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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.
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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 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, as you can probably tell, I live in Dallas, Texas now with my husband. You probably tell I didn’t start there. Um, 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. My sister’s kind of what every mother hopes for. She was the one that liked all those sticky-outy dresses and ribbons and, and I was not like that at all. I was an absolute tomboy and I just thought there was no one quite like my dad. 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. I just, I’m just a huge dog … I always loved dogs. 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 Focus on the Family with Jim Daly and that’s Sheila Walsh. And, uh, you can find help and hope for desperate situations in her book, Holding On When You Want to Let Go. We’ll send that to you for a gift of any amount to the ministry today, and we’ll also give you access to a free audio collection that includes this presentation with extra content. And, uh, you can look for that, it’s called Enduring the Challenges of Life Collection. Uh, we also have Sheila’s book here. We’ll send that to you, as I said, for a donation of any amount to the ministry. Uh, stop by focusonthefamily.com/broadcast to learn more or donate when you have us on the phone. Our number is 800, the letter A and the word FAMILY. 800-232-6459. 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 the, 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 dunno 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. As we wrap up this presentation on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, we’ll continue with more next time.
Jim: Wow, that was so good. Uh, Sheila has been through so much and she seems to really have mastered the art of holding onto God no matter what. And, uh, man, she, her word selection is just so precise.
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: I appreciate that.
John: Yeah.
Jim: And you can see she’s professional about how to communicate. What a testimony. If today’s message brought up some issues for you, uh, please give us a call. Our friendly staff would count it a privilege to hear your story and pray with you. And if needed, uh, you can request a free callback from one of our caring Christian counselors. We’re here to serve you.
And, uh, as a reminder, we are able to offer these services because of donors, friends like you who do ministry through Focus on the Family by making a monthly gift. It doesn’t have to be a large amount. It’s the consistency that helps us even out the budget month by month over the year. And if you can make a pledge of any amount today, we’d like to send you a copy of Sheila’s great book, Holding On When You Want to Let Go, as our way of saying thank you for joining the team. And if you can’t make that monthly commitment right now, we understand, we get it. Uh, we’ll send Sheila’s book to you for a one-time donation of any amount.
John: Yeah. Donate today at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast or give us a call 800 the letter A and the word FAMILY. That’s 800-232-6459. When you’re online with us, be sure to look for the free collection of audio downloads called, Enduring The Challenges of Life, which features this message from Sheila Walsh with extra content and wisdom from Joni Eareckson Tada, Dr. Tim Keller, and Dr. Larry Crabb and more. And be sure to join us again next time as Sheila shares how her mother overcame her own challenges after losing her husband and lived a long life of 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 serve God in the way that matters.
John: On behalf of the entire team, thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller, inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.
Day Two:
Sheila Walsh: 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 am gonna be the perfect Christian if it kills me. And it almost did.
John Fuller: Wow. That’s Sheila Walsh, and we’ll hear more from her today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
Jim Daly: Last time, John, we heard Sheila’s rather dramatic testimony of her childhood in Scotland, and how her father suffered a brain aneurysm and became a very angry man who regularly lashed out at her, uh, only her, no one else in the family. And as a young child, Sheila wondered why she made her dad so angry, and assumed that he saw something evil in her.
John: Mm.
Jim: Imagine that. He ultimately took his own life, and Sheila held onto that sense of shame as she grew up. If you missed part one of Sheila’s presentation yesterday, please get in touch with us. Uh, we can send you the entire message on CD or an audio download, or you can get the, uh, Focus on the Family app and have access to all the broadcasts.
John: Mm-hmm. Yeah. We’ll have the links at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast or give us a call 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY.
Jim: Now, today, uh, we’re gonna hear how Sheila’s mom, Betty, coped with her life as a single mom of three kids living in poverty, never speaking about what happened to Sheila’s father.
John: Mm. Well, here’s Sheila Walsh speaking to our staff on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
Sheila: I want you to go with me, if you will, to a small, very small Baptist church on the west coast of Scotland. It’s a cold, rainy, windy day, and someone is passing by the doors of this church, which suddenly open and people begin to pour out. And this gentleman is looking thinking, well, I’ve passed this church before, but there’s usually not very many people there. But there were so many people coming out that eventually he decided to stop and ask a question. And he said, you know, “What was going on here today?” And they said, um, “It’s actually a f- a funeral service. It’s a memorial service.” And he said, “Oh, wow. Is there like some local celebrity?” And they said, “No, no, it’s just, um, it’s a woman named Betty.” And he said, “Well, did she, was she a book writer? Did she do … What, what, what did she do?”
And they said, “Well, nothing really, but she just was faithful to God.” And when he asked me, ’cause I was the person they were asking the questions of, “Did you know this person?” I said, “Yeah, that was my mom.” You know, it’s interesting, nobody, unless you lived in our little town, would be familiar with the name Betty Walsh. 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. And there’s something so beautiful about living a life that heaven celebrates. And I decided this morning to bring three things that have made a significant impact in my own life. And they’re things that actually belonged to my mom. The first one is my mom’s Bible.
She was given this Bible in 1942. She was 12 years old. She won it, um, as a prize in the flower pressing competition. In fact, in Psalm 23, you’ll still find a Scottish blue bell pressed in there. But the reason I treasure it so much isn’t just that it’s my mom’s Bible. It’s what she wrote when she was 12 years old in the back of that Bible, in her beautiful penmanship, which we seem to have lost these days. My mom had the most beautiful penmanship. She wrote this, “Grace is undeserved favor. It is love stooping. Grace is undeserved favor. It is love stooping.” I work quite a lot with girls who are caught up in sex trafficking. I worked mostly in Bangkok, and Thailand, and Phnom Penh in Cambodia.
And I’ve been in this one particular area where a lot of these young girls live, and it was about 100 degrees that day, and their homes are all built over the local garbage dump, so the stench was quite overwhelming. And after a few hours, I slipped out of the back to just get a breath of fresh air. And I saw something that was very stark in the contrast. On one side, you have this area where these young girls are literally dying, starving, ill-treated, abused. And then right beside it was this gorgeous Buddhist temple with the most amazing gold dome. So I said to my interpreter, “I would like to talk to one of the priests if they’re willing to talk to me.”
And this was my question, “Do you ever consider taking some of the wealth that you obviously have and sharing it with those who are literally dying on your doorstep?” And his answer was very straightforward. He said, “Oh, absolutely not. The poor do not deserve our help. If they will take the little they have and give it to us, then perhaps next time they will be reincarnated into a better life.” Karma. But we know that grace is the antithesis of karma. We get what we do not deserve. You cannot turn on the news these days without seeing all the unrest that’s going on, not just in the Middle East, but across our nation. And so many religions ask their followers to shed their blood to prove their loyalty. We are the only ones where our Savior shed His blood so that we could be free. Grace, unmerited favor, it is love stooping.
The second thing I brought to show you are the pearls that my mom wore on her wedding day. You can kind of tell by the box that they are in that, yeah, there you go, that they’re old. I have the picture of my mom and my dad on their wedding day, and my mom is wearing those pearls. And I treasure them because she loved them, but there’s a deep spiritual truth in those pearls. If you think about it, if you think about how a, a pearl is formed, you know, the grains of sand will get inside an oyster and irritate the flesh. And so what the, the, the oyster will do is coat those grains of sand with calcium saliva. And it’s a, an ongoing process. It could take about three years for a perfect pearl to be formed.
So if you think about it, a pearl is simply this, A victory over tribulation. A pearl is a victory over tribulation. If you have lived more than 10 minutes, you know that life can be irritating. If you’re a Christian, make it eight minutes. Life is hard. But you and I have the opportunity to spend the rest of our days making pearls. That’s what I watched my mom do. Every irritation that came into her life, every hardship, she coated it with prayer, and she lifted up to the Lord. She spent her life making pearls.
Let me give you just a little example of the way that my mother’s faith impacted me. My brother, who’s three years younger than I, had hit one of those spurts that boys do when they suddenly shoot up several inches overnight, and he needed new long pants for school. But my mom lived on a widow’s pension, which there was just nothing in the budget. There was no extra give. So after dinner that night, she said to my sister, my brother, and I, “Come and join me by the fire.” And we sat there and she said, “We’re gonna ask Jesus for long pants for your brother.” I remember thinking, “Okay, does he keep long pants in heaven? Do the angels wear long pants?”
But my mom prayed a very simple prayer, “Lord, thank you that you are a husband to the widow and a father to the fatherless. We present our need before you tonight, and we thank you in advance for your provision.” She said amen, and went back to the kitchen. I sat by the chimney, ’cause I’m thinking, “What’s the delivery service?” I mean … A few days later, one of my mom’s friends was over having coffee with her. And when she left, she left a brown paper package on my m- on the chair. And when my mom opened it, there were three pairs of long pants. And I said to my mom, “Did you tell Aunt Maureen that Stephen needed these?” And she said, “No, darling, don’t you remember we told Jesus. We told Jesus.” My mom spent her life making pearls.
I wonder what you face on a daily basis at the moment. Somehow I think we cope with the big things that we didn’t see coming better than the daily irritations. There’s something about a big thing that you realize, okay, this is something that we have to decide how we’re gonna move through this, but all the daily irritations can be so hard. But you and I get to choose will we allow them to impact us? Maybe nobody sees it on the outside, but inside we’re just mad, we’re fed up, or will we determine that from this moment on, we will spend our life making pearls?
I read a beautiful piece, um, by Billy Graham’s grandson, Will Graham, his wife Kendra, they have a child who has a learning disability. It can take her a lot longer to do her homework than her siblings. But one night on the Discovery Channel, they were watching a program about life under the water. And this particular episode was all about how pearls are made. And after the show, they talked about it for a little while, bit and then went on. Few days later, Kendra’s in the kitchen getting dinner ready, and she can hear her daughter in the other room sitting at the dining table trying to finish her homework. She’s been working on it for an hour.
It would’ve taken most of the other children 10 minutes. And she hears her daughter pick up her pencil and throw it against the wall. And so she says, “Honey, hang on. If you’ll just give me two minutes, I’ll come through and I’ll help you finish.” And this eight-year-old girl said, “No, mom, I’m making pearls in here.” We get to do this. It’s like we’re part of God’s secret kingdom. Where the way that the world responds, the way that we’re told to respond, we don’t have to do that. We can live every day openly, gratefully receiving the grace that we know we don’t deserve, and also facing everything knowing that we can make pearls. And one day perhaps we’ll get to throw them at His feet.
I’m not gonna show you the third thing right away, and I’ll, I’ll explain why. It was about 4:00 in the morning and the phone rang. I hate when the phone rings in the middle of the night, you always assume there’s something wrong with someone. And it was my sister calling from Scotland to say that my mom had taken her last breath on this Earth and her first breath in the presence of the Lord. And she was about to take 80, turn 88. In fact, I had her birthday gifts wrapped ready to send to Scotland. But I just, I don’t think you’re ever ready to say goodbye to your mom. So I flew to Scotland. And in Scotland, funerals are very different than I’ve experienced here in the States. My husband is from Charleston,
South Carolina. And when his mom and then his father died, it was a much bigger event. You know, there was a viewing, and then casseroles, a lot of casseroles. I don’t quite get it, your mother’s dead, here’s a sausage casserole, but there you go.
Well, in Scotland it’s not like that. In Scotland, what happens is that you’re just placed in a simple white robe, put in a pine box, and that’s it. I wanted to see my mom one last time. Now I knew she wasn’t there. I knew she was home, but it mattered to me. So I called the funeral home and I said, “I realize this is not typical in Scotland, but would it be possible before tomorrow’s service for me to come and see my mom?” And they said, “Absolutely. If you can come now, we will put your mom in a little room and we can unseal the casket.” So I went in, and I just knelt down beside it and said, “Well done, mom. Well done. You did it. You ran your race. You lived in the grace of God. You made pearls every day of your life, and you made it all the way home. You were faithful.”
At the end of the service, um, my sister and I went back to the house so that we could take all my mom’s things. And Francis, my sister, said to me, “Now, you know, mom wants me to have her gold watch and she wants you to have her engagement ring.” And I said, “Yeah, I remember that.” Well, we found the watch, but we couldn’t find the engagement ring. So I said, “Well I’ll, I’ll go talk to the matron.” So I went down and I said to the matron, “Hi, um, I’m Betty Walsh’s daughter, and I was wondering, do you know where my mom’s engagement ring is?” And she said, “Oh, there’s a story there.” And I said, “Oh, do tell.” And she said, “One evening when all the ladies were gathered in the lounge, one of their sons had bought a huge box of Belgian chocolates for his mother. And your mom was kind of eyeing them up. And then eventually she said, um, ‘I’ll swap you.’ And the woman said, ‘So what are you gonna give me?’”
And my mom said, “My engagement ring.” And the woman said, “Deal.” So the matron said to me, “Sheila, don’t worry, I can get the ring back.” And I was like, “Nope. If my mom enjoyed the chocolates, let that woman enjoy the ring.” Because there was only one thing I wanted, and it was this little picture that hung above my mom’s bed all my life. She was given it when she was just a little girl, and it’s how she lived her life. On the days that were the hardest days in life, she laid her head down on the pillow under that declaration, yes Lord.
When she’d get up in the morning with not enough money to pay bills, not quite sure how she was gonna manage to raise three children herself, because she never remarried. The first thing that she would cast her eyes on was that, yes Lord. And I used to t- tease her. When I was a know-it-all teenager, I used to say to her, “You don’t know what you’re saying yes to.” And she would say, “No, but I know who I’m saying yes to.” And this is the thing that I treasure the most from my mom, living a yes, Lord life.
John: You’re listening to Sheila Walsh on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. And you can learn more about overcoming your circumstances with God’s help in her book Holding On When You Want to Let Go. We’ll send that to you for a donation of any amount today to the ministry of Focus on the Family. And we’ll also give you free access to an audio collection that includes this presentation with quite a bit of extra content. Look for that. It’s called Enduring the Challenges of Life Collection. And uh, of course, as I said, Sheila’s book, uh, you’ll find those at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast, or donate as you can, and uh, ask about getting resources when you call 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY. 800-232-6459. Let’s return now to more from Sheila Walsh.
Sheila: When our son Christian was about 10 years old, he asked me, first of all if I would make him a thermos flask of hot chocolate. And I said, “Yeah, sure. Are you going outside to play?” It was an unusually cold day in Dallas. And he said, “No, Mom, today I am running away from home.” I was like, “Wow, that’s huge news. Thank you for telling me.” And I said, “Can I ask you just a couple of questions?” I said, “Did I do, did I hurt your feelings? Did Dad say something?” He said, “No, Mom, it’s nothing like that. But think about it, there’s you, there’s the dog, there’s Dad. Nothing big ever happens here. If I don’t go now, I will never have stories to tell.” Now, that’s so true. So true. So I said, “Well, where do you intend to go?” And he said, “North. I believe I’ll head north.” And I said, “And what are you gonna do for money?” He said, “Don’t worry, Mom, I intend to return home on weekends.” Huge relief to me as his mother.
So I gave him the thermos full of hot chocolate and he put it in his backpack with a dog’s blanket, and his soccer ball, and a few books. And he said, “Goodbye, Mom.” And I’m like, “Traveling mercies, do stay in touch.” And off he went out the back door. So I ran upstairs to the balcony where I could keep an eye on him, and he was walking around this lake where we used to live. And eventually after a while, he sat down by the tree where he and his friends sometimes fish, spread out the dog’s blanket, poured himself some hot chocolate, and began preparing for life in the north. But eventually I realized he was actually coming home. So I ran back downstairs and that night when he was all tucked up in bed and we’d said our prayers, I said, “Christian, tell me about today. Did you enjoy your adventure?” And he said, “I did, Mom, but I think I would’ve enjoyed it more if my bag wasn’t so heavy.”
I thought about that a lot. What it would, what would it be like for you and I to make it all the way home, and for Jesus to say, “Did you enjoy the journey?” And for us to have to say, “Well, yeah, I did, but I think I would’ve enjoyed it more if my bag wasn’t so heavy.” What would it have looked like if today when you came into this beautiful chapel, suddenly all your baggage became visible. I don’t mean your snacks or your whatever else, I mean your stuff. The stuff that we just didn’t know what else to do with. And so we just shoved it down into the cellar of our souls. Some of you might be surprised by how much stuff you’ve been dragging through your life. Perhaps sad to realize how, for what a long time you’ve been carrying it. But this would be my question, if you saw it, would you want to take it home or would you want to take Jesus up on that glorious offer?
Last two verses of Matthew 11, “Come unto me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Ending up in a psychiatric hospital at 34 is one of the greatest gifts that God ever gave me, because it became so clear in the months that I was there, that this life that Christ paid so dearly for, is so that we can be free. Not burdened by the things from our past, not weighed down by the things that we have done, or have been done to us. I sometimes think, what would it been like if when you came in here today, you said, “Slight change of plan. Um, instead of having Sheila Walsh talk, we’re actually gonna show a movie of your life.”
Everything, everything you’ve ever said, everything you’ve ever done, even just the things you think, well, it’s not technically a sin ’cause I just thought about it, I didn’t really do it, but it was up there on the screen for everyone to see. How would that make you feel? The good news of the gospel is God has seen your movie. God has seen your movie and He loves you. And I think with just little shift in our understanding, of being open to receive this outrageous grace of God, of seeing every little irritation and distraction as an opportunity to code it with prayer, and to wake up every day and every night to lay our head down with these two words, yes Lord. I even had them tattooed to my wrist. Sorry Mom. Because Christ loves us so much.
When I first moved to Virginia Beach to host The 700 Club, my number one thing I wanted to get was a dog. I’m just a dog person. I love, love, love dogs. And I found this little West Highland White Terrier, and I called them Charlie after Bonnie Prince Charlie. And this dog had one tennis ball that it loved. It was an awful looking thing. It was chewed up, and I tried to buy him new tennis balls. No, thank you. He liked this old tennis ball. And one day we were out in the park, and I was throwing the ball and he would bring it back, and I’d throw it, and … But it had been raining and the road was a little slick, and I realized I threw it too far. And the tennis ball went through the park gate and out, and my little Charlie followed it. And I’m calling his name to try and get him to stop, but he’s not listening. All he sees is this ball, which disappears down a storm drain, and so does my little Charlie.
I do everything in my power to, to lift that metal grate. I brought, broke all my fingernails, I couldn’t do anything, so I began to knock on my neighbor’s doors. And one of my neighbors came out with his teenage son and I explained what was happening, and he got a crowbar from his garage and was able to get the metal plate off. And there I could see about six feet down, was my sweet little dog on a shelf. And I knew if Charlie fell off that ledge, he would be gone. And I said to the man, “I don’t know what to do.” And he said, “I do.” He said, “My son is tall and skinny. I’m gonna hold him by the ankles and lower him down.” This boy is now in my will.
“I’m gonna hold him by the ankles and I’m gonna lower him down, and he’s gonna grab your little dog.” And I said to him, “When you get to him, he’s gonna be scared. You know, he might nip you, or he might bark, or he might wriggle, but when you get there, grab hold of him and don’t let go.” And this darling boy brought my little Charlie back to me. So imagine for a moment, a day in heaven’s courts, and the Father says to the son, “I’m gonna lower you down into the darkness. And when you get there, they’re gonna wriggle, and scream, and they’re gonna hurt you, but don’t let go.” And Jesus said, “Yes, Lord.” That is how much we are loved.
John: What a vivid word picture from Sheila Walsh on this episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
Jim: Isn’t she an amazing storyteller? Um, I could listen to her all day. And if you’d like to hear more from Sheila, uh, I’d recommend her book called Holding On When You Want to Let Go: Clinging to Hope When Life is Falling Apart. Uh, we have that here at Focus on the Family, and we’d be happy to send you a copy for a monthly pledge of any amount. Why a monthly pledge, you might ask.
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: Well, most people tend to donate to their favorite nonprofit at the end of the year for tax purposes, and that’s great. But monthly giving, uh, helps us even out the budget throughout the entire year, and allows us to be better stewards of your donations. Uh, many of us who work for Focus support the ministry that same way, and I hope you’ll consider doing so as well. If you can’t make a monthly commitment right now, we understand. We’ll send Sheila’s book to you for a one-time gift of any amount. We want you to have it.
And regardless of whether you can give, we have a free gift for you. Uh, we’ve assembled a collection of audio downloads that are designed to give you encouragement for very difficult times. Maybe you’re in a tough spot right now. Look for the collection called Enduring The Challenges of Life when you visit us online. It features Wisdom from Joni Eareckson Tada, Dr. Tim Keller, Dr. Larry Crabb, and Pastor Duane Miller, who shares a miracle caught on tape. Plus, we’ll include this presentation from Sheila Walsh as extra content.
Also, please call us if this show brought up some issues, uh, from your past. Our friendly staff would love to hear your story, pray with you, and if needed, uh, you can request a call back from one of our caring Christian counselors. Please let us come alongside you in the name of Christ.
John: And you can reach us by calling 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY. 800-232-6459. Or of course, visit our website to request free access to the audio download collection, and donate and get your copy of Sheila’s book. You’ll find us at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. Thanks for listening today to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller, inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.
