DELILAH DILEMMAS: Hmmmm

Job loss, squirrel troubles, abuse... everyone's got something. Can I help? ~ Delilah

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, it's Delilah. Thank you for stopping by. I have
put together some of my favorite radio moments here to
share with you on our daily podcast. Hey it's Delilah.
Every night on my radio show, we share something called

(00:23):
a Delilah dilemma, where you write to me or you
call me with yours situation and I try to help
you come up with the right solution. Today, we're going
to listen to some of those on this podcast. Tonight's
Delilah's Dilemma, says Dear Delilah. My husband lost his job
at the end of January and he's been depressed ever since.

(00:47):
I've been doing my best to keep us and our
three kids, who are eleven, ten, and seven months afloat.
Our finances are not looking great and it's stressing me
out and overwhelming me. I feel like kids, the bills, work, housework,
et cetera. Is too much for me to handle alone.

(01:08):
I just don't know what to do or how to
motivate my husband to get out of bed and not
sleep so much. He's been applying for jobs, but no luck.
I go back and forth between frustration and compassion, but
frustration is winning out these days. Any suggestions on how

(01:30):
to motivate him to put a little more effort into
getting something that helps to support his family, or at
least engage with us while he is looking. We love
listening to you from Jessica. Jessica, I will have my
Mama Delilah words for you coming up next. Tonight's Delilah's

(01:55):
dilemma is for a single mom of three kids who
is married. Let me say that again. It is from
a single mom, a single parent. She is single, she
is alone. She is parenting a ten year old and
eleven year old and a baby, a new baby. She's married,
but her husband is not husbanding. She's wifing and husbanding

(02:18):
at the same time. He is not being a partner.
He is not partnering, He is not parenting, he is
not contributing. He is sleeping and eating and causing more stress. Jessica,
I am sorry that he is suffering with depression, but
that's an illness that he needs to take ownership of.

(02:40):
If he were suffering from diabetes and refusing to take
his insulin, if he were suffering from cancer and refusing
to do his cancer treatments, there's nothing you can do
to motivate him to want to get better, but you
cannot continue on this path or you will crash and burn,

(03:03):
and then your children will not have either parent. You
cannot continue doing the housework, doing the parenting, doing the pickups,
doing the drop offs, the engaging with children, and bringing
in enough money to support a family of five while
he does nothing. He is expecting you to parent him

(03:26):
just like you're seven month old, and that's not okay.
So you need to set some really hard boundaries. And
I know you don't want to, and you think it's
not compassionate, but you need to. You need to say,
if you are not going to get up and clean
up the house and take care of the children while
I am working to support us, then you need to

(03:48):
find someplace else to sleep at night. If you want
a parent to parent, you go back to your mom
or your dad, or your grandma or grandpa. But I
am not your parent. I am your partner, and you
are not partnering with me. And that's not mean and
that's not unloving, that's honest. He is suffering from mental illness.

(04:09):
I understand that, but he cannot. You cannot be the
one to get him help. He has to want to
do that, and why should he and he's got a
free ride. But it's going to kill you because you
cannot continue to have all this stress on you. Tonight's

(04:35):
Delilah's dilemma is from Mary, Mary, Mary, who is quite
contrari She says, Hi, Delilah, funny, not funny dilemma. I
do a lot of container gardening every year. I grow tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, herbs, flowers,
et cetera. A little of this, a little of that
out on my patio. I take great joy and pride

(04:58):
in my little harvest and enjoy the fresh produce. For
a couple of years now, there have been manic squirrel
activities going on in the neighborhood. They've destroyed my containers,
digging things up by their roots, breaking tender young shoots,
eating anything that resembles a fruit before maturity. At a

(05:24):
recent neighborhood night out event, I heard other neighbors are
having the same issue, and also that it comes down
to a single neighbor who started hand feeding a litter
of baby squirrels three years ago. It's those squirrels who

(05:45):
now have no fear of people who dig to bury
the peanuts handed to them, and who have also discovered
my hard grown delicacies. These neighbors laughed when they heard
what's been happening. I know it sounds like a comedy,
but I'm truly distressed about this. Please any advice from Mary,

(06:07):
Mary quite contrary? Oh gee, Mary, I love your sense
of humor. I really do, and I will share my
words of advice. I don't know if I have any advice.
I'll just share my funny words. Coming up next Tonight's

(06:33):
Delilah's Dilemma speaks to my heart on two levels. Number One,
because I am a gardener and I have acres of
land that I garden. I grow way too much produce
every year, and I give it to neighbors, I give
it to friends, I give it to the food banks.
I love to garden, and I love to harvest my gardens.

(06:55):
And because I feed squirrels and raccoons and deer, and
this year I'm the bad neighbor Mary. I'm the one
that feeds the squirrels and the critters and the deer.
And guess what they ate all my garden this year.

(07:19):
The deer that I, you know, handfeed apples to decided
to eat every green bean plant I planted down to
the root. So I am both you in this scenario
and the bad neighbor that fed the squirrels. What can
you do about it? Nothing? Absolutely nothing, because the damage

(07:39):
is done. The squirrels are tame. You can't untame them.
And you can try. You can buy like chicken wire
and put it around your containers. You can try that.
Squirrels are very clever. Though they are very very clever.
They'll figure a way to break in. Or you can
just go with it. You can just go with it

(08:00):
and laugh at it and become friends with the squirrels.
I'd even invite a raccoon or two to the party.
You can have a few of the deer that ate
all my green beans and cucumber plants this year. I'll
send them your direction, Because what are you gonna do?
You're gonna You're not gonna win a battle with a neighbor.
Your sure is not gonna win a battle with the squirrels.

(08:21):
So you might as well become an animal lover as
well as a plant lover and garden into a greenhouse.
That's it. You need a little greenhouse. You need one
of those little greenhouses on your patio. Nah, the squirrels
will figure out how to open the latch. Good luck

(08:43):
with the gardens, good luck with the neighbors. And if
you feed feed raccoons, they really like marshmallows. Okay, just
say Tonight's Delilah's Dilemma is from a listener that just
absolutely wrecked me. I've read it through two or three times,

(09:06):
hoping that I can do this on the air without
losing it. She writes, Dear Delilah, I am married to
a man that physically abuses me. We dated for ten
years before marrying a year ago. There was abuse throughout,

(09:26):
but I always forgave him and told myself that it
would stop. We spent a lot of money on our wedding,
and we went far in debt. We were going to
divorce recently, even going so far as signing divorce papers,
but our families sat us down and said we would

(09:48):
bring shame to them, so we've stayed together. The physical
abuse reoccurred today on our first wedding anniversary. I've left
the house, but I know I will go back because
I don't want him to be in debt because of
our wedding. Delilah, please tell me what I should do.

(10:12):
Thank you from Priya Priya, I will have my words
of love for you coming up next. Tonight's Delilah's Dilemma
is one of the hardest I've ever received from a

(10:33):
woman who has been abused by the man she loves
for ten years and a year ago she married him
hoping it would stop, and it hasn't, And now on
their one year anniversary, he has abused her again. Priya,
it's not going to stop until he has an epiphany

(10:58):
and realizes how evil his actions are and how desperately
he needs help and commits himself to a program to
get help. Until that happens, you are going to continue
to be the target of his rage. And if your

(11:22):
family and his family thinks that that is acceptable and
that you should continue to be hurt, shame on them.
They know better. They're telling you it would bring them
shame for you to walk away from this. Not okay,

(11:43):
Not okay. There is honor in integrity, There is honor
in strength, There is honor in doing the right thing.
There is no honor in staying and getting hurt and
abuse and mistreated. That abuse stems from a lack of

(12:07):
respect for the woman that he promised to cherish, promise
to cherish and protect what honor is there in that
There is no honor, There is only heartbreak. Walk away
while you can still walk, run away, while you can

(12:29):
still run. The damage done to your heart is going
to take a long time to counsel through and to heal.
But please do not spend one more hour, one more night,
one more week, walking around on eggshells, wondering when he

(12:51):
is going to hurt you again. Please honor yourself. I
so hope you have been enjoyed these radio moments as
much as I enjoy bringing them to you. I'll share
more with you each weekday on Hey It's Delilah. Do