The Dr. John Delony Show - Family Name-Calling, Handling a Friend's Affair, & a Wife Changes Religions

Episode Date: January 8, 2021

The Dr. John Delony Show is a caller-driven show that offers real people a chance to be heard as they struggle with relationship issues and mental health challenges. John will give you practical advice on how to connect with people, how to take the next right step when you feel frozen, and how to cut through the depression and anxiety that can feel so overwhelming. You are not alone in this battle. You are worth being well—and it starts by focusing on what you can control. Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show. We want to talk to YOU! Show Notes for this Episode Geek Minute: Sugar Dr. Rhonda Patrick Dr. Peter Attia 7:32: My brother called my husband a racist on Facebook and I'm having a hard time dealing with it. 22:20: How do I handle the information that 2 married co-workers and friends of mine might be having an affair? 34:45: My wife has unexpectedly gone back to her Jehovah Witness beliefs. I am Protestant and struggling with how to deal with this as we raise kids together. 46:36: Lyrics of the Day: "Walking in Memphis" - Marc Cohn tags: nutrition, family, relationships, technology/social media, anger/resentment/bitterness, infidelity, workplace/career, marriage, disagreement/conflict, parenting These platforms contain content, including information provided by guests, that is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The content is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional medical, counseling, therapeutic, financial, legal, or other advice. The Lampo Group, LLC d/b/a Ramsey Solutions as well as its affiliates and subsidiaries (including their respective employees, agents and representatives) make no representations or warranties concerning the content and expressly disclaim any and all liability concerning the content including any treatment or action taken by any person following the information offered or provided within or through this show. If you have specific concerns or a situation in which you require professional advice, you should consult with an appropriately trained and qualified professional expert and specialist. If you are having a health or mental health emergency, please call 9-1-1 immediately.

On today's show, we talk to a woman whose brother called her husband a racist. It is that complicated. We also talk to a man whose best friend may be having an affair and he doesn't know how to address it. And finally, we talk to a kind man whose wife just changed religions on him and they've got two kids navigating a messy situation. And by the way, I screwed up Mark Cohn's lyrics. Stay tuned.

What up, what up? I am John, and this is the Dr. John Deloney Show, where we take your calls about your life, your relationships, your kids, your mental and relational health, all of it. We talk about all of it. I want to help you rethink, re-examine, and reconsider your lives, how you talk to yourself, how you talk to those you love, how you talk to those who hate, who you hate, I guess, not who hate, who hate, who hate everybody, I don't know. Talk to everybody. How do you talk to anybody and everybody? How to boldly take the next crooked, wobbly step towards whatever is next in your life. We're going to talk about integrity.

We may talk about loss. We may talk about when things just fall apart. We may talk about infidelity, finding love again. And today we're going to do something new. I've got a new segment, and I didn't even talk to James Childs. We've got a new segment called The Geek Minute. How about that? Does that sound good? I love it.

You sound like you're just overwhelmed. So here's the thing. For so many reasons, I want to talk about science. And for so many reasons, science has such a bad rap these days. If you say the word science, it instantly means you're all these other things. And so I want to take a cue from a couple of folks. Dr. Rhonda Patrick, who does a great job. She's out there in the Internet's world.

She's brilliant. And she does a great job distilling science, hard concepts into easily digestible tidbits. And then Dr. Peter Atiyah, if you don't listen to his podcast, The Drive, you should. It's excellent. But he, again, does a great job taking very complex things and distilling them down. Dr. Atiyah has a segment on one of his blogs he used to have years ago called The Nerd Safari. And I loved it because me and my friends in higher ed, we all call ourselves nerds. We're a bunch of research nerds.

So we're, I was sitting around trying to think of what we could call a segment where we, I take a study and distill it down for practical use for normal people, not for scientists, not for other nerds, not for conspiracy theories, but just here's a study that is out that you could use in your life to make your life better make your life better. And there's usually a 30 to 20, sometimes as quick as 15 year lag on when a study comes out and it actually makes its way into mainstream media, the mainstream life, right? And I want to

close that gap in a significant way. 25 years is just too long. It's just too long, right? So we're thinking about what should be called like nerd safari, and we can't do that because Dr. T is the, like, he's just the best, and he's way out there. And so I was sitting there thinking, and I remember being in a meeting with everybody and saying, guys, I got it. I got it. We're going to call this the geek squad. And I thought I'd stumble onto something great and I think someone gently said like yeah that's cool it was really cool the first time um Best Buy came up with it for all of the people who come to your house and fix your electronics and then I felt like an idiot so we're gonna call it the geek minute because I'm just gonna take a minute and I don't want to use

nerds and I don't want to use anything else we We're just going to use geeks. If you've got a better title for this little segment, this little scientific segment, let me know. I'm happy to change it. But for today, it's the Geek Minute. So here it is. In the last show, I talked about we're doing 30 days no sugar from January 7th to February 7th. By now, you're a couple days into it, and your life is probably terrible. It probably hurts, unless you're hardcore and you snap into a slim gym and you're one of those tough guys.

It'll get you later. But this comes to me. Dr. Patrick sent this via her newsletter, but it's a study that came out in September of 2020. Charlotte Debross is the chief investigator on this, out of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. So we all know that excessive sugar intake, the article says, is now recognized as a key factor for obesity, type 2 diabetes,

cardiovascular disease. So I hope you recognize that the science of nutrition already knows. Sugar's the culprit. It's the bottom line problem with so many issues. But it went on to suggest that because of the way cancer works, could sugar play a major role in the development and sustainability of cancer? So, this study looked at 101,000 participants. That's a lot. The median age was 41 years old and they adjusted for socio-demographic, anthropometric, lifestyle, medical history, and nutritional factors. What that means is sometimes a study comes out and somebody will say, well, that's just because they use real unhealthy people or really overweight people or really fit people. This study is saying that they looked at all of those things. They adjusted for all of the different body types and lifestyle factors and ages and medical histories, nutritional factors.

And here's what they found. No big shock, but total sugar intake was associated with higher overall cancer risk. In addition, and I'm reading directly, significant associations with cancer risk were also observed for added sugars, free sugars, sucrose, sugars from milk-based desserts, dairy products, and sugary drinks. And that includes Coke, that includes orange juice. And before you dairy, non-dairy people send me your mean cards cards and letters just know that they're talking about the lactose the breakdown of dairy products is the sugar there and they went on to write these results suggest that sugars may represent a modifiable risk factor for cancer prevention particularly breast cancer contributing to the current debate on the implementation now get this here's where this is all headed. Sugar taxation, marketing regulations,

and other sugar-related policies. And so once they determine that cigarettes will kill you, you know, if you look at the package, it's a huge warning. They've got a bajillions of dollars worth of taxes on cigarettes. What you're starting to hear in the scientific community is one of the ways to curb some of these massive health issues is to start taxing sugar in a profound way. This study comes out and says, not only is sugar contributing to obesity and type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases like heart disease,

but now we can say almost beyond a shadow of a doubt that cancer is associated with sugar intake as well that's a lot so what that's the geek minute for today so whatever's going on in your heart in your home or your head i'm here to stand with you give me a call at 1-844-693-3291 that's 1-844-693-3291 or you can go to johndeloney.com slash show, fill out the form, and it will go directly to Kelly Daniel, the one and only. And she will see about getting you on the show. All right, let's go straight to the calls. We've got a lineup today, good folks. This one's going to be a good one.

All right, let's go to Nicole in Cincinnati, Ohio. Nicole, how in the world are you today? I'm doing really well, John. How are you? I'm doing so well, so well. So how can I help this morning? It's this afternoon. We used to shoot this show in the morning, and I'm just used to saying good morning, but it's the afternoon. How in the afternoon are you? Very good. Cold and snowy. Oh, good deal. It is not that here in Nashville, but very cool. So how can I help? So a few months ago, my brother called my husband a racist on Facebook in public.

And essentially, during this conversation, he would not explain why he felt my husband posted a meme. And my brother would not explain why he thought it was racist and essentially my husband unfriended him because my husband wasn't going to continue to be attacked I don't feel that the meme was racist but now my brother and I we haven't spoken and to be honest I don't know that I care to speak

to him our family has been really close all these years and I just feel like now we're kind of like everything else kind of falling apart and I just I'm not sure how to resolve this conflict or even how to approach it well it doesn't sound like you want to resolve it do you I do but I also don't like being attacked. Okay. So let's back out a little bit.

You said your family's been close all these years. I would suggest that if one comment on Facebook would lead to, we're not even going to talk anymore. You're not worth a phone call. You're not worth an offline text. Like, hey, what's going on, man? Especially though, you're not worth a phone call. I'm going to let that go through Thanksgiving, I'm assuming. I'm going to let that get up on the Christmas season.

I'm not even going to reach out to you. And as you said, it's not even, I don't even even want to i would suggest y'all weren't that close so what happened before this usually people don't just fire off and and say hey you're a racist without already there's there's some seeds of dissension some seeds of dislike underneath this placid smooth you know stream we have flowing down here so were y'all really that close or did everyone just play nice until something blew up well i wouldn't say that we i mean we weren't like calling each other every day but i mean on my end i didn't have any issue with him um and to be quick also he spent through college in cincinnati but then he moved across the country, and now he's on the West Coast.

So, and he seems to be doing well out there, but we were never close enough to call him every day, but we never had any real, like, we never had any issues. So, Nicole, when your husband posts a meme, and, man, I tell you what, it is everything. I have to not ask what the meme was, but let's don't do that, okay? Let's A, assume that it wasn't racist and your brother put something out there that was inflammatory. He just lobs a grenade onto somebody else's Facebook platform, which by the way is an imaginary world. It's not real.

None of this is real. So originally when you said he put something on facebook and called him it in public he didn't he put it on facebook but that's that's another that's a whole other conversation so he posted on facebook why in the world would you not call him right away and say what are you doing man why would you not engage that my brother can be really difficult to talk to and tends to be argumentative and it's his way or the highway. But right now it's your way or the highway. You did a thing, so highway. So it sounds like y'all are both very similar. Is that fair? That's fair. Or he's more aggressive and you're more from the one down position. You won't sink the ship from up top.

You'll just pull it down underneath, right? Both are power moves, right? They're just done differently. So do you want to talk to your brother anymore? I do. I'd like it to go back. I'd like it to go back to how it used to be. And I don't want to – I want our family to be whole again. And again, I guess I should also say on the same day, he went after my cousin's husband and called him a racist troll.

Okay. And my mother suggested that maybe there's something, she wouldn't tell me what it was, but she suggested maybe something's going on with your brother. And you don't understand what's going on with him. And I can get that benefit of the doubt. But I guess I'm looking for an apology that I'm never going to get. And that's how I feel like we could mend this. Yeah, see, here's the thing. But he's not going to apologize.

Well, and it won't make it any better. You're not going to feel vindicated or validated. And in fact, the person with the challenge here is you. My goodness, man, your brother is doing something out of character. He's just calling people racist across your family. Your mom knows for a fact that he's hurting, and his sister didn't reach out to say, dude, what is going on? Right? That's fair.

It seems like if you don't want to talk to him, be at peace with your boundaries. Somebody went after my husband, I'm through with you. One strike, you're out, I'm done. My guess is it's not one strike. Your brother's probably been a jerk before, right? Or outspoken and loud and leans on people, etc. And let me just pass this along. Nobody has been their best self the last nine months. Nobody. The last nine months have been hard, right? It's been hard with COVID. It's been hard with cities on fire. It's been hard with race relations. It's been hard all across the board with so many different things.

Economically, it's been a disaster. Politically, it's been a hurricane, blizzard, diarrhea storm. It's just been a mess. And so you have a one of two choice. And usually I can't distill a call down into something this simple. But you can either A, call your brother and say, dude, what's going on? Are you okay? Or you can just stand firm on your convictions that you posted a line on the internets about my husband. I'm through with you. We're done. And you can contact your family and say, everyone's welcome at my house for Christmas except my brother, and we're moving on, not together. But what you can't have is a desire to have your family back to the way it was.

That's a fantasy. That's gone, okay? There's a rift there. And again, my guess is this rift has existed between your husband and him for a while. But it is what it is. And you can either address the rift head on, which is what adults would do with you going directly to your brother, not through your mom or anybody. Or you can just call it over. What do you want to do? Usually I just leave the call there, but I'm interested. What do you want to do? I think reaching out is a good idea.

And I guess I did forget to say that he called my husband a week later, and then he continued to double down and call him a racist. So here's the million-dollar question. Is there a chance what your husband posted was offensive? I'm sure someone's offended out there. That's not the question. That's a passive, lukewarm response. Is there a chance that what your husband posted was offensive?

Honestly, no. Okay. Honestly, to be perfectly honest, I actually like the post. Okay. And several other family members like the post. And I'm willing to call him and i'm willing to talk to him but are you willing to be your i guess hold on are you willing for him to be your brother and you'll have different political views are you willing to for him to still be your brother who you love and you will defend and you have differing opinions over what is racist and what is not?

Why is that a deal breaker? I guess for me, and I guess where it confuses me is how we were raised. If someone was a racist, we generally did not continue interacting with that person. I saw that as a really bad thing. So for my brother to be a grown adult and us being raised in the same house. I guess I'm confused, and maybe I should ask him more about what he thinks racism is and things like that, and if we can, like you're suggesting, disagree to disagree. Or you could learn something, right? You could enter this and say, this is not not like you this isn't how we were raised this is not who we are what are you seeing that i'm not seeing like let's stop let's don't call

each other names and i'm using this tone of voice on purpose right but what are what am i not seeing because i don't i can't wrap my head around it. And if your brother yells at you and says, you're an idiot, that's just because you're this, and fills in the blank, well, yeah, now he is the immature one, right? And I'm not saying he wasn't immature in the first place. What I'm saying is this.

I have been working in and among race issues my entire professional career. And I have learned a lot this season. A lot. Because one of the cornerstone moments for me, one of the cornerstone takeaways is I need to shut my mouth a lot more and listen a lot more. And so my initial response to certain things, when I would see a post, if you will, or hear a news conference or hear a speech or read a book was, I don't think that's right. That's been my historical speech. Or I would go lean in and say, hey, here's my response to this. This season, no more. This season, I will read something that I don't fully wrap my head around or the data doesn't make sense or usually it's somebody's experience is

way different than mine. And now I've got a core group of people that I'll reach out to and say, hey, help me walk through this. I'm not fully grasping it. And I seek first to listen, not first to defend. First to learn, not to explain. Now, does that make what your brother did right? No. Right? Just lobbing that as a grenade is not helpful at all. It doesn't solve any problems. If somebody sees an offensive meme from somebody that they love, and you actually are invested in changing

somebody's heart, then call them on the phone and say, hey, by the way, dude, that's not cool. I have several close friends over the years who have pulled me aside and said, hey, don't say it like that. I see where your heart's at, Deloney. We know you well. That's not how you say that, right? Let's do this another way.

And even to the point that I would have people that I would call and say, hey, I'm about to go give a speech on this. I'm going to do an academic presentation at this particular conference on this topic. Is this the right way to say this? And they would say, Deloney, no, don't say that, you idiot. Say it like this. And I was so grateful to have them in my life. But just lobbing grenades, you're this, you're that,

solves nothing other than it makes you feel superior for a minute. And we have enough superiority going on, guys. Let's stop all that nonsense. If you actually see somebody that posts something that's hurtful, that says something that's hurtful, and you want to make a difference in their life and in the world, privately go to that person and say, hey, you are hurting people. You got to stop.

Here's what this actually means. Here's the history here. And then if they choose to say, I think you're an idiot, and I'm going to say it louder, well, then they've made their decision and feel free to walk away. But man, family members interacting over Facebook is one of the core roots of this issue. And Nicole, your family's not the only one. Good people, stop interacting on social media. Stop interacting via these platforms. Call each other. FaceTime one another.

If your brother or sister is hurting, call them on the phone and say, are you okay? And none of us, like I've already said, were our best this year. All of us have said things and done things and thought things and leaned into things that were not right, that were not good. None of us have been at our best during certain moments. Some of us have grown. Some of us have fallen backwards. Some of us, most of us, have done all those things. But all that to say, when somebody's hurting and they say something stupid,

when somebody's hurting and they lash out, be graceful. Don't just sit there with your hands clenched tight waiting for an apology that may never come. Choose to forgive. Put that brick down, and you move on with your life. But for God's sake, pick up a telephone. So, Nicole, I usually don't do this, but call your brother. Call him tonight and say, I love you, and I can't shake the feeling that you're hurting. And you said some things that hurt me, hurt my husband, hurt our family. But I think something deeper is going on.

What's going on? And I don't think what was put up there was racist. In fact, I liked it. Can you teach me where you're coming from and enter that conversation that way? And then if your brother's an idiot, then you and your husband have to sit down and draw a boundary and say, we wanted this fantasy of a whole family. It's not coming. It's not going to happen. And we got to move on. All right. So thank you so much for that call, Nicole. I do know this. I know millions of people across the country are dealing with that right now. So I appreciate you having the courage to call and talk through that. But let's all be people that are slow to respond, slow to anger,

quick to pick up a telephone, quick to look somebody in the eye and say, Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hold on. Let's back up and be relational beings first. What's going on? So thanks for that call. All right, let's go to Dan in Oklahoma City. Dan, the man, what is up, my man? How are we doing? Hey, Dr. D, how's it going? I'm doing all right. How can I help today, man?

Yeah, I'll try to sum up what has happened real quick, and then I'll dive in just a little bit. A couple days ago, I got a call from my co-worship leader, and she said that she was stepping down immediately due to some inappropriate text that her and my pastor have been having in this last week. So are you on staff at this church? Yes, I am. Yes. Me and her are co-worship leaders, and we have a band of about eight people, and me and her just lead together. I joined this church about a year ago, and this pastor is one of my dearest friends. And so just to dive into that phone call a little bit, at the very first of the phone call. She wouldn't give me any details. She just said that she was stepping down

because of some circumstances that had happened, and she would not tell me what was going on. She just kept saying that this would put me in a corner if I knew, but then she'd kind of give me some hints along the way, and I honestly, I'll be honest, I did pry quite a bit, and then I asked her if I swore to secrecy if she would tell me. Oh, no, Dan. Yeah.

Yeah. So you swore to secrecy, and then she threw a grenade at you, huh? Well, and she said she wouldn't tell me, and then all she would tell me is she said this had nothing to do with the band and nothing to do with the sound people and nothing to do with the band and nothing to do with the sound people, nothing to do with the church board, and she said that's all she would tell me as far as leadership would go, and she'd just give me these hints, and then I finally guessed it, and then she told me, and this pastor is actually one of my dearest friends. He's a mentor to me. He's given me marital advice before. And she just kept telling me

that she felt like she had to fall on the sword for this one and that she was only 25% to blame. But she said she had kind of toyed around a little bit to see if he was serious and test the waters. And she said that she wasn't proud of it, but this wasn't her first rodeo with doing this before. Sure. And, you know.

So let's hold on. So I want to stop with her. Let's just put her, she's made this phone call. Now I want to talk about you. Okay. So for people who are not in the church world and people who are not on staff at a church, here's what I'm hearing really quick is the complexity here.

You have a coworker who swore you to secrecy, but she really wanted you to pry and find out, which you pried and you found out, that she was being inappropriate with your boss, who happens to be the senior pastor, and your good friend, and a spiritual advisor to you, and a marriage advisor to you. And she chose to step down. And the one side of the story you have here is that it was mostly him, but I went fishing, and I've done this before, and I know how to do this, but it was mostly him. And so you are in eight different rocks in a hard place.

It feels like you're not, but it feels like it. Yes. And rock number one is I swore I wouldn't tell. Rock number two is I have a friend who by any stretch of the imagination, friendship is about vulnerability and friendship is about openness and friendship is about accountability. And then number three,

how are you going to worship at a church where the boss is doing that? Right? I know. Yes, I'm sorry. This is heavy, but yes. No, I mean, it's very heavy and I don't want to make light of it,

but your path forward is relatively simple. Okay? So you'll hear me say this a lot on this show because it's our life and it is not by your hand, but in your lap. Okay. So somebody just dropped something in your lap and now you got to deal with it. Did you cause it? No. Is it your fault? No, but you do have a responsibility to deal with that. And that can be trash that's blowing down your street. That can be a neighbor who you've got to go knock on the door and have a hard conversation with. It could be a teacher that treats your kid wrong.

Whatever the thing is, you didn't cause it, but now you've got to deal with it, right? That's life. How old are you, man? I'm 27. All right, so if you haven't experienced this before, this will be the hardest thing you've ever walked through, and it will be a cornerstone of who you become, the minister you become, the pastor you become. And if you choose to quit all this and get out and go sell insurance, it's going to be a cornerstone of the person you become because you're going to have to do something hard.

Okay? Yeah. sell insurance, it's going to be a cornerstone of the person you become because you're going to have to do something hard. Okay. And for everybody out there, never, ever, ever say the words, I promise I won't tell. I promise I won't tell because you never know what someone's going to put on you. You never know what someone's going to put on you. And you learned this the hard way, Dan, but I am not in the business. If somebody doesn't want to tell me, I'm going to move on with my life. Yes. You know what I mean? That is their secret, their burden, their whatever to carry. But the next time you'll know that if someone calls and says, hey, I have to emergency step down, there's some things that happened behind closed doors and I got to go. Then you will say, oh my gosh, I'll be thinking about you. We'll be praying for you. I wish you

the best of luck. And if I can ever be of service, you know how to get ahold of me. And then you hang up and let them go. And then your next call is to the boss, right? Not to pry from that person. And you let the boss know that somebody said something uncouth is going on but anyway that's where we're at right now right so your path forward and again i feel like i'm doing this in the second call in a row here to being pretty prescriptive but you got to let her know that you shouldn't have pried you did and you can't keep that that confidential period and the next thing you have to do is go directly to your friend in person and say, here's what's in my lap. Yep. And you got to do that.

I agree. And that's honestly, I just needed the permission to do that because I know that, you know, Scripture says in Matthew to confront your neighbor if they are sinning and if this is true. And so I feel like I owe him the respect to do this. And just to let you know also, and I feel like this is important to share, but what's even more crazy is that my pastor and his wife, in two different situations, about a month ago, privately with me, let me know, and they let me know to be aware of this other worship leader and that she's not happy in her marriage and that to not be alone in situations with her because she pries for attention, and I'm a kind of guy that just loves to love people, and they said that, you know, it can be taken as flirtatious if someone wants attention, and what's crazy is my pastor even said, I just want you to be aware, and I don't want you to ever be alone in situations with her just to protect your marriage because

it could always be a he said, she said thing, and I don't ever want to ever be alone in situations with her just to protect your marriage because it could always be a he said, she said thing. And I don't ever want to put you in that predicament. And that's why I'm so confused. Well, and here's where this is really important. This is why you, with no fanfare, no drama, no calling in the Calvary, this is why you as a grown man go sit down one-on-one with your other grown man friend. Okay. And you say, here's what I was told. I have a feeling that he may pull his phone out and say,

I'll show you what happened. And your eyes will bug out of your head once you get the other side of the story. Okay? And reserve your judgments, reserve your grenades for him reserve your disdain for him and the role of the church and partridge in a pear tree here's the thing he may be a scumbag he may have had one one singular lap lapse in judgment. One. And he may have received a bunch of crazy text messages from somebody, immediately showed his wife, immediately gone to his bosses, right, the eldership or whatever leaders are at your particular denomination,

and said, whoa. And to which somebody stepped in and said, you need to resign right away to this other worship leader. She did and now she's spinning the story. All that to say is you don't know. Yeah. And so your job is to go sit down and say, here's what was told to me

and it's my job as your friend who loves you and who has invested in you and you've invested in me to put this out there and know that this is being said about you and you've invested in me to put this out there and know that this is being said about you and this is out there. And then let him speak. And here's the thing, Dan. You may not get resolution on this. That's what I'm worried about.

Right? Sometimes your resolution is going to be, I did the right thing, and then the truth will find its way out. Sometimes the resolution on something is finding another side of a story, right? If you're great friends with him and he denies the whole thing, you may say, dude, show me your text right now. And he may pull your phone out right away, right? Or you may be able to say, dude, can you show me? And I've got friends in my life who would do that to me, by the way. Yeah.

Right? And is your heart going to be beating fast? Yes. Is this going to be awkward? Yes. Is this going to be uncomfortable? Yes. But is this what you have to do?

Yeah, it is. It is. If you get a sense that he's lying and shady and skeptical and weird, then it's fair to put him on notice that I'm going to give this seven days and then I'm going to go talk to my bosses there at the church. If I think you're not being honest with me, then I've got a responsibility to this entire group of people who attend this church, who work at this place, that they know what was dropped in my lap.

But I think the right thing to do is to go to him directly first, right? Now, quick aside, and Dan, I'm not speaking to you. I'm speaking to anybody else listening to this. If this is a kid in the youth group, whole different conversation. This is a kid in the youth group. If this is a kid in like a Sunday school, then we're calling in the Calvary. We're turning all the lights on in the building and we'll figure stuff out later. But that's when I'm going to have a much louder conversation than a personal, hey, someone just quit and they said it was because you were making them feel uncomfortable.

They said it was because you were hitting on them and you're married, they're married. Something feels oogie about this. And they said they had to quit. Dude, what in the world? This doesn't sound like you. This isn't the guy I know. This isn't the pastor that I know. But I have to sit down and look you in the eye and say, I'm not cool with this.

What's going on? So that's my thoughts, Dan. I appreciate the call. And again, that's a lot of responsibility for a 27-year-old. And that's what you signed up for. You're in this role for a reason. I do want you to do this. I want you to have this hard conversation and please email me back. Please call me back. I'd love to have you back on the show and let everybody know how that conversation went. One of the things that we don't do well as a culture, as a society, is have hard conversations.

And so I want to hear how it went. And it may help for you to write bullet points down, right? It may be helpful for you to practice this conversation with your wife or in the mirror or whatever that may be, but make sure you are clear-headed and clear-minded and go talk to your friend. He deserves that, you deserve that, and the people in that church deserve that. So thank you so much. All right, let's take one more call. Let's go to John in San Francisco, California. John, what's up? Hi, Dr. Deloney. How are you? I'm good, man. I'm good. How are you? Well, I'm struggling and I need a little bit of help. All right, brother, you called the right place. How can I help? I think you called the right place. How can I help? I think you called the right place.

I don't know what you're struggling with. I kind of said that presumptively, but let's go for it. Let's see if we can figure it out. So I'm married, and my question is, how do we navigate marriage and raising two kids with now two very different beliefs? A little back story is we've been married for seven years, dating for three prior to that. We have two kids, ages three and five. My wife growing up was a Jehovah's Witness. She stepped away from the faith about late teens. She wasn't in it when we were dating, so she had talked about it a little bit, but wasn't a part of it.

But now, all of a sudden, she wants to go back, and she actually is going back. Okay. What makes it hard is their beliefs are strongly different. No birthdays, no holidays. I feel like a sick old parent yeah number one I hate that for you John because your whole world just got turned upside down

and I'm just going to sit here for a second and grieve with you it sucks man and I hate that for you what conversations did you and your wife have leading up to this does Does she just come in one day and lay this on you? Has she been thinking about this? Has there been challenges in your marriage or is this just out of the blue? She's mentioned it before. And I think a big push is

her mom who's not around. She's East Coast, so we're West Coast. Her mom is a big influence on her. And so I think COVID is also another issue. She brought that up saying that she started talking about prophecies and how things are starting to come true and the faith she wants what they believe in to happen for her and the kids. She would like me to join in on it. And I'm just not, I don't agree with that. Right.

Hey. So what do you want to do? That's where I'm stuck. We love each other. We're married. We're in it for the long haul. But now our way of life is turned upside down, and I just don't know what to do going forward. Okay. For those, again, for those listening to this who aren't in these universes, I want to spell a broader picture. Often folks who aren't in

any particular faith community or are in faith communities that may be more universal in nature, there are certain faith communities that have a deep, heartfelt ideation that if it doesn't happen this way, somebody's soul is going to be tortured forever. And these conversations can be existential in nature when my version of endings and your version of endings don't match. It's not simply a matter of, well, you can go to that building on Sunday and I'll'll go to this building, and then we'll just meet up for lunch. It can be much deeper than that. Right, John? Right. Okay.

One of their beliefs was blood transfusions. She does not believe in that. Okay. And so, God forbid something happens, and she's with the kids, and one of them gets hurt, she's not going to agree to saving her child's life. Right. So here's the, man, I'm wading into deep waters here, but here's the reality. You're fortunate in this conversation because you and your wife both love each other. Okay. And you have to have a conversation that is less about religion, less about beliefs, and more about how are we going to honor and take care of these kids while she makes this big transition, while you come to terms with what your new relationship is going to look like and what the day-to-day is going to look like, what the week-to-week, what the month-to-month, year-to-year is going to look like.

And then you need to get into the nitty-gritty. And some of these transitions in your mind are going to be bigger than they are in reality, meaning you're going to have conjured up in your head this and this and this. She's not, if your kid's in a car wreck and they're racing her to the hospital, she's going to sign a paper and say, no blood transfusion. I'm going to let my kid die on the table. So you need to know the doctors won't let that happen. Okay? But there may be other alternatives where you say, my kids will get the medical care that they need.

I will not budge on that. Period. Right. I am going to throw my child a birthday party. Period. Okay? Yes. And so what you need to get in your head is the non-negotiables, right?

And have a conversation with your wife. Ask her, what are the non-negotiables? Because now she gets both sides, right? She's been there. She left. She was with you and your, are you just in a Protestant faith? Okay. So you're, she's been in that world and then she transitioned out. My guess is she's going to transition again in a number of years, right? She will move around in these conversations.

And so what I want you to do is to have your non-negotiables, have her non-negotiables, and y'all sit down and talk through them. Okay? If you find a situation where your kids aren't safe, you've got a bigger problem. Okay? Or you believe your kids aren't safe. You have a larger issue here.

If my guess is it's not going to be the case. Correct. It might be, but probably not. Okay. My guess is there's going to be a lot more similarity than you think. And the rug got pulled out from under you in a pretty significant way. And my guess is she's hurting too. She's trying to figure this out as well.

So number one, you're going to get there in love. You're going to figure out what is best for our kids. And then you're going to continue to double down on connection and see if there's any sort of, I may be nuts here, but any sort of compromise moving forward, right? And it may be no holds barred. I am taking my kids to this place. We are doing this thing, at which point you and her need to go see a marriage counselor immediately because then your marriage is going to be on life support. Okay? Okay.

I know you're committed to it, but if you have strong Protestant beliefs and you have kids, if you have strong values and beliefs of any sort, and somebody else, particularly your wife, is imposing different values and beliefs on your kids that contradict those, there's no way your marriage survives that, okay? That if you don't have a spirit of love and connection and compromise there, okay? And here's the magic. I want you to be open with your kids as you have these conversations, okay? How old are they? Three and five. three and five three and five okay so not hard now because she is she's obviously teaching what she believes now and so and they're not doing this out of spite or hate or anything but they'll make comments oh dada doesn't know jehovah

or sure stuff like that or why doesn doesn't that pray to Jehovah? They're innocent kids, but that's her teaching them this stuff, and it's hard. It's hard to sit at the dinner table and do that. It is. And if it aligns with your values and beliefs, you need to let her know that I'm also going to tell this story, one about Jesus, one about who I believe in, one about how I believe how this narrative plays.

And it's going to feel like you're going to throw these kids into a tizzy and they're not going to know up from down and side to side. You're not. They're going to hear the integrity in your voice. They're going to hear the integrity in your wife. And they're going to hear two adults approaching a problem, having different outcomes, but they're all going to be rooted in connection there. Does that make sense? It does. It does. And kids are

incredibly resilient. They understand, like here's, this is an off the wall example. If it's a terrible one, don't send me mean cards and letters, whatever. I'm late to everything i try so hard john i can't tell you how hard i try my wife is 15 minutes early to everything okay and it drives me crazy that we leave that much time on the table we just get somewhere and we sit and people are still filing in and it drives her crazy that we are always running in and we're always late right right my My kids know that I'm trying. I really am. I'm putting some things in place. I'm constantly working towards discipline. And it's a discipline issue, dude. I wish it was something, you know, psychosomatic. It's discipline for me. And she is constantly working on having a little more fun in life, right? Loosening up a little bit. And my kids see two parents who are both people of integrity,

both people who have values, both people who have beliefs, and who are approaching going to the movies differently. Does that make sense? Yeah. So there's not the existential weight here, right? There's not the idea of what's going to happen in the afterlife and all those other conversations. But there is, if you approach your kids in love, you approach your kids with connection,

they're going to be able to hear and see you guys. Okay, they love us. I'm figuring this out. I'm figuring that out. It's when she says, you cannot mention Jesus in my house again. Then you are going to have a problem. Or when you turn to her and say, you will not talk about praying to Jehovah again in this home, then y'all are going to have a problem. Or when you turn to her and say, you will not talk about praying to Jehovah again in this home, then y'all are going to have a problem, right?

So ultimately, you know what, I'm going to back out. Y'all need to go see a marriage counselor now, right? Y'all need to go see a marriage counselor now. Y'all need to go talk to somebody now and begin to work through some of the, what this means. Have somebody else navigate this with you, your non-negotiables, the things that are, you're able to compromise, what birthdays and holidays are going to look like, what church service is going to look like, what we're going

to tell our kids about end times prophecies versus this is one of many, many, many, many, many pandemics that have happened in our, in the history of people and so on and so on and so forth, right? But double down in love. You still love this lady. She still loves you. And that's a great place for you to start, okay? Sit down tonight with her and say, we're going to talk about our kids. We're going to talk about the non-negotiables.

We're going to go from there. John, thank you so much for this call. I do want to know how that conversation happens, how it goes. So call me back. Let me know how it goes. And let me know how the non- much for this call. I do want to know how that conversation happens, how it goes. So call me back. Let me know how it goes. And let me know how the non-negotiables call. My guess is I'm almost positive there's going to be very, very few, very few things at the end of the day that you'll have to go to war on right now. Eventually you will.

Eventually you're going to have to butt heads in a hard way. And you'll have to say for me in my house, she'll say for me in my house, and you're going to have to have heads in a hard way and you'll have to say for me in my house she'll say for me in my house and you're going to have to have some hard hard conversations but for right now in the season of transition the season of pain double down on love double down on non-negotiables and make sure those kids are loved and connected all right so as we wrap up the show let's see here i've got let's go with this one let's go with this one. Let's go with this one. Actually, you know what? Nope, that's two on the nose for today. Can't do that one, brother. I was going to do that one.

That would sound like I set John up. John, I did not. This is just a song that was just sitting up here. We'll do that some other show. All right, we're going to go with the 1991. I mean, this is the top five greatest songs ever written. By the one and only Mark Cohn. And it's a song about Tennessee.

It's called Walking in Memphis. And he goes like this. I put on my blue suede shoes and I boarded the plane. Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues in the middle of the pouring rain. WC Handy, won't you look down over me? Yeah, I got a first class ticket, but I'm as blue as a boy can be. Saw the ghost of Elvis on Union Avenue. I followed him up to the gates of Graceland.

Then I watched him walk right through. Now, security, they didn't see him. They just hovered around his tomb. But there's a pretty little thing waiting for the king down in the jungle room. Then I'm walking in Memphis. I was walking with my 10 feet off of Beale, walking in Memphis. But do I really feel the way I feel? Mark Cohn, I love it.

This is the Dr. John Deloney Show.