{"id":11,"date":"2009-06-04T16:07:03","date_gmt":"2009-06-04T16:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/honestly-with-sheila-walsh\/2009\/06\/welcome.html"},"modified":"2009-06-04T16:07:03","modified_gmt":"2009-06-04T16:07:03","slug":"welcome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/honestly-with-sheila-walsh\/2009\/06\/welcome.html","title":{"rendered":"Welcome!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><font color=\"#000000\">A friend asked me a couple of years ago if I blogged and I looked at her with the blank stare of the uninitiated. There are words that have today become the cornerstones of our pop culture that had no meaning at all five or ten years ago. Most of them have to do with methods of connecting or communicating and that fact in itself speaks volumes. The world that we live in is a vastly different place than the world our parents grew up in. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><font color=\"#000000\">&nbsp;<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><font color=\"#000000\">I have just returned from a trip to Scotland to celebrate my Mom&#8217;s eightieth birthday. She lives in the same small town where she was born. She is a member of the same small church where her mother, her grandmother and her great grandmother were members. She is connected in many deep and meaningful ways to her community and culture. She can tell me the name of almost every child she went to school with and what career and family choices they made. The tapestry of her life is rich and vibrant. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><font color=\"#000000\"><\/font><\/span>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><font color=\"#000000\">Many of my generation tell a different story. We went away to college and then relocated across the country or world depending on career or calling. We have a lot of &#8216;stuff&#8217; that previous generations would not have known to dream of but beneath it all we still long for connection, to know that we are not alone in this journey.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><font color=\"#000000\">&nbsp;<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><font color=\"#000000\">If I had to define my life&#8217;s passion in one sentence it would be this-To live every moment in the love of God and be a channel of his love to others. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><font color=\"#000000\">&nbsp;<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><font color=\"#000000\">So that&#8217;s what my blog will be about-moments of seeing God in unexpected places, moments of unexpected grace amidst the questions and challenges of life. I don&#8217;t know where you are in your journey as you read this but if you will allow me to lay the first piece of the jigsaw puzzle of faith on the table it would be this simple truth, God loves you, right now, as you are, he loves you&#8230;to be continued!<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><font color=\"#000000\">&nbsp;<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><font color=\"#000000\">Sheila<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A friend asked me a couple of years ago if I blogged and I looked at her with the blank stare of the uninitiated. There are words that have today become the cornerstones of our pop culture that had no meaning at all five or ten years ago. Most of them have to do with&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gods-love","category-grace","category-hope"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Welcome! - Honestly with Sheila Walsh<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/honestly-with-sheila-walsh\/2009\/06\/welcome.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Welcome! - Honestly with Sheila Walsh\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A friend asked me a couple of years ago if I blogged and I looked at her with the blank stare of the uninitiated. There are words that have today become the cornerstones of our pop culture that had no meaning at all five or ten years ago. Most of them have to do with&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/honestly-with-sheila-walsh\/2009\/06\/welcome.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Honestly with Sheila Walsh\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-06-04T16:07:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sheila Walsh\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Welcome! - Honestly with Sheila Walsh","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/honestly-with-sheila-walsh\/2009\/06\/welcome.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Welcome! - Honestly with Sheila Walsh","og_description":"A friend asked me a couple of years ago if I blogged and I looked at her with the blank stare of the uninitiated. 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Sheila is a featured speaker with America's largest women's conference, Women of Faith, with more than 4 million women in attendance. Her unique speaking style combines honesty, vulnerability and humor rooted in her passion for God's Word. Author of the best-selling memoir \"Honestly\" and the Gold Medallion Award nominee \"The Heartache No One Sees,\" Sheila's newest book \"Let Go: Live Free of the Burdens All Women Know\" releases in 2009 and is a book tailor-made for the times we live in. \"Gigi, God's Little Princess,\" Sheila's line of books and videos for little girls won the National Retailer's Choice Award in 2006. Sheila co-hosted television's \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The 700 Club\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and her own talk show \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Heart to Heart with Sheila Walsh\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on the Family Channel. Sheila is currently working on completing her Masters in Theology degree. She lives in Dallas, Texas, with her husband, Barry, son, Christian, and two little white dogs, Belle and Tink. For more information, please visit www.sheilawalsh.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/honestly-with-sheila-walsh\/author\/jloper"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/honestly-with-sheila-walsh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/honestly-with-sheila-walsh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/honestly-with-sheila-walsh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/honestly-with-sheila-walsh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/honestly-with-sheila-walsh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/honestly-with-sheila-walsh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/honestly-with-sheila-walsh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/honestly-with-sheila-walsh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/honestly-with-sheila-walsh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}