Facing the Canon with Julie Sheldon

hi i'm jay john welcome to facing the canon and i'm delighted today to be talking with my good friend julie sheldon julie it is a joy to have this opportunity thank you it's good to be here well i've known you for a few years julie uh but maybe a a lot of our viewers today haven't and so what we want to do is find out a little bit about your journey and some of the ups and downs which i know you've had and how you've coped so let's go back where where did you grow up oh wow right to the beginning yes okay well i grew up in devon and i grew up um a happy little girl very loving horses loving ballet and but my real passion with bally right from the age of three apparently i walked up to my belly mistress then and said i want to be a ballerina right at the age of three the age of three i knew i wanted to dance at the age of three had you seen uh ballet well my my grandmother had been a dancer my uncle was an actor and i think there was sort of it was a bit in the family it was a bit around but uh yeah i knew i knew very early on i wanted to be a ballerina or a nun funnily enough oh either of balor i didn't know about the nun thing until i was a bit older but uh yeah but it was a strange combination uh your uncle julie he was an actor yes that's right called called alec mccowan that's right now didn't he once uh recite one of the gospels he did he did mark's gospel and he learned the whole thing from beginning to end and he did a one-man show of saint mark and did it all over the world did it the white house did it for the queen i think or the green mother and uh amazing amazing feat of memory and endurance really how long was it yeah um i don't know it was a couple of hours i think to do the whole thing from start to finish but you know how maybe you don't have but i have trouble memorizing one verse and he did the whole thing oh long time and he was doing a shakespeare play at the same time so he was memorizing shakespeare and the gospel all together goodness absolutely he can still do it he's 86 and you can ask him and he can still do it he still can recite it yeah but then you did become um a ballerina well i went to valley school at 11. you know when you're going to do it seriously you have to kind of go when i went away to elmhurst valley school and um and in fact it was there that i said i wanted to become a nun because i had a sort of an amazing sort of moment in the garden and we didn't have much to do at weekends it was very disciplined during the week and the weekends was nothing really much to do and we used to play in the garden and i remember one of those sort of lovely moments where the sun was coming through the trees and i remember vowing to to god at that point that if i didn't become a ballerina then i would become a nun for him so did you always have faith growing up i think i did yeah and the school was very although it was a faith you know we went to chapel um every day and twice on sundays it was a very theatrical type of faith you know we had to process into chapel with our hands like this and we wore veils when we're in the choir and it was all very theatrical but it stirred something hugely in my heart even at that young age and my parents were were believers but but um it took them a while on their journey to to really find a living faith so when would you say that your faith really crystallized a bit later on when i was about 17 or 18 and i've been dancing for a long time by then and i was invited to go to a girls camp a christian camp and i went kicking screaming i did not enjoy it at all i got there and and and you know by now is very involved in this theatre um and the theater world is very sort of well supposedly glamorous but you know what i mean it's people always looking over your shoulder to see if someone a little more interesting is coming in the room and it's it's dramatic it's theatrical it's very lovely and you know the rest of it um so i was living in that sort of world and i went to this girls christian camp where people were not like that at all they were just good nice girls and they had something about them that i knew i didn't have and and i was attracted by that i was attracted by their their faithfulness and the way they spoke about jesus and the way they they prayed and the way they were real again in the theater unit's very artificial and and um we were told always from a very young age to smile very important as a ballerina you know you smile whatever's happening in your body you smile stand up straight and smile but you know from very early on it's it's quite artificial so whatever's happening in your body you must always put on a good performance right always put on a good show and suddenly i was confronted with all these girls who weren't like that at all but they had faith which uh which i was very attracted by but also um quite angry about because i knew i wasn't in the zone with them at all yeah but then so what happened you went to a dance school and then did you join a company then i went on to the royal valley and um so i went to live in london work in london and dance um you know really seriously full-time in london with the royal valley and it was actually whilst i was at the royal valley school that i had um a very bad accident i was dancing with my boy partner and uh he was lifting me up into a lift and his hands slipped i mean if you've ever tried to lift a girl in the middle maybe you haven't but they're very slippery my son has you know he has and you know you're slippery yes and uh it was a complete accident but his hands slipped i fell to the floor and i fractured my spine and effectively my career was ended at that point although i carried on dancing i didn't realize i had a fracture i carried on darts i carried on smiling carried on performing until i got to a point where i knew i couldn't really so when you kept dancing you were in pain oh yes of course but but there's a dancer you're always in pain you're always in pain but had they not um spotted the fracture well i'd had an x-ray and it hadn't showed and then when it really got excruciating i had another x-ray and it showed this fracture in my spine so that was like the end of your career as a dancer well yes no i mean i i had nearly a year off bali from the royal valley and then they kindly said come back to give me another chance which was fantastic but you know i got to that point where i i sort of knew i wasn't as good as i'd been before when you've been very very fit and at the peak of your of your you know your strength and your profession and then you have something like that i knew i wasn't as good so it was a major setback oh it was huge how did you coach with that setback at that time like everything i had up into that moment i smiled you know and and i pushed it all down and okay this happened just get on um you know and smiled and carried on giving a really good performance actually but but you knew deep down though that there was no future for you as a dancer as a dancer i went and did modeling i went to did modern dance but my heart had always been a classical ballerina passionate for that one thing now but later on uh you had another setback um when you became quite ill but that there was a long process of discovering what was actually wrong wasn't there yeah and it was it was a strange time really because i um i'd had that awful back accident and i recovered and and you know did other work and worked for warner brothers and did a big promotion for the superman film when that came out and all sorts of different stuff like that and then i got married met my lovely husband tom and we had two daughters mimi and georgie and then when they were one and four um a strange thing happened i'd had a knee operation again you know a dancing related injury and um and gradually after that operation my my leg started to do a weird thing in its office of drawing up across my body until my right knee was virtually on my left shoulder and my foot was all turned in and i had no control over what was happening at all and then the other leg started doing similar things well like spasms huge spasms i mean if you've had cramp at night you've got to imagine that but but multiplied sure terribly painful and you have no control whatsoever and my legs started drawing up then my hands started closing in then my wrists started bending over then my arms started bending up like this and then my head began to draw this muscle here pulled my head right over my shoulder um so absolutely excruciating and and we had no idea what was happening and you had two young girls that needed looking after two little girls at that time and somehow you know also having been a ballerina and having been looked at for beautiful movements and being able to control what i did all my movements suddenly get an illness that you have no control whatsoever you know i couldn't help any of this that was happening it was out of my control and i dribbled and i shook um and i couldn't be a mother you know i couldn't even hold my daughters because my leg was up here and i you know i couldn't get my girls behind me or anything like that i couldn't be a wife proper wife yes you know it's impossible for us to have any any sort of marriage yes very hard time well in your heart and mind how were you coping with this um by that point i was a believer i you know made a professor you know i made a real commitment as a young girl in that girl's camp where i had to do it yeah but but i did come to real faith in christ then um so i believed in prayer i believed that that jesus heals today i had no problem with any of that uh i didn't cope well with being so disfigured i didn't cope well with people treating me as if i wasn't all right in my mind you know when you're that disabled in a wheelchair and shaking and dribbling people think that you're perhaps a little bit funny upstairs and also in one of the london hospitals the um the staff were telling you almost like pull yourself together yeah that was sad that was sad so they were kind of mis judging you really weren't they i think and thankfully now you know we're talking quite a few years on now people know about dystonia which is what i had which was eventually that's that was a diet yeah i diagnosed that severe generalized estonia is what it was called and it now we know there's at least 40 000 people in this country with it it's a worldwide illness it's well recognized now but at that point they hadn't seen i don't think that many cases that had got quite so severe they'd seen people with it with one part of the body maybe just the neck or the hands but not the whole the whole body it usually happened to children like that what does it define or the stone is defined as it's a neurological movement disorder and it comes from the part of the brain that parkinson's comes from so it's something goes wrong in the basal ganglia part of your brain and it's like all the wrong messages are being sent out but you had one of the most severe forms of a very severe form yeah and in fact your consultant didn't gave you something like 25 recovery well yeah again you know since i've been well and they really didn't think i was going to get better at all and you don't really get better from from severe generalized dystonia it's not an illness it can be treated quite well now with botox and other sort of levodopa type drugs but you don't really get better not not like that so you went from one hospital to another and i read somewhere in a milk cart or something yeah what was that how comes the hospital provides the old middle sex hospital had a milk cart that they used to take you to the hydrotherapy pool i mean just one of those funny quirky things of the national yeah quirky isn't it yeah but you you obviously deteriorated and and had the various uh treatments and operations but nothing no i mean one operation they gave which was horribly sort of dramatic was they they they thought in their wisdom that a good way to get this leg down off my body was to put me in a plaster cast from from here to here yes so they put me under general anaesthetic and then plastered this leg up because they could pull it out while i was asleep yes under anthetic and then when i came round the spasm was so great that it actually cracked the plaster of paris so you can imagine that the force and then yes to bring power to break the plaster and you know it was very confusing people came to pray people came to you know to anoint me with oil and they hands on me and many people prayed and i got worse and worse it was incredibly confusing did you feel abandoned by god occasionally yeah very hard to pray as well when you're in that much pain very difficult to to yeah to feel the closeness of the holy spirit or you know to feel the presence of jesus just almost impossible when you're in that much pain and i became so ill it affected my lungs in the end so i could barely breathe either sure so rather than praying i was thinking breathe breathe take another breath take another breath you know it became that severe and my eyes were affected too and they started the spasms were shutting my eyes as well so everything bit by bit was being affected and shutting down but then um an anglican clergyman called jim glennon from sydney australia came how did he end up coming to visit you and pray with you wonderful story really uh he knew a friend of mine well she didn't even know him very well but uh she felt courageous and said to him would he she knew he had a wonderful faith to pray for him in the name of jesus he wasn't a faith healer he was a christian yes um or a christian who prayed in the name of jesus and he um she felt bold and she knew was coming to england and she said would you come and visit my friend she's in intensive care at the national hospital please will you come and pray with him with me and uh so they came and i didn't have a clue who he was i had never heard of him and didn't know anything about him and many people came yeah that's just like another person and i was there trying to breathe and coping with all this stuff were you aware that he'd come yeah i knew um not really no because at that point by then i was um in a sort of fetal ball in this bed and um heavily sedated heavily drunk to try and stop these terrific spasms and about four times a day everything we're going to reverse so from being like this it would all come pulling backwards and my head would go back and incredibly painful i can't tell you that but um yeah so he he very sweetly just said could he pray i mean he wasn't a man of many words at all and and he just prayed and he he said such a simple prayer and and i'm always encouraged by this because we complicate praying for him and he just said for me on behalf of me he just said thank you father that you're healing me now and then he said thank you jesus that you are healing me now and then he said thank you holy spirit that you are healing me now very very simple and then he wrote on a big piece of paper and he stuck it on the side of my locker in big capitals because i couldn't really see very well and he wrote these words even when we're too weak to have any faith left god remains faithful to us and will help us fantastic even when we're too weak to have any faith left god remains faithful to us and will help us and then he stuck that on the side of your stuck it on my locker and you could read it see those words and i thought yeah that's it too weak no faith and yet he was a promise that god would help and that was it really did you sense anything nothing at all nothing at all then what nothing at all uh i went to sleep very i don't remember even saying goodbye heavily heavily drugged uh went into very deep sleep and all i can do is tell you what i remember sure what i mean absolutely i i've never wanted to elaborate what's happened this is what happened i went to sleep i woke up and i felt able to sit up now it had taken me always two people to sit me up you know one this side one this side to bring me actually lift you up yes i woke up from that sleep and i sat up and then the next day i got out of bed my leg was up like a stalk my arms were still like this but i could get them into crutches and i walked across the wards to the window and you hadn't been able to do that not for months months a month yeah so when the doctors and nurses saw you what was their reaction it was quite interesting they they kept coming to have a look not saying much but just having a look and then finally um i think some of the younger doctors felt that this was just perhaps a remission uh the professor of neurology i was under he he was amazed he was a scientist he said i'm not a man of faith at all but something miraculous has happened those were his words yes he was prepared to accept that sometimes things don't fit into the textbook absolutely or his understanding he hadn't seen it happen before uh so it it it was amazing for them too and you eventually walked out of the hospital it took a few overall to get the whole everything yes it probably took a couple of months it was sort of we were still in the hospital oh no no i was like i was allowed to come out as soon as i was you know they saw you you knew you were gradually getting that bit by bit my head straightened my my you know back straightened my eyes opened i could breathe um you know my hands one hand open the other one didn't my legs started being able to be walked on and i could go home and be a mum yes and uh and everything was functioning i remember what you told me the story was it about a little finger yeah well my hand my left hand strangely stayed stayed in it was mainly three fingers and sometimes four and it was a funny thing because it was very intimate between tom my husband and myself because if he went to hold my hand instead of having a nice hand to hold he he had this fist and we never really even thought to pray about it we thought well god's done such a wonderful wonderful restoration you know should we be praying about a little hand here um and he he healed my hand as well again through the most amazing and miraculous and instant that was completely instant so what happened there i went to um stay at a place called burstwood in kent in england and i was finishing writing a book all about this experience yes and i had the manuscript on my knee and i just prayed and i just the heart of thanks i said father thank you for everything that's happened and please use all this for your glory sure and as i prayed that prayer i had an image very strong picture came into my mind i'd never had anything like this happen before it wasn't a vision it was just a very clear picture and it was as if god had said what i've given you is is a dress to wear and it fits you well but then i could see there were three groups of people standing around and one group was sort of saying well this is a lovely dress thank god for the healing that's taken place and then there was a second group and they were sort of standing there one of the women was weeping just crying and the other one was very angry and sort of hands on hip and saying accusing me why should you have such a pretty dress why should you be healed yes and then there was a third group and in my mind's eye i could see them sitting on the ground and they were sort of looking up and saying it's a lovely dress but i bet there's nothing at the back i bet it will fall down i bet the healing will fall down and you'll be back in a wheelchair and you know you can imagine all this sort of going on in my mind i thought you know what is this i i had no experience of this before and in my mind's eye i looked more closely i could see the dress had a hem all unravelled all on one side so i gathered up my book and i ran into this place where i was staying and i bumped into a chaplain which was i thought good a good sign and and i just said to this person an extraordinary things happen can you help me and we went to the chapel and i explained this picture of the three groups of people and hanging down and this person said look i've got no idea what any of it means but let's pray very wise person yes and and they just pray that god would sew up the last bit of the hem on this dress and immediately my hands sprung open immediately there was there was nothing there there was no contractures you know there'd been nodules there'd been ligaments that had gone all knobbly and horrible in there and my nails obviously always cut into my skin and made it bleed and it was frankly horrible you know if you imagine not being able to wash properly absolutely really horrible and manky and my hand literally sprang open and it's as pure and straight and unmarked as it is now it was completely extraordinary but what was more extraordinary was that picture yeah because the three groups of people i had no idea what was to ever come yes and yet god whatever i've had the joy of speaking about it there's always been the three groups of people people who say yes i believe god heals the day yes people say it's not fair you know what about my mum what about my friend you know it's not fair why does god heal like this and people are angry about healing in this way and the group who sit on the floor who say well you look fine but it's just on the mission you know you come back yes and we celebrated 21 years in june yeah 21 years so that you you then uh following i mean your the healing the restoration that christ did in you he started telling your story and traveling and um you wrote your story as well actually and uh your your book is dancer you called it dancer off her feet which is an absolutely lovely title where did you go and write this um i did most of it at home but then buzz would i just finished off yeah but it's been a blessing i had no idea when i prayed with that manuscript on my knee that that i'd go anywhere with it you know i had no idea that god would do what he's done and for the last 20 the opportunities and the thankfulness in my heart and that's why that second group of people have always been close to my heart you know why it's not fair you know why are some people here like this and yes and i've never been able to answer it i'm not a theologian i just had an extraordinary thing happen to me but what i would say is is when god does do something remarkable in your life it's what you do with it of course um i don't think he gives us all lovely gifts for us just to sit on our hands and think well that was nice you know no yeah i may be wrong i don't know but that's how i've worked it out but i just feel i'm so thankful i'm so grateful but i'm not smug no because you know that five years later and that's what i was just about to ask you five years later georgie your daughter was diagnosed with she has a malignant brain tumor so it's not that we're sort of triumphalistic and saying it's fantastic you know we are so thankful for what happened i'm so thankful that sure i can look after her as an able-bodied person yeah and she wanted to be a ballerina she wanted to be a ballerina too yeah she was doing very well and then she singing and then but then 10 years old struck down with a malignant brain tumor and then had to have an operation she had radiotherapy chemotherapy surgery and uh and she's she's done well she's still alive how old is she's 25 she's 25 now so that's 15 years day after day after day we've prayed and prayed and we thank god for her for her life and we will continue to absolutely but that obviously you you were ill you recovered and you're you're traveling around the country telling your story and communicating the truth of the good news of jesus and then your daughter is struck down with this disease now it is confusing we live in this world of miracle and mystery don't we you do how did you cope with um georgie's georgie's illness frustration um and god being involved in all of this well first off i can tell you that it's much easier if easy's the right word to be ill yourself than to watch your child suffer watching your child suffer is the pits yeah it really is and i remember very early on excuse me in great ormond street hospital just handing her over to god and saying father you know she is yours yes you know i bore her but but i can't hold on to her um and this was just before she was going for her brain operation and it has been hard it would be foolish to say it wasn't um but we have never ever lost sight of the fact that god can be the god of the miraculous and also god of the 11th hour yes you know when i was prayed for i was really not well i was one step away from being on a ventilator and you know my life was in serious trouble and we've always just held on to that we've and we've been thankful always even even in the really hard times we've been thankful for that the small mercies the little tiny glimmers of improvement the little sort of kindnesses that people have shown all the little things have have added up really to to keep us going i mean sometimes it's been terrible the mind's good it helps you forget the really terrible times i'm talking 15 years on but we still struggle with her and she's still you know not completely well she's had more cancer she's had thyroid cancer and she's had a lot of skin cancer so you know we we continue with that and the skin cancers as a result of the the radiotherapy yes that she had as a child and so constant checks constant treatment and it continues so what would you say then julie to um people who are listening to our conversation now and they're struggling with ill health and you know like the persistent widow they've knocked and knocked and knocked on the door of heaven and they're still struggling with ill health what would you say i would always encourage you to persevere always and if you can't pray yourself get other people to come in get get the warriors you know get the fighters get the get those so strong to come and pray and to support you and carry you and and to be alongside you um and and to be real with god you know i think all of us have a little dark dungeon in our heart where we hide from him a bit like adam and eve you know they're hid in the garden and and we have a little bit in our heart where we instinctively we hide from god um and that's a bit where we need to be real and say you know father this is this is awful you know i'm thinking of people watching who may be suffering and in terrible pain you know be real with him and say this is this is hard father i need you i can't do it without you but give me courage give me hope give me either perseverance give me endurance all those big words absolutely they're even hard to spell let's just live but uh and just to remember you know christ's suffering as well and that he knows he knows about our suffering i wonder whether you could just pray oh i'd love to julie for anyone who is struggling who who kind of um what you've said has resonated with them and maybe just pray into their situation um of this feeling possibly of abandonment um and to pray and meet the love of christ into their situation thank you very much so heavenly father we thank you that wherever we are whatever our situation however disabled however in pain however hopeless however depressed however oppressed we thank you father that we are precious and that you love us and for those in that place of darkness where it feels like there's no hope no future i pray now for you that by his holy spirit you would know a sense of peace and hope again and just as jim glennon prayed for me those simple words i pray for you now father thank you that you are healing me now jesus thank you that you are healing me now thank you holy spirit that you are healing me now in jesus name amen amen julie it's been a delight to talk to you thank you so much so you

Channel: Facing the Canon

Views: 7,706

Rating: 4.8688526 out of 5

Keywords: facing the canon, facing, the, canon, Julie, Sheldon, Julie Sheldon, Royal, Ballet, Royal Ballet, interview, J.John, JJohn, J John, Philo Trust, Philo, Trust, Christian, Christianity, Jesus, Bible, God, Lord

Id: mDr071r2qL0

Length: 30min 28sec (1828 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 11 2013