praise

How God Encountered Me at the Women’s Encounter 2025

/ Anne (Grace is my Superhero) / Leave a comment

I wrote the following testimony in April of 2025.

During the Encounter weekend, I heard the Holy Spirit more clearly than usual, tying together all He had said before and bringing it into focus so I could understand more completely.

               The first issue He addressed was my writing.  I haven’t had the time or energy for it in the past few years.  Many ideas would press in yet getting them out through my fingertips into a computer seemed impossible.  I had only written one article for my blog in the past year. Would I ever write another article again? I doubted the power of my testimonies and if God could do any good through them.  I even began to fear putting my family at risk by keeping our stories and photos on a public platform. When the annual bill came from WordPress for my website, I thought it would be wisdom to wipe my blog clean, delete it, and be done with it.

               I was praying for wisdom while doubting that I could hear God’s voice clearly.

I did hear Him say, “You can at least believe all the things that I have told you in the past.” He reminded me of my journals full of His words, scriptures, and promises.  He reminded me of the two prophecies I had received in the past year at church.

The first was from Vinny during the baby dedication prayer.  He told me, “You have a book in you.”  I thanked him but just thought to myself, “How nice.  We will see if that is true.”

The second was from a woman I didn’t even know at the Women’s event in December.  She gave a word to my close friend which seemed very accurate. Then she turned to me and said, “You  are a teacher, and you have great wisdom. You are going to write books and books and people will come to you and say, ‘I read your book, and I was inspired.’ ”

               Sitting in the Women’s Encounter on Friday night, I was praying, “Holy Spirit come!  Come more than you ever have before.  Let me hear your voice more clearly and understand your direction for each day.”

               He began to gently show me how He had come, but I had consistently pushed Him away.  Every time I dismissed encouragement from other people about me, my life, and my writing; I had dismissed Him.  I had made a habit of dismissing His words when I thought I was being “humble” or “realistic.”  I began to repent. 

               I was not sure how to start writing again, and then I saw the email with a link to submit a testimony!  I don’t want to rehash my own dysfunctional thoughts or bad decisions anymore.  I am tired of myself, tired of writing about myself.  I want to grieve, breath, and heal in my own hidden place rather than write my stories to share with the world.

God said, “That is shame talking.  That is not me.”

               I repented for finding the voice of the stranger and the voice of the accuser easier to believe than the voice of my Good Father. 

               “Where the enemy sought to empty you for your shame, I am filling you for your glory.  I will shame the enemy.”  A quote from the weekend addressed this shame.

               There were many things that Haley said that named my struggle.  My notes from Saturday read like this, “Love is not guilt. Don’t love because of guilt or out of guilt.  When I live in guilt and shame, I divide myself.  I need to obey the LORD whole heartedly.  I need to be where He has told me to be and not feel guilty for where I am not.  The will of God is not easy.  I don’t have to hold my family together.  Trust God.”

               God began to show me many things. The heavy burden I have been carrying is called, “grief” and “guilt.”  For years I have been practicing small moments of grief as I encountered sad situations that I felt powerless to change.  Examples would be: watching Ashlyn crawl in a way that harmed her joints because she couldn’t walk, caring for a sick child whose pain I could not take away, watching another child believe what YouTube said about a subject more than he believed God, nursing my baby as much as I could yet seeing him remain skinny and hungry. 

God told me, “I don’t want you to grieve, I want you to praise me because you know that I am bigger than the situation.”

               I really tried to do this.  Charles spoke on Sunday mornings about strongholds, “A mindset impregnated with hopelessness from which we accept as unchangeable situations that we know are contrary to the will of God.”

He was talking right to me.  I tried to rise above the circumstances, to see as God sees.  But I failed and continued to live with small episodes of grief each day.  Every time a child would come to me with a request that I couldn’t fulfill, “I am sorry,” would come out of my mouth.  Each time I made supper late or not at all, “I’m sorry.”  Each time a guest came over and saw that state of my house, “I’m sorry.”  Each time I arrived somewhere late or never showed up, “I’m sorry.” 

               During the women’s encounter I heard God say, “I don’t want you to say, ‘I am sorry’ anymore. You don’t have to please anyone but me.”

               Of course God wants me to ask forgiveness when I have sinned or wronged someone.  He just didn’t want me to carry sorrow for every time I couldn’t fix the situation like ONLY GOD COULD.

               I have been giving every bit of guilt and shame to Jesus, over and over again.  I have been giving my sorrow to Jesus, over and over again.   I still say, “I am sorry” quite a few times each day out of habit.  Every time I say it, I realize that I am still grieving over something.  I also make the other person sorry and more prone to self-pity. 

I am practicing other things that I could say.

               “You can’t get a shower this morning because the bathroom has been occupied for the last two hours?  Great! This will make you stronger!”

               “You can’t read the book that you want because your brother is reading it.  You are learning patience!”

               “You don’t like the dinner I made tonight? How wonderful, there will be more for the rest of us!

               “You think we are weird parents because we have weird rules that no other parents have?  You will thank us someday!”

               I know, I still need a lot of practice. Just writing those sentiments out made me realize that they are not quite right.  (Another reason for me to start writing my stories down.  It forces me to take the thoughts floating around in my head and put them in a logical order. It forces me to look back into my journal, the Bible, and the recordings so I can remember the details I had forgotten.  It helps me to process and take steps forward!)

My alternatives for, “I’m sorry,” lack a certain compassion and encouragement.  As God told Haley, “You may have to get it a little bit wrong to get it righter.”

One night Aria, my six-year-old, came to me with a very long story about why BOTH her knees were hurting and why she was so sad that they were STILL hurting.  I started formulating one of my typical responses when I was under pressure to get supper ready and felt powerless to help her hurt knees.  But instead of saying, “I am sorry your knees are hurting.  There is nothing I can do about it.  Just sit on the sofa and rest,” I felt the Holy Spirit in me pull her aside to the sofa.  I snuggled with her and words started coming that I had not premeditated.

               “You know, Aria, that God is healing you.  He gave you the most wonderful knees.  You have ‘wonderfully well and blessed and highly favored of the Lord’ knees.  He meant for your knees to last your entire life.  You are young and you will heal quickly.  God, thank you for Aria’s knees and that you are healing them. She will be running and jumping and dancing in no time.”

               Aria started to smile.  We both felt encouraged rather than sorry. She gave me a hug and said, “You are the best mom ever.”

Wow!  So much better than, “I’m sorry.”

               I am trusting the Holy Spirit to lead me and fill my mouth as I break up with grief and sorrow! It is not up to me to fix every problem and meet every need.  I will trust Him to do it.

The Power of Praising Through Pain

/ Anne (Grace is my Superhero) / 6 Comments

Doris

I attended the memorial service for the mother of a dear friend of mine.  This friend is my age, and we have known each other since junior high school.   It was much too soon for her to have to say goodbye to her mom.  I was deeply touched by everyone who shared memories and thoughts and prayers.  I marveled at the joy and pain mingling together as we sang songs of worship.  Our pastor stood up to share. He began to talk about how we each encounter situations in life that don’t make sense, that seem too difficult to be God’s best for us.  We all ask God the question, “Why?”  He listed the many famous men of the Bible who asked why.  Then he made a statement that cut to the core of my being.

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“There was one ‘why’ that swallowed up all the other ‘whys’,” he said, and I instantly knew what he was talking about.

Jesus, hanging on the cross, became sin and cried out from the anguish of his soul, “My God, WHY have you forsaken me?”

Jesus knows how we feel as we navigate through this journey called being human.  We all suffer pain, heartbreak, sickness, and loss.  We all have our faith shaken and our knowledge stripped and our understanding emptied until all we can say is, “Why?”  Jesus was at the very same place Himself, and He put himself in that place on purpose so that we didn’t have to be there alone.  He is always right there with us, whispering, “I understand…and someday you will too.”

And love’s voice answers from a cross:

“I bear it all with you;

I share with you in all your loss, I will make all things new.

None suffer in their sin alone,

I made – I bear – and I atone.” – Hannah Hurnard

 

God made us for Eden which means “delight” and “pleasure.”  We were made to live in perfect shalom; peace, nothing broken, nothing missing.  But our world was plunged into darkness and put under a curse because of sin.  The effects of that gloom always seem so wrong and unfair and foreign to us.  That is because they are.  We were created for something better, something perfect.

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” – C.S. Lewis

While we are here in the Shadowlands, we have a unique and very short-lived opportunity that we will never have again once we have crossed over into glorious eternity.  We have the privilege to have faith in something we can’t see.  Faith in a good and amazing God.  Faith that all things will be redeemed and restored.  We have the chance to touch our Father’s heart as we praise Him through our pain.

Rick Joyner received a vision from God in which this was shown to him in a marvelous way.

“I saw the Father.  Millions and millions were attending Him.  His glory was so great and the power of His presence so awesome that I felt the whole earth would not have even measured as a grain of sand before Him…His robe was composed of millions and millions of stars which were alive…I knew I could dwell before Him forever and never cease to marvel; there was no higher purpose in the universe than to worship Him…

“Then I was in a different place, beholding a worship service in a little church building…Everyone in the battered little room…were experiencing severe trials in their lives, but they were not even thinking of them here.  They were not praying about their needs.  They were all trying to compose songs of thanksgiving to the Lord.  They were happy and their joy was sincere.

“I saw heaven, and all of heaven was weeping.  I then saw the Father again and knew why heaven was weeping.  They were weeping because of the tears in the eyes of the Father.  This little group of seemingly beaten down, struggling people had moved God so deeply that He wept.  They were not tears of pain, but of joy…

“Jesus turned to me and said, “When you worship without seeing His glory, in the midst of your trials, this is worship in Spirit and truth…Do not waste your trials.  Worship the Father – not for what you will get, but to bring Him joy.  You will never be stronger than when you bring Him joy, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

One Sunday at church I was inspired by a testimony of a woman who had been miraculously healed of cancer.  I love it when God’s power is so visibly demonstrated here on the imperfect earth among broken humanity.  I clapped and cheered for this one soul who had received a death sentence and then had that terrible pronouncement revoked.

But I was deeply touched and moved and undone by something else.  A man who had recently lost his wife to cancer was raising his hands to praise God for the healing of another.  I felt my heart deepen and stretch to try to contain the grandeur of that one small act.  I thought I heard heaven weeping because this man had so touched the Father’s heart with his praise.  The greatest victories of the Christian life occur when we suffer crushing earthly loss and still praise God!  The “Whys” get swallowed up by such praise and we get catch a glimpse of the world we were really created for.

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I Love My Tribe

/ Anne (Grace is my Superhero) / 4 Comments

 

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The music washes over me.  It is not just melody and rhythm…it is the very atmosphere of heaven.  The lights are bright, the stage is full of musicians, and I am surrounded by my tribe.  Almost every Sunday morning I find myself here, in the sanctuary of Life Center and saturated with the swirling presence of God and humanity.  There are so many worship leaders that share the stage, so many musicians that rotate from week to week.  They are full of talent and resurrection life, and I love them all!  They have birthed an abundance of CDs out of the overflow of their lives of praise.

I watch the senior pastors in the front row, boppin’ to the rockin’ music.  They are in their sixties, but they enjoy the youthful expression and energy as much as anyone.  They actually lead the rest of us in radical, “out of the box” thinking! They have served this church for over twenty years, and I love them! I see one of the younger worship leaders, passionately singing a song that he wrote; and I think about how I used to babysit him when he was a boy.  I look over and see his parents in the front row, beloved pastors who raised me in the youth group; still loving, still serving, still standing for all that is true.

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Some folks are out of their seats, dancing.  Some are swaying to the music.  Others are sitting with their eyes closed.  Others are kneeling on the floor.  My teenage daughter is up front, worshipping with her friends.  I observe many gray heads in the crowd, faces lined with wisdom and love.  I see parents holding their little ones.  I see children twirling scarves and prancing on bare feet.  Life is always bursting forth at Life Center.  There are more pregnant women than I can keep track of, and I love them all! I long to be able to tell each one of them how gorgeous they are and how precious they are to God, carrying His little children of promise!

I notice women running to each other in joyful reunions, laughing and hugging.  I see people spontaneously begin to pray for the person next to them, passion and concern on their faces.  I see others exchanging gifts or notes.

It is time for the offering and one of the “newer” pastors takes the microphone.  He and his family have become so precious to me.  Every time I see him take the stage, I am alert with anticipation.  I know that some stunning revelation will spill from his lips that will rock the way I see the world.

The music subsides and there are announcements of births and deaths; family business that herald joy and tears all at the same time.  How we each know that thrill and that pain, and how we each long to share those with our brothers and sisters.  I walk to the back of the sanctuary during the meet and greet time, and I am enveloped in a warm and healing hug by a beautiful black mama.

“Look at you!   You’re beautiful!  Just beautiful!” she always says to me with her eyes shining and her amazing, white smile blazing.  She is the beauty! I wish I could describe the indescribable, how dark and lovely she is…but her beauty is so deep and so true, I am at a loss for words.

It is time for the message and another pastor comes up.  He and his wife are treasures to me, having led countless youth events, missions trips and prayer times that I was apart of.  We have even lived with them a couple of times.  Some folks in the crowd are a little confused because he talks too fast, as though he has 4 hours worth of revelation to impart in 45 minutes.  Chris and I are fluent in “speed talk” since we grew up under his tutelage, and we just chuckle to ourselves.  In his message, he talks about a mission trip that he led 20 years ago.  I was part of that trip, and how I cherish those memories!

After the service, I hug my dear and longtime friends.  I greet friends I grew up with and friends who were in my wedding.  I talk with my children’s pastor, who I went to school with.  I see more recent friends, who have quickly taken residence in my heart.  I identify new acquaintances as well.  I notice many fresh faces and hope to call them my friends someday too.  So many personalities, so many gifts, so many stories, so many ways that God reveals Himself to me; represented by these precious people.

“I love my tribe!” I always think to myself on a Sunday morning.  The love wells up within me, along with pride.  I love my tribe!  There are children of God all over this earth, in different denominations, different countries, varying cultures and traditions.  But I am so glad that my boundary lines have fallen here, at Life Center.  I started coming to this church in 1989, when it was meeting in the old casket factory.  My husband Chris started coming earlier than that, in 1985.  We left for a time and moved to Colorado Springs.  In the eight years we were there, we couldn’t put our roots down, no matter how hard we tried.  Now we are back in our promised land, surrounded by family.  How good it feels to watch our family tree grow tall and strong with a wide trunk and thick bark, an oak of righteousness, a planting for the display of His splendor.

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How glorious it feels to let our roots descend into the rich and fertile soil of Central Pennsylvania! How refreshing to drink the deep, deep waters.  How thirsty we had been for those waters!

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There are wonderful people of God all over the world, but this family is mine…my clan…my tribe.  I am so glad!  How I love my tribe!