Sheila Walsh: Hope Beyond Depression – Part 2

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Sessions average about $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Visit growtherapy.com.blog now to get started. That's growtherapy.com.blog now. Growtherapy.com.blog now. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. This program is supported by you, our viewers, and our partners. I pray, Lord, today give me eyes to see what I'm going to miss without you. I'm Joyce Meyer, and I believe that God can heal you everywhere you hurt. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Enjoying Everty Life once again. Today, Joyce, Erin, and I continue our conversation with Grammy-nominated recording artist, TV host, author, and speaker, Sheila Walsh, who we love, and she's talking about the hope she found in Christ in her darkest moments. Now, if you're walking through a difficult time in your life, or you need reassurance that God is not angry at you, Sheila needed that too, so you don't want to miss this vulnerable conversation about the power of God's Word to heal you right where you are. We're glad you're with us. I had this really powerful memory from my childhood. After my dad died, we lost our home in our car, and we moved into housing provided by the government. My brother, my sister, and I, we were the poor kids in our school. We got free school uniforms and free school meals. It was when you get to 12, you go from primary school to secondary school in Scotland, and at 12, there's always a school dance. The fashion that year was for these very straight little dresses, and I didn't have anything like that, but I knew my mom couldn't afford it, so I just thought, well, I won't go. But I came home from school one day, my mom said, Sheila, I got your dress. I was like, oh my gosh. So I ran upstairs to my bedroom, and it was just awful. It was this sticky outie, this dress with a big bow in the back, and I was like, the opposite of straight down. Yeah, and I knew that my mom must have sacrificed something. So on the night of the dance, I wore it, but I didn't go to the dance. I took the back road to the school, and I sat in the field behind the school, and I watched all my friends go in in a little straight dress. And I just, I knew that I didn't belong. And I went home after dance, told my mom I had had a great time. And not so many years ago, I had this vivid dream one night, and I'm a little girl, I'm young, and I'm in a field, and somebody's walking towards me, and I'm wearing that blooming dress. And it's Jesus, and he comes up and takes hold of my hands and swings me around. And it was like, wow, I saw you then, and you were beautiful then, and you're beautiful now. Wow, what redemption. Oh, I know. Because that's when when you're a little girl, and you have a situation like that, you don't forget it. I mean, it's like, where's my fairy godmother to fix my dress when when I need it. And you know, I remember different times in my life, feeling like those, those things that were just not like everybody else, or, you know, just weren't good enough or made me feel less than and and like you're talking about Joyce to realize the good things in us. There, there are different times in my life where I could do that. And other times where I couldn't see the good things in my life at all. And then yet other times where I felt like, well, I shouldn't even think that way, because it's prideful. It's just we go through so many things spiritually trying to figure out this whole relationship with Christ and this whole walk, and how it works. So I'm very curious with you, Sheila, with, as you as you look at things now, and as you have this walk with Christ, and you're still doing all of the things that you are doing before you're sharing Christ, you're in Christian media, what do you do differently to make sure that you don't have the same stressors that you had before that you're not thinking the way that you were thinking before? It's a great question, Jen Jen. Honestly, it's seeing the one person. I used to see crowds. Now I see the one person. And I was reading through the four Gospels again recently, looking at the number of times that Jesus saw one person and that he heard one person. And so for me, being transparent is really, in fact, one of the things I love about you, Joyce, is that when Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, the first Thessalonians, he says, we loved you so much that we determined not just to share the goodness of the gospel, but our very souls. And you do that. You combine the power of the word of God with the power of your story. And I think when that happens, then people are able to relate more because you're not kind of presenting this, you know, 10 things to do with chicken through the Bible. I mean, it's not like, you know, I've got all these, you know, little things. I've not heard that one. I'm a little intrigued. I have more than one would have dressed if you'd gone to Nordstrom. I mean, it's not how that baloney. It's just, you know, here's the truth. Right. And here's who Jesus is. Yeah. And it's just the most, it's just the most beautiful thing every single day. I did it this morning. I pray to Lord today, give me eyes to see what I'm going to miss without you and give me ears to hear what's behind what somebody's saying. Like I was speaking at a conference and I'm at the end, I'm listening to this woman tell me her story. And suddenly another woman just kind of sticks her head in. And it's hard to ignore because there she was. And she said, I'm so sick of hearing about your perfect family. And I was like, come home with me. Meet us in the morning. But then I said to look, hold on a minute. And I finished with this lady. And then I said, this woman, let's go for a walk. So we went for a bit of a walk. And then I said to her, I said, what happened to you? And at first I thought she was going to deck me. Yeah. But she fell into my arms because she's buried two sons. And at that night, I talked about my son and how much I love him. And I thought, that's why we need the Holy Spirit to be able to hear behind us. Coming out of their mouth. What's really going on in the heart. So good. There's a verse. When you were talking about how you have to see the one, I think the way that we hear in scripture, how we can learn from how God is with us, with our broken hearts, it reminds me of that. So in Psalm 34, 17, through 18, when the righteous cry out for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles, the Lord is near to the broken hearted and saves the Christian spirit. And when anytime I read something like that, I always think like he sees my broken heart. He sees my tears, not like us collectively as a whole. He's collecting all of our tears in one big giant bottle. It's he sees Aaron's pain. He sees Aaron's hurt because of this specific situation. And he cares enough to meet me there. He cared enough to give you that dream. I've never had a dream about being in a field with a dress like that. But he knew that's what you needed for your heart. And it's so individual of the way that he meets us where we are. It's so beautiful. I love that. Yeah. I love that verse in Psalms where it talks about God gathers all your tears in his bottle. One of my friends, which she went to Israel for the first time, she brought me back a little tear bottle, you know, that they would give to women in a funeral procession. So they would pick up all the tears and it'd be a way of saying, this is how much you're loved. And the fact that God does that for every one of us. I mean, I think of the people watching right now who think nobody knows what I'm going through. Nobody knows what I've the pain. Nobody knows how many tears, but God does. Not one fell to the ground that he didn't see. Hebrews 4 15 has always meant a lot to me. And I was, I happened to be reading Hebrews right now. And I read it again this morning. We have a high priest who understands our weaknesses and our infirmities because he's been tempted in all points like we have yet he never sinned. So, and you know, that that's the longing for everybody. Just I just want somebody to understand. I used to tell my husband, I just want you to understand. And so then he started just telling me, I understand. I said, no, you don't. You're just saying that. But we really want somebody to get us to understand what we're going through. And but Jesus always understands. And I love that scripture. Yeah. And one of my early Bibles, you know, how you have all the different Bibles that you've had through times and different versions and so forth. But one of my cherished early Bibles when I was a teenager, I have every one of those verses underlined about how God is there for me personally and how he's experienced this himself, how he was rejected and crushed and, you know, wasn't known for who he really was. And that just means and meant at that time so much to me because it can be very easy when you're raised in the church. It can be very easy to gloss over it and to go on with a Christian walk without that deep personal connection to a loving savior. And that is really what for me changed so much. And it made it so that it wasn't even as much those christiany things that I needed to believe just because I was groomed that way. But because I knew the savior who was really going to do those things in my life. And I think that's one of the hardest things because and I'll just be really brutally honest too. But when when I'm dealing with physical things, which which I have a little bit recently, that's when it's really hard for me to remember those things. I can be really strong in my faith. But when I don't feel well, then it can be, well, you know, I, you know, are you still there? Is this on? Do you see what I'm going through? And coming back to that standing firm on that, no, this is who Christ is for me. He's been here. He understands this. He's, he's not looking away. Then that helps me so much in that in those hard times. But I think of people right now who are who are with us, who are listening, who are in that place that you were at, who are either not sure what's wrong with them. They're just hurting. They're, they're sad. They're, you know, you can have such emotional pain that it becomes physical pain as well and don't know how to deal with it. Or they're just afraid to tell someone because they don't want people to think that their faith isn't strong enough. So, you know, I think about those people and I look at each one of us and I would say to you guys, we've all been there. You know, we've all felt that kind of pain. And so Sheila, you have some points and some suggestions for what you say people might want to do. And the first one is tell God everything. We don't have to keep anything from him. I'm so moved by what Christ did on the night when he was betrayed. You know, when I was in Israel not so long ago, and it was the first time I'd seen the Garden of Gethsemane and, and everything was so close. For some reason I had, everything was so different and so far apart. And it's really not standing on the Mount of Olives looking down the Garden. And it was just this sense of when Christ went into the Garden, he processed his pain but in the presence of his father. Because I think sometimes when we're going through hard things, or we have doubts or confusion, we think, well, I'll get myself sorted out and then I'll talk to God. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so, I'm so blown away by the fact that Jesus, it wasn't like he said, well, Father, let's go. We knew this was always the plan. You know, let's go. It was like, that condition he had where, I mean, look, the only one is a doctor tells us, you know, that he actually sweat blood. And it's a condition called hematohydrosis. Still happens today, very rare, and the place where it shows up is when people have been walked to their execution. It's like he was in agony. And yet he was in agony in the presence of his father. He poured out his pain in the presence of his father. And then he made space for grace. I did a weird thing a couple of years ago. I had this jar of expensive cream my husband had bought me and there was just a little bit left and I'm Scottish. I'm like, I'm not leaving that. That's, and so I kind of scraped this cream out of my fingernail. And I bent my head forward to get my hair out of my face. And in that moment, something snapped and I thought I'd broken my neck. So I ended up in the emergency room for 18 hours. And it was just terrible because I was just thinking this could be a life altering injury. And I remember what happens to your family when something drastic happens. And when I'm taken in for the MRI, the technician gives me this panic button. And he said to me, I'm going to be in the other room. This is for you. You'll be alone in there. And the minute he said that, I thought, no, I won't. I will not be in there. That's right. There's just this tremendous understanding that no matter what you're going through, that Christ is with you. I love it. And at the end of Hebrews from Paul says, you know, or whoever wrote Hebrews, never will I leave you. No, not never will I forsake you. It's like he overstates the things. It's like, come on, let's get it. Yeah, we need that ever. Yeah, my husband and I went through a thing once where we housing market crashed and we made a couple of stupid decisions. And we ended up having to go to bankruptcy court. And I remember it that morning sitting in a bankruptcy court, we were case number nine. And I watched this guy in front to me and he's got these tissues and he's just like making snow because he's so nervous. And I thought, this is the amazing thing about our life. There's nowhere I can go, whether it's an MRI to bar bankruptcy court court, for Jesus is not with me. And I've learned more than answers to prayer. I want the presence of Christ. Is the presence of Christ changes everything. Yeah. And no shame to come to him at those points in our lives to tell the whole truth. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. When when Christian was little, I used to be part of something called women of faith. And we were having an event one night in an arena. And I remember I had on a cream suit because I never wore it again. And we'd had a chocolate cake backstage for one of the crew it was his birthday. And my mother-in-law was taking Christian back to the hotel to get his bath and go to bed because he was covered. And I'm about to go on the just one more song. And suddenly I hear this little voice behind me saying, mom. And then he just wanted one more hug. So I got down and I knew what was going to happen. I mean, I hugged him and I thought that's why I like working with women because they get the frosting in your hair thing, you know, if you've got children. But the message I wanted to get to my son was you don't clean yourself up to come to your mother because you don't clean yourself up to come to your father. You come as you are. So the chocolate cake found your friends. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, another one of those points that you say is to admit that you're stuck in a struggle that it's okay to admit it and then to change the way you think. And you say it's like rewallpaper in your mind. What do you mean by that? When we were growing up, my mother had a thing for wallpaper, the ugliest wallpaper you've ever seen in your life. Everywhere. And then suddenly she would think it like in the spring, oh, let's do fresh wallpaper. Do you know how hard it is to get wallpaper off a wall? Taking it off is so much worse than putting it on. So much worse. But I discovered it's the same with your mind. There's so many things that we have got wallpapered to our mind of I'm not enough. I'm not lovable. I'll never be enough. All that stuff. And I found it had to be intentional about scraping that stuff off and then replacing it with the truth of the word of God. And that's why I love to memorize scripture. When I was young, I used to go to this thing called the scripted union every Thursday night. And that's all we did was we memorized scripture. And it was wonderful because that first night in the psych hospital, when I feel so alone before I had that gift given to me, they take away anything you could hurt yourself with. But they didn't take away my Bible, the one thing I could heal myself with. But I remember remembering that verse from Psalm 27. And I actually got myself stood up and I said the end of Psalm 27, I believe that I will live to see the goodness of the Lord and the life of the living. Yeah, something so powerful about being able to pull up the word of God. Yeah, it pulls us up. Oh, gosh, yeah. Yeah. Joyce, when when you hear Sheila's stories and and your stories are different, but you have those similarities. Yeah, the same pain. Yeah. Yeah. What are some things that that strike you as as familiar and as things that you would also encourage anyone listening right now who might be going through the same thing with? Well, definitely just how bad she felt about herself. I mean, I just thought so bad about myself for so long. And even when I started trying to believe that I was the righteousness of God in Christ, I mean, confessing the word of God out loud. When I was alone in my home, was one of the greatest things that God taught me. And he taught me to do that before I ever heard it in any kind of a meeting or any kind of preaching. Just the Holy Spirit. Yeah, I wrote down 60 things that were all promises of God that I declared were a reality in my life. And at the time, none of them were true. And five years later, every one of them were true. Yeah, because you you when you like you said when when you've got that old wallpaper that's been on the wall for a long, long time, and you've you've thought one way for years and years and years, you don't just change that overnight. It has to be something you have to stick with it and stick with it. And I've just been feeling very strongly as we've been sitting here that so many people watching, they don't understand that being a Christian is not about what we do. It's about having a relationship with Jesus. I mean, like talking to him about everything, listening to him, reading about him. And, you know, I have a routine like everybody else, I get up every morning and I go straight to my recliner and I get my coffee in my Bible. And I have a certain pattern of things that I do. But they're all geared toward keeping close to God, staying close to him. And I know I have a promise from him, he will always, always take care of me, no matter what, he will always take care of me. And that's the same thing for everybody. But it's one thing when you hear somebody else say it. It's another thing when you get it from God. Yeah, when you hear God speak to you, you know, then it's like, yeah. And something you don't even have words. I remember when I was 18 and I was about to go off to seminary, I had the summer. So I thought I wanted to volunteer something in my little town. So there's a senior center where you could go and serve lunches and have coffee and play games with them. And so I did that. And there was this one guy I could never reach. Everybody else would come around the table and chat and this one man would sit with his chair against the wall and wouldn't interact at all. So one morning I thought I'm just gonna have to try harder because so I took his lunch to him on a train, then I took a chair and I sat beside him and I said, hello, my name is Sheila. I'm from this town. But one day I'm going to go to America and his eyes lit up like he just won the lottery. And he said, I'm from America. And he said, if you ever get to Poughkeepsie, tell him George said hi. I don't know what Poughkeepsie is, but I will. I love that George from Poughkeepsie. But the funny thing was every morning after that, because Sunday's me, we didn't have a car, so I had to take two buses to get there. And Sundays that would be a wee bit late. But the minute I walked through those doors, no matter what was going on, George cried out, she came. Sometimes what I'll do is I'll put my chair in the middle of the living room and I'll just sit there. And I feel like I hear all of heaven cry over me. She came. Just being in the Lord's presence, let him love you. Yeah, a lot of people want to know, well, when you spend time with God, what do you do? That's the first thing. Well, what do you do? Well, I just kind of do whatever I want to. Sometimes I pray, I read the Bible. Sometimes I read another book that's explaining something to me in the Bible. Sometimes I watch my own TV program. One day last week, I was having an issue with something and I needed some help and I turned my program on. It was about attitudes and I thought that's it. You talked to yourself about it. I'm not awesome. I appreciate yourself. I'm talking to myself about it. But the thing is, you don't have to have any hard and fast rules about what you do. Yeah. Like you said, even if you just sit there, what God appreciates is that you came to him and you gave him time. Yeah. Yeah, he just wants to be with us. Not about what you do. He just wants you to be with him. And he's so good to always meet us there. Even when we don't feel it, we can know it. And that's really important too, because sometimes it's like, well, I don't feel anything. I don't feel any different. But we have to stand on the truth of what God's word tells us and keep making sure that that is inside of us. And there will be those times that his presence will be just as real as someone walking into your room right when you need it. I had to learn that feelings don't have brain. Yes. We think that we just pay way too much attention to our feelings as opposed to what we know to be true. Yeah. Well, I would love to wrap things up with this. The final thing that you say for people dealing with depression or going through rough times is, decide to start again and again and again. It may take more than once. That's good. Make a decision and let it let God do his work and do what you need to do to help. And you know, it's interesting because at first taking medication for I was diagnosed with severe clinical depression, I felt really ashamed about that. I take it to this day. I took it before the show today. I take that little pill with a prayer of thanksgiving that God is, but could God heal me absolutely like that? And if He does, I'll tell you. But until then, I take that word depression and I rearrange the letters because if you rearrange the letters of depression, you get, I pressed on. And that is why. That's good. Every single morning I press on and tomorrow's gone. And you know, I mean, yesterday's gone. Tomorrow's not here yet. But in this day, we even just driving over here, just thinking, Lord, what a great privilege to get to sit with these three women and talk about you and who you are. So I would just say to your viewers, just know if you fell down yesterday, get back up again. Righteous man falls seven times and gets up again. Yeah. Yeah. And seven times in scripture means much more than seven, doesn't it? You know, for us in practice, for me, I'll just say it. It's more than seven. I'm falling down a few more times than seven and he's there to pick me up every single time. So thank you. It's so wonderful to know that we can be healed and made whole and yeah, take such a mess like you had or I had or millions of other people have had. And I can't even sit here now and say I'm sorry it happened to me. Me either. Me either. The first thing I realized that I thought, well, that's kind of dumb that you don't need, you know, but I thought, I really don't mind that it happened to me because it made me who I am. Yeah. And it gave me a equipment to help other people. And so yeah, people want people want they want to hear things like what we've talked about today. They want to know that it's okay to take medicine if they need to. They want to know that they don't have to hide that that is not, you know, there's there's too much of people judging somebody because, well, I would never do that. Well, you don't know what you would do until you were the one was depressed. So sometimes what we think will bring us happiness still doesn't do it for us. We try everything. Look out for number one. But life still feels empty. Well, you know, we typically look at our circumstances and try to change them in order for me to be happy. I know this because I thought this way for years. I was always on my mind. I would constantly think what about me? What about me? I had no idea that the root of my unhappiness was something I could actually change. I was getting in my own way and missing the blessings that God has for me. You see selfishness steals our joy. But God has such a better way for us to live. I firmly believe that people need to realize that there is great power in an unselfish life. That's why I've written what about me inside. I share why it's important to get out of that me mindset and how to change your perspective in a way that will benefit you and others. I have absolutely no doubt that what I share in this book will change your life, just like it completely changed mine. Request what about me today and take important steps to living an unselfish life. It's available to you right now for your gift of any amount. Call us today at 1-800-331-8000 or visit us online at JoyceMeyer.org. You can get out of your own way, walk in love and live unselfishly. When you request what about me, you'll also receive enjoy your journey. Two powerful books designed to help you find true joy in Christ. Discover happiness not based in circumstances, but in God's gift of peace. These books are available to you right now for your gift of any amount. But wait, there's more. For $60 or more, you'll receive this Radiate Love tote bag along with other gift items. Call 1-800-331-8000. Visit us online at JoyceMeyer.org or use the QR code on your screen. Remember, your contribution today allows us to share the gospel and God's love around the world through our hand of hope outreaches and media platforms. What about me and enjoy your journey are available for any amount. Discovering true happiness through Christ is just a phone call or touch screen away. Call 1-800-331-8000. Visit us online at JoyceMeyer.org or use the QR code on your screen. Our stories, they matter. Your gifts, your passions, even your quirkiness, they were designed with intention. He can use every twist and turn of your journey to create something new out of brokenness, beauty, out of struggle, a life transformed. Join us for the 2026 Love Life Women's Conference and discover how God can bring transformation to your story. With Joyce and her guests, Christine Cain, Lisa Harper, and Worship with Natalie Grant and Hope Darst, October 22nd through the 24th in Tampa, Florida. Register today and say, go to JoyceMeyer.org slash Love Life. Register now. Real life, real friends, no pretense. JoyceMeyer's Talk It Out podcast. Join Joyce, Erin Cluley, and me, Ginger Stockey, along with some amazing friends as we honestly share the hard stuff. Laugh through those unpredictable moments and learn to apply what God says about it all. Watch or listen to new episodes every other Tuesday, wherever you get your podcast. We hope you enjoyed today's program. We are so grateful to our JoyceMeyer Ministries partners who make this and all we do possible, including sharing God's word and offering help to people all over the world. This program is supported by you, our viewers, and our partners.