How Radio Host Delilah’s Faith and Words from Rory Feek Encouraged Her Amidst Tragedy
By Movieguide® Staff
American radio host Delilah recently shared how country singer Rory Freek aided her in dealing with the grief of losing three sons.
Delilah’s son Sammy died in 2012 with sickle-cell anemia at 16. Five years later the host’s 18-year-old son Zach died by suicide and in 2019 she lost her stepson Ryan.
“I think when you lose a child, if you don’t have a coping mechanism, you’re not going to last long,” Delilah, 61, said on the “PEOPLE Every Day” podcast with Janine Rubenstein.
Although Delilah’s faith, and the counsel of a grief advisor, helped her in amidst tragedy, it was Freek’s words that stuck with her.
Freek, 55, lost his wife Joey to cancer in 2016.
“Right after Zack passed, [Feek] reached out to me, and he said something to me that changed me,” Delilah said. “He said, ‘Your boys are much more a part of your future than they are a part of your past.’”
“Because you know where they are,” Delilah recalled Freek saying. “And because your hope is in the Lord, you know you’ll be with them again. So now you will look forward to that day with great anticipation. You won’t ever fear death again. You will look forward to it because you know where they are.”
She continued: “And that was such a huge gift. It reframed everything, that one little conversation, and gave me the hope and something to look forward to. But while I’m here, I want to be as effective as I can as a mom, as a broadcaster, as a friend. And so I got to keep moving forward.”
Delilah still mothers 13 other children.
“I can’t stop living just because they did,” Delilah said. “I have to keep moving forward to be the best person that I can be. And so that’s what I do every day. Every day I thank God that they’re safe with him. Every day I thank God that they’re not hurting. That the boys are not in pain. That they’re in paradise, and that one day we’ll all be there.”
In 2019, Delilah shared how her faith strengthens her despite immense tragedy.
“I came to my faith in my 20s and it is my faith that has kept me going through losing two boys, two of my sons, Sammy and Zack,” Delilah told Fox News in 2019. “There is a verse that says, ‘Every one of our days is numbered before a single one comes to pass.’ That one verse has saved my sanity because all of my sons’ days were numbered. God knew when they were going to leave this earth before they came to this Earth and knowing that changes everything. Because if I didn’t believe that, then I would do the what-ifs. What if I had done this differently? What if I had done that differently?”
“I would drive myself insane with the what-ifs,” Delilah continued. “But the reality is I did the best that I could with the information I had. All of our days are numbered. God already knows when he’s going to call me home. So while I have today, while he’s given me this 24 hours, I can spend it mourning and depressed over what I’ve lost or I can spend it rejoicing in children who still need me, who still need their mom to be fully present. So, I choose life. I choose joy. I choose to invest my energies into those people that God has in my life today.”
