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FROM THE DESK OF STEVE SHULTZ about Sheila Walsh
and "ALL THAT REALLY MATTERS!"
 Dear
Elijah List Readers,
We asked The 700 Club for permission to re-post this interview between Scott Ross
and Sheila Walsh. And we thank them for that permission.
Years ago, I used to love to watch Sheila on the 700 Club. She was a role model
to me.
Then one day I found out she'd left the show and I always wondered why.
What an amazing work God did with Sheila during this time.
As you'll see in this article (and in her book), Sheila says during this time, "I
was the loneliest person on the planet!"
Read this article and you'll be amazed and probably even comforted. Perhaps for
the first time you'll even say to yourself, "I guess I'm not alone in all of this.
I guess I can feel lonely, unworthy, and just 'bad about myself' and God can still
love me."
Read on. And then I hope you'll get Sheila's book, "ALL THAT
REALLY MATTERS."
Blessings in abundance!
Steve Shultz
THE ELIJAH LIST
www.elijahlist.com
BREAKING CHRISTIAN NEWS
www.BreakingChristianNews.com
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January 31, 2005
"All That Really Matters"
An Interview with Sheila Walsh
by Cheryl Wilcox and Scott Ross
www.sheilawalsh.com
www.cbn.com
INTERVIEW - Sheila Walsh: God Matters
By Cheryl Wilcox and Scott Ross, The 700 Club
 In
1992, while juggling her role as co-host of The 700 Club and wife in a difficult
marriage, Sheila found herself exhausted. One day, she checked herself into the
psychiatric ward of a local hospital to undergo treatment for clinical depression.
Now, more than a decade later, Sheila speaks candidly about her new groundedness
and a new appreciation for what really matters.
CBN.com's Scott Ross recently talked with the Scottish-born, Women of Faith speaker
at her Nashville home.
SCOTT ROSS: Sheila, I remember years ago you, when Pat Robertson and I were
co-hosting The 700 Club, and we all simultaneously realized [speaking with a Scottish
accent] we are all Scots. Of course, you and I are real ones. We will say nothing
about the third member of the party! You were born in Scotland, as I was. Why do
you still speak the way you do, and I speak the way I do?
SHEILA WALSH: Because you paid a lot of money
for expensive elocution lessons, and I just decided to be the woman God had called
me to be!
SCOTT (reporting): Yes, she still has that fiery passion for Christ,
coupled with her fantastic wit. Of course, we remember Sheila Walsh as a former
co-host of The 700 Club. Today she is known to [have] packed audiences around the
nation through the Women of Faith ministry.
 SHEILA:
It's five women talking about, "Here's what I've gone through. Here's how I met
Christ in the middle of it. Here's what's available to you. Don't be afraid to live
your life. Come and live your life."
SCOTT (reporting): It's a message that is resonating with women in
city after city. The Women of Faith ministry team laces humor with candid talk about
their brokenness. Sheila speaks openly about her own struggle with clinical depression.
"WHO ARE YOU?"
SCOTT: You had already achieved a great deal of "success." You were well
known. You had written books. You were singing. You were selling albums. You were
co-hosting The 700 Club. You were married. And yet you end up in a shrink ward?
SHEILA: Because I was one of the loneliest people
on the planet. You can be incredibly well known and very alone. And that's who I
was. I was a well-known person who was very alone. The first day at the hospital
the doctor said to me, "Who are you?"
I was in a very flip, angry, depressed kind
of place. I wanted to say to him, "Listen, buddy, you're getting paid a lot of money.
Read your notes and that'll tell you who I am." But I came out with this pathetic
answer: "I'm the co-host of The 700 Club." I thought that was a good answer.
He said, "No, no, I don't mean that. Who are
you?"
SCOTT: Not what you do.
SHEILA: Yeah. "Who are you?"
I said, "Well, I'm a writer and a singer."
He said, "No. Who are you?" And I said, "I
haven't a clue."
SCOTT: How long did it take you to find out who you were?
SHEILA: Quite a long time. I mean, somebody
said to me the other day in an interview, "How long did it take them to fix you?"
I said, (laughs) "They haven't actually
signed off on the job yet. They are still working on that." It was the beginning.
It's almost like they gave me a compass and said, "That way is north. Keep walking."
"YOU DON'T HAVE TO GET YOURSELF OF THE PLACE YOU'RE
IN - JUST REACH OUT AND GOD WILL GRAB HOLD OF YOU"
SHEILA: One of the days I remember, I'd been
in the hospital maybe two weeks, and I got a pass on a Sunday to go to church with
a couple of the nurses. I sat in the back of this little Episcopalian church in
Washington, D.C. I didn't know anyone. The sun was streaming through the stained
glass windows. The pastor, who I had never met before, said, "Some of you in here
feel as if you are dead inside and you are already six feet under, but Jesus is
here. If you would simply just reach out your hand -- you don't have to get yourself
out of the place you're in -- just reach out your hand, and call on His name, He
will reach in there and grab hold of you."
I've never walked to an altar in my life. I gave my life to Christ in my bedroom
as a child. But I said, to the nurse, "Can I go?"
She said, "Yeah."
I ran to the front of that church, and I lay
flat on my face in front of the altar, and it was like, "God, I'm done. I'm absolutely
done. I have nothing left. And you either help me here, or I'm done."
God said, "Yes. You've been done for awhile.
You just didn't know it."
Paul said, "There's not one good thing in me." I never got that before. I thought,
"Oh, come on! You wrote a fairly decent part of the Bible, buddy." I totally get
that now. There's not one good thought in me, apart from God. That's the good news.
ALL THAT REALLY MATTERS
SHEILA: When I work with Women of Faith, I probably
talk to anything from 15 to 20,000 women a weekend. They are dying to hear somebody
tell their story out loud and not self-combust; to bring all the secrets out of
the shadow into God's light and say, "You know what? Here's who we are, and here's
who God is. As you are, at this moment, you don't have to tidy yourself up. Just
come as you are, and God loves you."
It's my absolute passionate belief that every single human being, man, woman, or
child, is aching to find a face-to-face relationship with God. But sometimes, when
they look at us, we don't look like what they're looking for.
SCOTT: Us being . . . ?
SHEILA: Us being the church. I have a book out
called All That Really Matters. The reason I wrote it was because I thought,
"OK . . . I'm now a mom of a six-year-old son. What do I tell him about God that actually
is important, as opposed to my own ideas, my prejudices, the things that I wanted
to do and then pretend they're in the Bible but I just can't remember the verse?
God, what do You actually want me to tell my son about You that matters?"
I came down to realizing there is just one
thing. It's like when the guy said to Jesus, "Is there one thing that matters more
than everything else?" Jesus said, "Yes. Love God with everything you have and are,
and love your neighbor as yourself."
COMING OUT ON THE OTHER SIDE
SCOTT: You are a mom. You are a wife. You're doing all the other things.
You came out on the other side of this thing.
 SHEILA:
It's a different thing, though, Scott, because before, if you took away
all the stuff around me, if you took away . . . I think I hear wee Jimmy coming
even as we speak. Christian, come here, darling.
CHRISTIAN: What?
SHEILA: I want to introduce you to some people.
Come here. Come over here and sit in my lap.
SCOTT: We're talking about you.
CHRISTIAN: Momma, I just wanted to get some
food.
SHEILA: (laughs) You just wanted some
food? So, you actually have no interest in saying hello?
SCOTT: That's the priority.
SHEILA: OK, well . . .
SCOTT: Thank you for visiting.
SHEILA: Thanks for dropping by.
SCOTT: (laughs) It's a perfect example. This is a role that you have
now that you didn't have before. Any child's a gift, but this has to be so fulfilling
for you.
SHEILA: I got pregnant and turned 40 at the
same time.
SCOTT: Whew!
SHEILA: That was pretty amazing.
"GOD HAS SEEN YOUR MOVIE, AND HE LOVES YOU"
SCOTT (reporting): Our brief interruption so
clearly illustrates the biggest change in Sheila over the last decade. Her ministry
is not just performed on a platform but lived out in relationship with her husband,
Barry, and her son, Christian. Away from all her creative endeavors, like authoring
books and writing children's stories, while still singing and performing, she has
a family. This is where she draws her strength and purpose. They help her keep it
real.
SCOTT: There are a lot of people watching this, listening to this right now,
who are living secret lives, who are dying quietly in corners. They go to churches,
raise their hands, or worship and go through all the games, marriages, failure,
sexual problems, drug problems, whatever it is, wounded inside, but they have nowhere
to go. What do you say to them?
SHEILA: What I want to tell you is God has seen
your movie, and He loves you.
Sheila Walsh, www.sheilawalsh.com
Scott Ross, www.cbn.com
 Sheila
Walsh is a powerful Christian communicator who is a unique combination of singer,
songwriter, author, speaker, and television talk show host. She is a featured speaker
at the nationwide Women of Faith conferences and creator and host of the national
Children of Faith conferences. Sheila is the former co-host of The 700 Club and
host of her own show, Heart to Heart with Sheila Walsh. She is the author of
Honestly, Living Fearlessly, and most recently, A Love So Big.
Sheila lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband, Barry, and son, Christian.
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"What
matters more than enjoying a love that never lets you go? Nothing! In this
delightful book, my dear friend Sheila Walsh shows us that kind of love -- how
we can receive it from God and give it to others on a daily basis. I encourage
you to read this book and rest in the fact that Jesus' simple plan was designed
from the very beginning . . . with you in mind." - Luci Swindoll,
Women of Faith speaker and author of I Married Adventure
"Whenever
I see a woman happily juggling fifteen plates -- and hardly dropping a one -- I
always want to ask, 'How do you do it?' I listen up when she replies, 'All that
really matters . . .' My friend Sheila is, perhaps, one of the busiest and
happiest women I know, but she has found what truly matters (despite one or two
broken plates now and then). Listen to her wisdom in this wonderful new book,
and your life can't help but be transformed." - Joni Eareckson Tada,
president of Joni and Friends
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