Day One:
Sheila Walsh: But God’s the only one who knows whether we’re serving out of pain or passion, out of a calling or a wound so deep, we just don’t know what else to do.
John Fuller: Today, on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, Sheila Walsh will explain the origins of her deep insecurities that led to a mental breakdown, and what she learned through that experience. Well, thanks for joining us today, I’m John Fuller.
Jim Daly: As many of you know, Sheila Walsh is something of a legend in Christian circles. She went from a career in Christian music recording 24 albums.
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: I mean, that’s a lot. To co-hosting The 700 Club with Pat Robertson, to writing multiple best-selling books. Uh, now, in addition to being an author, Sheila hosts several shows on the TBN Television Network. But as you heard in the opening clip, there was emotional pain behind all of those accomplishments, and you’re going to hear that story today.
John: Mm-hmm. And Sheila is a superb storyteller. I know you’ll be riveted by what she shares. Here now, Sheila Walsh speaking at a women’s conference sponsored by Focus on the Family.
Sheila: So I wanted to ask you a question. What would you say if you could sit down and talk to your 21-year-old self? If it was just the two of you in a room, and somehow you wanted to give her a, a little bit of a heads-up as to what her life would be like, that it wouldn’t be perhaps what she thought it might be? So lemme just tell you what I, I would say. I wish I could take my 21-year-old’s face in my hands and tell her, “It’s okay not to be okay, I promise.” Would she have believed me? I don’t think so. She was determined to get everything right.
It started with a photograph. I was cleaning out drawers the other day and found an old photograph under a roll of Christmas paper. I sat down on the sofa and studied the picture. I’m in a white dress and a graduation gown, 21 years old, graduating from London Theological Seminary. My hair is short and dark. That’s actually my natural color.
I said to my hairstylist the other day, “Do you think I should ever go back to my natural color?” She said, “You no longer have a natural color.” Good to know. In the photograph, I’m smiling, confident, ready to take on the world for Jesus. My heart aches ’cause there’s so much I’d love to tell her. “Moisturize your neck, you’ll thank me later.”
No, but if I only had 10 minutes, I just, I’d cut to the chase and I’d tell her this will not be the life she imagined. I’d tell her that she will disappoint people, and they will disappoint her, but she’ll learn from it. I’d let her know that she’d fall down over and over again, but rather than understanding the love of God less, she’ll understand it more. I’d let her know her heart is going to break, but she’ll survive, and it will change how she sees people. Not as causes to be saved, but as people to be loved.
I’d let her know that sometimes the night will get very dark, but she will never be alone, even when she’s absolutely convinced that she is. I’d let her know that she’s loved and I’d tell her to get rid of the punishing list of things that she thinks she needs to get right. I wonder if any of you grew up with that kind of internal list of what you think makes you a, a good wife, a good mom, a good follower of, of Jesus.
One of my favorite stories in the New Testament is Christ’s encounter with a woman at the well. It’s a story you could unpack for days, but there’s just one little thing that Jesus said to her that has changed the trajectory of my life. It’s after, you know, they’ve had quite a bit of conversation and then she’s discussing, “Well, where should we worship? You know, you Jews worship here. We Samaritans worship here, which is the better of the two?” And Jesus said, “The time is coming. In fact, it’s here right now when those who worship will worship in spirit and in truth.”
I’m a bit of a geek. I love studying, I love commentaries, I love taking a deep dive. And when I looked at the original language for that word truth, it’s a little Greek word, aletheia, and it means with nothing hidden that that’s how Jesus defines true worship. We worship in spirit with nothing hidden. So tonight, I thought I would do just that.
I thought I would share a little story, um, some of my story of why I’m honestly the least likely person to ever be on a platform, to ever be given a microphone. I was born on the West Coast of Scotland, small fishing town. And I was born into a family where my mom and dad loved Jesus. Now, that would not be unusual in most places in America, but in Scotland, particularly at that time, only 2% of our population even went to church. So to have a mom and dad who didn’t just go to church but actually really loved Jesus was such a gift.
I have a sister who’s two years older than me and a brother who’s three years younger, and I was very much a daddy’s girl. And remember, even when I was really little thinking, “When I grow up, I’m gonna be just like my dad.” I had no idea how those words would come back to haunt me further down the road.
It was getting pretty close to Christmas, this one particular year. And all I wanted for Christmas was a dog. And so I remember saying to dad, “Dad, do you think for Christmas I could get a dog?” He said, “Well, honey, your mom’s got three of you under seven, you know, maybe, what about a hamster?” I’m like, “No, not a hamster, a dog.” And he said, “Well, that might be too much for her.” And I’m like, “Dad, please, a wee dog, a three-legged dog, anything.”
So one night, my sister and I are in bed in our pajamas and my dad came in and he was holding something behind his back and he said, “Okay, I have an early Christmas gift and it’s alive.” And he asked us to close our eyes and hold our hands. Well, my sister wouldn’t do it, but I did. And immediately, my dad put something in my hands that before I opened my eyes, had run up the sleeve of my pajamas and all I could see was a tail. And I thought, “I don’t care what it is, I’m giving it a name.” It turned out to be a little wiener dog, a little Dachshund. I know we named her Heidi. And it was one of those times in life where you just think, “Okay, everything is great.”
Do you remember the movie The Wizard of Oz? I dunno how long it’s been since you’ve seen that movie, but do you remember that moment? It’s right in the beginning before Dorothy lands in that glorious technicolor world, and she’s looking up at the sky and she’s singing that song that everyone has covered, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” There’s a place where every dream that you dare to dream might come true.
Well, Dorothy might have been looking for a rainbow. She had no idea that it was a tornado that was heading right for her. Have you ever been there? And just outta nowhere, something slams into your life and changes the landscape and nothing will ever be quite the same again. That’s what happened in our home. By the time I woke up the next morning, my father was in intensive care and not expected to survive. He’d had a massive brain aneurysm, but eventually, he was able to come home.
And my mom explained to my sister and I; my brother was too little to understand. Dad was a little different. He was now paralyzed on the left side, and he lost the ability to speak. It was, it was as if words were on shelves too high for him to reach. But I thought, “Well, he’s my dad and I’m gonna learn his new language.” He could make sounds and I thought, “I’m just gonna be his best friend.” Which worked until it didn’t. My dad began to have what we called in layman’s terms, brainstorms, where he would become incredibly strong and quite violent. And until the very last day, the only person he took his anger out on was me. He never touched my sister; he never touched my brother. And until the very last day, he never harmed my mom.
That was confusing for me as a child, because I thought I was the one who was closest to my dad. It was only in fairly recent years that a friend of mine who’s a neurosurgeon explained that sometimes when there’s an extreme brain injury, the person will strike out at the one person they believe will love them no matter what, but you don’t understand that when you’re five. It would start in little ways. I would walk past my dad’s chair and he would slap me in the face or he would grab a handful of my hair and pull it out. And I just thought, “I have to try harder. I’m making my dad angry.”
And the last day I ever saw him alive, I was sitting by the fire playing with my little dog, and she did something I’d never seen her do before. She started growling and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. And I turned just in time to see that my dad was about to bring his cane down in my skull. And I don’t remember whether I pulled his cane or pushed him, but he lost his balance and he hit the ground hard and lay there just roaring like an animal.
And my mom who’d been in the kitchen, she came in and when she saw what was happening, she took my sister, my brother and I, she locked us in a room while she dialed 911. As I said, we lived in a little fishing village. It probably took only four or five minutes for help to get there, but it felt like an eternity. Listening to my dad banging my mom’s head against the wall. And I thought he was gonna kill her and we would not be able to help her.
It took five men to carry my dad out of the house that day. And he was taken to what was called back then our local lunatic asylum is what we call a psych hospital these days. He was 34 years old and he was put in various different stages of security because he was becoming increasingly violent. But one day, my dad managed to escape, and they searched for him all through the night, and they found him in the morning. He had drowned himself in the river behind the hospital.
And in those days in Scotland, you didn’t take children to a funeral or to a gravesite. My only vague memory of that morning is my mom coming home in a black dress with a black hat on. And she took every single picture of my father off the walls or off the table and she put them in a little brown leather suitcase, which she locked, and she pushed under her bed and we never mentioned his name again.
I think we know so much more now about how to help children process grief. I think my mom thought if Sheila wants to talk, I’ll let her bring it up. But she had no way of knowing that this question that tormented me day in and day out was, “What did my dad see in me? What did he see in me that made him hate me so much?” Because, um, this was quite some time ago in Scotland. And because my father as a member of the church had died by suicide. He was buried in an unmarked grave and we had to leave town.
We moved back to the town where my mom had been raised, and we went on as if nothing had happened. We would go to church, we would sing the same hymns, and we would sing about a good God and a faithful God and a loving God. And there were so many missing pieces in my heart, but we were just a family who didn’t talk about hard things. We just carried on.
And when I look back on my life in those years, I think that was where it began that I lived with such a sense of shame. And I don’t know what a clinical definition of shame is, but this is how I differentiate between shame and guilt. If I said something hurtful to Jodie, I would feel guilty until I could sit down and say, “I’m so sorry. That was my fault. Please forgive me.” So if guilt tells me I’ve done something wrong, shame tells me I am something wrong. And what do you do with that?
You know, it would be fascinating, girls, if we had time to hear a little bit of every one of your stories because we all have one. And when something happens in childhood that you don’t know what to do with, you just kind of push it into the cellar of your soul. But even though you think you’ve buried it, you’ve buried it alive, it’s still there. And we find some way of going on, some kind of mask to wear to make it possible to, to function well.
Sometimes we turn to spending too much money because we think if I look better on the outside, perhaps I’ll feel better on the inside. Some days we turn to prescription medication or to alcohol or to relationships. I found the perfect place to hide, Christian ministry. Now, think about it. Who’s gonna come up to me and say, “Put that Bible down, or we’re gonna have an intervention. No more Second Kings for you lady.” But God’s the only one who knows whether we’re serving outta pain or passion out of a calling or a wound so deep we just don’t know what else to do.
When I was 12 years old, my mom took me to hear Scotland’s only gospel group. They were terrible. But the thing I do remember about that night was the gentleman at the end said, “God has no grandchildren. He only has sons and daughters. And just because your parents are believers doesn’t mean you are. You get to choose for yourself.” And so that night I asked my mom to pray with me, and my mom led me into a relationship with Jesus. And she said something that would be good news to most people, but have you ever noticed that you tend to hear things through the broken window of your own life?
She said, “Sheila, not only is Jesus your Savior and Lord, you have a Heavenly Father watching over you.” And I remember at 12 thinking, I’ve got one more chance to get it right. Whatever my earthly father saw in me that made him hate me so much, my Heavenly Father is never gonna see that. I’m gonna be the perfect Christian if it kills me, and it almost did.
I went to seminary in, in London to train to be a missionary in India, but God redirected my steps, and I ended up working with Youth for Christ across Europe and singing with Billy Graham and some of his crusades. And then I was invited to co-host The 700 Club with Pat Robertson. And so for the next five years, that’s what I did. I sat there every day. But here’s the truth, inside, I was still the same, scared little broken girl who wouldn’t let anybody get close to her in case you saw what my father saw.
You know, it’s possible to be very well known and desperately lonely. That’s how I lived. But God, in His mercy … It’s interesting to me that mercy is such a little word, but it weighs so much. God in His mercy, let my life hit the wall at 200 miles an hour. I had never heard of clinical depression. Certainly not if you’re a Christian, absolutely not if you’re on a television show that prays for people to be healed. But I would go to the ATM machine and couldn’t remember my four-digit PIN. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat. And I had this overwhelming weight of sadness, not just like a bad day, but this is as if someone soaked a blanket and ice-cold water and draped it over my heart.
So I’m interviewing my first guest of the day and I ask her a question and instead of answering my question, she kind of turned the tables on me. And she said, “Sheila, you sit here every day and you ask us how we’re doing, how are you doing?” And I wasn’t expecting it, and I didn’t have time to pull up my wall. And there was such kindness in her eyes, and I started to cry and I couldn’t stop. I hadn’t cried in years, but I couldn’t stop.
And eventually, our director threw to a commercial break, and I took off my microphone and I walked outta the studio and I locked myself in my dressing room. And as far as my … I was concerned my life was over. If the whole deal you’ve made with God is I’ll get everything right and you’ll not stop loving me, and then you fall apart on national television. As far as I was concerned, the deal was off. I had a, a telephone in my dressing room and I called one of my best friends, a guy called Dr. Henry Cloud. And I said, “Henry, um, I think I’m losing my mind.” And he said, “No, you’re not, Sheila, but you need some help, and you need it now.” And so by that evening, I was in the locked ward of a psychiatric hospital. I was 34 years old.
John: You’re listening to Sheila Walsh on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and you can find help and hope for desperate situation you’re facing when you call and connect with one of our caring Christian counselors. I’ll have the number in a moment. We’d also encourage you to get a copy of Sheila’s book, Holding On When You Want to Let Go. Out of the pain you’ve heard from today, she addresses how God can meet you and help in your circumstances. And we’re sending that book to anyone for a gift of any amount to the ministry of Focus on the Family. Contribute today, and by the way, when you’re online with us, you can request two free audio collections, they’re called Enduring the Challenges of Life Collection, and also our Best of 2025 Collection. Now you can find those and, uh, further help, at FocusontheFamily.com/broadcast. Or call if you’d like details or to connect with a counselor, our number is – 800-A-FAMILY. Let’s return now to more from Sheila Walsh.
Sheila: I was in this little single room, no, no locks on the doors. I took the blanket off the bed and I sat in the corner of the room. And honestly, I felt as if I’d gone to hell. I’ve never felt so alone, so dark, so abandoned in my life. I was aware of people coming to the door every 15 minutes, but I never looked up. I just kept sitting there with my head and my knees, but it’s 3:00 in the morning.
The person who came in walked all the way to where I was. And when I saw their feet by my feet, I’d looked up. Looked like maybe a doctor going off duty, but he was holding something, and he gave it to me. It was something you’d give a child. It was a little stuffed lamb. And he turned and he walked to the door, and when he got to the door, he stopped and he turned, and he said just one thing. He said, “Sheila, the Shepherd knows where to find you. The Shepherd knows where to find you.”
And that one moment began the most amazing adventure of my life, of discovering the love of God is never based on our performance. It is based on the finished work of Christ. And wh… the image that this little lamb brought back to me was when we were growing up, my mom was a farm accountant. She did the books for the farmers and the shepherds. And there was something that happens, and I discovered it’s not just in Scotland, it happens in New Zealand, anywhere around the world where you have large shepherding communities. Every now and again, a ewe will give birth to a lamb and immediately reject it. And the shepherd can try and push the little lamb back toward the mother, but she will kick the lamb away. So if the shepherd doesn’t intervene, that little lamb will die. Not of hunger, but of a broken spirit. They’re called bummer lambs.
So the shepherd will take that little lamb into his home and feed that lamb and keep it warm. And at some point during the day, he will pick that little lamb up and hold it close to his heart so the lamb can hear a heartbeat. And once the lamb is strong enough to be returned to the flock, it will be. But this is the part I used to love watching. In the morning, the shepherd will come to the field and he’ll call out, “Sheep, sheep, sheep.” And the first ones to run to him are the bummer lambs, because they know his voice. Does the shepherd love the bummer lambs more than the rest of the flock? No, but they know his voice, and they’ve been held.
I will be a bummer lamb for the rest of my life, but it’s no longer the bad news. It’s the best news. Does Jesus love His bummer lambs more than the rest of the family? Nope. It’s just that we dare to believe that at our most broken, at our most helpless and hopeless, the Shepherd picked us up, and held us close to His heart, and we know His voice, and we will never ever follow anyone else.
And when you look at our nation, we’re all broken in one way or another. And we as the church get to choose how we will respond. Do we feel as if we have to be God’s PR agents and make God look good because we look good? Or are we willing to allow our scars to be shown? You know, I think God tells His story in scars. I think it’s so interesting that the only scars in heaven will be the marks of Christ.
He could have left them behind when He rose. He could have left them behind with the linen cloths, but He didn’t. And I think if Christ is not ashamed of His scars … And there’s a difference between an open wound and a scar. We all have a story and we need a level of healing and understanding before we’re able to share what God has done.
I wanted to read a Psalm to you, Psalm … Uh, one that you’re gonna be very familiar with, but it’s a Psalm that means the world to me. And then I’ll tell you why. When David wrote Psalm 23, I dunno if you’ve ever noticed this, but he spends … The first three verses, he’s talking about God. When he gets to what we call verse 4, he pauses and he begins to talk to God. “The Lord is my Shepherd. I have all that I need. He lets me rest in green meadows, He leads me beside peaceful streams. He renews my strength. He guides me along right paths, bringing honor to His name.” And then David lifts his head.
“Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid, for You are close beside me. Your rod and Your staff protect and comfort me. You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. You honor me by anointing my head with oil. My cup overflows with blessings. Surely, Your goodness and mercy will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the Lord forever.”
I don’t know if you’ve ever visited Israel, I was there last year. And in Israel, shepherding is different. In Scotland, you always see the shepherd coming behind the sheep and he’ll have his sheep dogs with them. It’s the same in all the other countries where they have large flocks. But in Israel, you’ll never see that. In Israel, the shepherd always goes ahead of the flock just to make sure there’s no crevice that a sheep could fall into or no danger. But the interesting thing is, um, his two dogs will always come behind his flock. And I realized when I read the Psalm that those two dogs are in Psalm 23. They’re called Goodness and Mercy. We will be dogged by Goodness and Mercy all the days of our life.
John: And that’s Sheila Walsh on this Best of 2025 episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, we’ll continue her presentation next time.
Jim: Wow, that was so good, and Sheila has been through so much, and she seems to really have mastered the art of holding on to God, no matter what. What a testimony she has!
If today’s message brought up some issues for you, uh, give us a call. Our friendly staff would count it a privilege to hear your story and pray with you. And if needed, you can request a free call back from one of our caring, Christian counselors. We’re here to serve you and to help you!
And just a reminder – we are able to offer these services because of our donors – friends like you who do ministry through Focus. If you can make a donation of any amount today, we’d like to send you Sheila’s book called Holding on When You Want to Let Go, as our way of saying “thank you” for helping us bring hope and joy to hurting families now and into the New Year!
And right now, special friends of this ministry have offered to double your gift, so that you can have twice the impact. So please, donate today!
And regardless of whether you can give, we have some gifts for you! We have two free audio collections that you can download and enjoy…
The “Enduring the Challenges of Life” Collection fits right in with today’s message, with almost five hours of encouraging programs from guests like Tim Keller, Larry Crabb, and Joni Eareckson Tada.
And the Best of 2025 Collection, which features the top 20 programs of this year! Both collections will include this message from Sheila Walsh, with extra content.
John: Yeah, you’ll find those online at FocusontheFamily.com/broadcast, and uh, when you’re there, be sure to request Sheila’s book as well, or give us a call. Our number is 800- A – FAMILY, (800) 232-6459.
We’ll hear more from Sheila next time as she tells us how her mother overcame her own challenges after losing her husband and how she lived a long life trusting God.
Sheila: But the church was packed that day because of the way that my mom touched lives in ways that were never lauded on television or in writing unless it’s in my books, but faithfully served God in the way that matters.
John: Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller, inviting you back as we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ.
