That's okay. Listen, it's okay. Yeah. Just just if you're laying in bed weeping, one of the things I eventually got to a place where I just said, you know what? If I'm weeping, Jesus is weeping with me. He's in bed with me. He's holding me. He he cares for me like the shepherd that that carries a sheep, you know.
Tell me a little story about when you were out under the umbrella that day.
Yeah. I was I was outside just just thinking about Bo under the umbrella on our deck, I just started to bawl again. I mean, I'm just weeping like crazy. And then all of a sudden, it started to rain. It drizzled at first and it got a little stronger and I said, Thank God I'm under this umbrella, you know.
But as I was weeping, the Lord said, Charlie, I just want to show you as little analogy that when you weep, I weep and and I have seen that in my spirit. I've seen it in the scriptures when at the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus wept and he says, see how much he loved them And like I said, there's so many great men and women of God that that wept, but Jesus suffers when we suffer. He suffered when we suffer. He looked over Jerusalem and it said he wept over Jerusalem because he loved it. He wept people.
Jesus wept. That's right. It's okay to cry when you're grieving over a loss or when you're grieving over something that's, you know, painfully hurt you. So listen, God can use tears to help cleanse you and bring healing to your soul.
Amen. Really true. Amen. One thing I'd like to before we close, I would like to share a little bit of something in our book that we have in the very beginning. It's called the quick start guide.
And the our our book is it's in two parts, really. The first half is written to those who have suffered loss and you're struggling with grief and bereavement, and you're missing your loved one. You don't really know how to move forward. So it's written to you. It just it's a lot of practical, but even some maybe things you it helps you understand grief, the paralysis you feel when when all this first happens.
So we get into all that. We flesh all that out as as we go through. But in the beginning, we have this quick start guide. And like Charlie said earlier, I just we just wanna give you permission Yeah. If you're in this boat to take some of these tips.
So the first one is like Charlie was just saying, let yourself cry. You must allow this or you will implode. I read a book called The Bereaved Parent, and it was about a couple who lost a 10 year old boy. He was born with a heart condition. He was on transplant list, and he was climbing in the transplant list, but when he reached 10 years old, his heart just couldn't wait any longer, and he he passed away.
And she it was their story of of of survival. And the husband, he didn't take any time off work. He was a traveling salesman, and he just knew he had to get back out there so he could continue to provide for his family. And let me say this, even though they knew their son was in a sense a ticking time bomb, they loved him so much, and they were so hopeful that he would get that new heart and and all this, but they but yet they knew that the chance that he could die was real. And and so they lived with that his whole life.
So he did die, and but it still blew them out of the water even though they knew that this could happen. And and just a side note, our our situation was very similar in that, you know, we fought this thing for nine months, and most of that journey was a steady decline. Now there were a few highs, like I mentioned, after all the radiation, you know, he had all this you know, it was so all clear almost in his throat region, and, you know, it got better for a while, and we were all just had the highest hopes and faith. And but then when he died, it was like a sudden death to us because we even even though we were watching him decline and we were praying and standing and believing and speaking and commanding and, you know, all that, he died. And we were we but we were flabbergasted because we weren't expecting it.
We were expecting him to to be healed, you know, for the healing to manifest and all this. So the same way with this couple. They lost their son and and so back to the the tears. This man, he started doing his traveling traveling again and just kept pushing and pushing through, pushing through, never gave any place for grieving or mourning. He just got back at it.
And after about nine months, he he just started falling apart on the inside. And Yeah. And so finally, he went to see a a counselor, and he said they said the first two hours that he was there, you know, he went for one hour, and then a week later or a few days later, he went for another hour. The whole hour, all he did was cry. And after that, it's like nine months worth of tears were bottled up on the inside of him.
He released that, and then he was able to start healing. Yeah. So there is healing in tears, and we will talk about more of that later. Yeah. But I wanted to give you permission to cry. Yeah. It's not you're not being overly emotional because you let yourself cry. You just have to do it. It there is healing in tears and God collects all your tears in his bottle. So anyway, thanks for hanging in there with us.
We hope this was helpful for you. We just wanna pray for you really quickly. Father, we just thank you. Thank Thank you for these people. We pray for them. We pray for the ones that are struggling. Lord, you are close to the brokenhearted. You heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds. We thank you that Jesus heals broken hearts, and so we just receive that, Lord. We just pray that the the oil of your Holy Spirit would cover each one of these broken hearts.
And, we just thank you for for all that you're doing to help them in this healing journey today.
Hello again, everybody. This is Charlie, and Jill and I just want to 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. 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. 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.