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Uplifting interviews, light-hearted discussions, and a sprinkle of humor—Holy Banter invites you into joyful, faith-filled conversations that inspire and entertain. Join Christina Steele, Associate Director of Adult Evangelization at St. Alphonsus Liguori Catholic Church in Zionsville, Indiana, and co-host Andrea Simpson, Coordinator of Middle School Ministry and Outreach, as they explore real-life faith stories, share spiritual insights, and occasionally laugh a little too loudly. Whether you're deep in your journey or just curious, there's a seat at the table for you.
Welcome back to another episode of Holy Banter. This is Christina Steele.
Andrea:And I'm Andrea Simpson. Today we are here with Ann Jones. She's been a parishioner at St. Alfonso's for six years. She is an amazing artist and an author who with God's help is still writing her story.
Andrea:So thanks for coming to talk to us today, Ann.
Anne:Thank you for having me.
Andrea:Of course. Well, we have so many questions for you. We know you in a few different capacities, but most recently you've agreed to help lead our Grieving with Great Hope group. And unfortunately you have a lot of experience with grief. You are a great proponent living in a way where you focus on your faith and not your fear or your grief.
Andrea:So Christina and I would love to know more about, how this all started for you, how your grief journey started.
Anne:Yeah. In, in 2011, my sister was diagnosed with a glioblastoma brain tumor and she fought it for five months and then, she passed away on March 17, fourteen years ago.
Andrea:That's Lisa, right? Yeah. Lisa.
Anne:And we were very, very close. I have four sisters and we were the closest. We raised our kids together. We were on the phone a few times a day, helping each other through marriage, you know, and we always ended up laughing, you know, at the end. We would make something funny out of it.
Anne:And then my mom was a twenty two year pancreatic cancer survivor, which doesn't really happen, but she had a Whipple procedure and she lived twenty two more years. Her life expectancy was five to ten, and she lived twenty two. That s amazing. The last two years of her life, she was on a J tube, which is different than a G tube. You have to be on a pump twenty hours a day with this icky formula, and you can t eat.
Anne:Her stomach wouldn t work. That was the whole problem. So she was in assisted living and she would go back and forth to the hospital. She'd get an infection. But she would always rally and come back.
Anne:And I remember her saying, Why doesn't God take me? And I would say, Well, you must have something to teach me. Which, my dad had passed away suddenly in two thousand and one, and we all thought, Oh, maybe six months and mom will be gone. Because they were both orphans and were married for fifty seven years. She just took up the challenge and ran with it.
Anne:And, you know, she would say, I do what I want and I don't have a bedtime. I love that. That's cute. She, when my sister passed away, she kind of gave up. That just devastate her?
Anne:Yeah. She was like, what if I don't want to get better this time? You know? Where do you think
Christina:just the grief is
Anne:overwhelming Yeah. Mean, for to lose a child
Christina:was just
Anne:horrible. Oh yeah. Can imagine. And Lisa was very, affectionate and loving and giving and She just didn't get it. Seven weeks after Lisa died, my mom died.
Anne:I was there with her and we sang hymns and talked to her and she passed very peacefully. How was
Christina:that loss compared to the loss of your sister?
Anne:You know, we expected my mom to go. It wasn't as hard, but she was a driving force. Know, she was just something else. I mean, that's what people would say.
Christina:Well, they'll live twenty two years of pancreatic cancer and she'd have to be.
Andrea:Yeah. And she didn't have a bedtime.
Anne:And she did what she wanted. Right. If didn't want to eat dinner, she didn't make dinner. That's awesome. She wanted to watch something on TV.
Anne:She didn't have to worry about my dad having them remote. Freedom.
Andrea:Or freedom is what
Anne:it was. Point those things out, you know?
Andrea:Yeah. But that's looking at the positive, Yeah.
Anne:I mean, twenty two years when you're widowed, have to.
Christina:And she was a pretty faith filled person?
Anne:She was and she wasn't. They were Methodists when I was growing up. She was Baptist as a child and went to church by herself and got baptized.
Christina:Wow. She really
Anne:is So a she, you know, she knew God and loved God. My dad was an agnostic until he was in world war two and he saw Catholic men dying in foxholes, praying the rosary with a smile on their face. Wow. And he said, there's gotta be something bigger than me out there. He have, I
Christina:have didn't become Catholic though. No, he was never Catholic. Yeah.
Anne:So he was just, he was not the most faith filled person, but he actually had a near death experience. He had a dissecting aneurysm the day after Easter in 2000, and we were all praying. My mom was at the hospital. They lived in Florida, and my sister was down there. They came out after just a couple hours.
Anne:It was supposed to take six to nine hours. They came out and said, we got in there and there was no aneurysm in there. Three people did echoes on him and it wasn't there.
Christina:That's amazing.
Anne:So he would walk the beaches in Florida and say, God gave me a second chance. My gosh. He wrote my mom a love letter and mailed it to her for Valentine's Day. You know, he had eighteen more months of being able to just really appreciate life. I mean, cracked his chest open and everything.
Anne:You know, he's, I remember calling him the next day and he said, I said, how are you? And he said, well, I just had a bed bath from a blonde and a brunette.
Andrea:I'm going break.
Christina:My gosh. Men are dirty to the end.
Andrea:Yeah. Yep.
Anne:He was 79,
Andrea:but he didn't waste that though.
Anne:He didn't No, waste no. And they were great people. They just very, they never meant straight That's to either one of amazing. So my mom passed away on May 8, we had her funeral the Saturday the eleventh. It was a day before Mother's Day.
Anne:Then that week, my sister and her husband and myself and my husband went to the assisted living and cleaned out her apartment. Then we had my son's wedding coming up on the following Saturday, the nineteenth. So on Friday, we went to lunch with a bunch of people who were in from out of town for the wedding. And then Friday night, my son and daughter-in-law wanted to have just a pizza party. They didn't want a fancy thing.
Anne:They wanted the people who were from out of town to be able to come, not just the wedding party. So we had a great, great time. And my granddaughter was there and she called my husband daddy because her mom and dad weren't married and her father wasn't in her life at that time. So I remember her telling the waitress, This is really my grandfather. I mean, she's like four years old.
Anne:This is really my grandfather, but I call him my dad. That's so sweet. Yeah, she introduced and the waitress said, Yeah, I have the same thing. I call my dad, my grandpa dad. So we went home and we went out on the deck and he had a glass of wine and was talking about how much he was looking forward to my daughter-in-law being part of our family.
Anne:We went to bed, said goodnight, told each other we loved each other, and he said, iIim going to go out on the couch. I canit sleep. So that was a normal thing. And he would sleep half on and half off the couch. The kids would walk through to the kitchen, you know, with his refrigerator, he would be snoring away.
Anne:Well, that morning of the wedding, I woke up about 06:30, and at 06:50, my daughter, who was a nurse, said, Oh my God, he s cold. So I ran out there and he had died. He was on the floor. He looked like he was asleep. One daughter called another daughter and said, Hey, come up here and see what's going on.
Anne:And she was a nurse. She like, you know, called, called the neighborhood police, whatever.
Christina:How old was he?
Anne:He was 54. And his
Andrea:name was Chris, And
Anne:he was overweight and he was diabetic, but he was under control, had blood pressure issues. We think it was sleep apnea that caused him to have a cardiac event. I remember going out there and the first thing that came to my head was you're with Jesus, but really today? At first, that's
Christina:a gift that that was the first thing to your mind.
Anne:And it was, and I hung onto that a lot. If you knew my husband, he would not want to be the center of attention. He would not want to do this on this day. But I had to call my sons. We're all staying at my son's house, and called him and had to tell him that his dad was gone, and we decided to have the wedding anyway.
Christina:That's remarkable.
Anne:And it was the most surreal day of my life. I mean, felt like I was in a Salvador Dali painting. One minute I'd be dancing, and the next minute I'd be like, He's dead. It just didn't sink in. And when I see pictures of the way I look like a raccoon, my eyes are just black circles, you know, from crying.
Anne:But it was kind of a neat thing because everybody came to the house, you know, that was from out of town. My mother-in-law was at a hotel. I had to call the hotel and tell them. So everybody came over, and the neighbors got us breakfast. It was a beautiful, sunny day.
Anne:We went out on the deck and had breakfast, waiting for the priest to come. So the priest came. He was like, I'm sorry, I was in my garden. And I'm like, I'm in my pajamas. No apologies for that.
Anne:My brother-in-law was the only one there with us, the two girls and myself, and Emma, my granddaughter. And he came out and it was his twin. He was just totally rattled. He's not a man of faith, so it was not like I could talk about that. We got through the day somehow.
Anne:I mean, we kept interchanging the words funeral home and nursing home, wedding and funeral. I had a therapist that some of the family had seen and he specialized in trauma. He was a great guy. He was a quadriplegic in a And he was a good, strong Christian man and prayed before every session. He did what's called EMDR therapy.
Christina:I've had it.
Anne:Have you? Yep. And I know Father Travis has.
Christina:Maybe explain what it is.
Anne:Okay. Some people, it's a little light that goes back and I like to close my eyes so I can visualize things. So I use vibrating sensors in my hands and they turn them up and down. And they have you go through the traumatic event and how you could better handle it. And for a lot of people, I don't know how it works for everybody else, but for me, all this scripture just flooded my brain from my years as a fundamentalist when I learned all this scripture.
Anne:And it just gave me such hope that God was going to take care of me because I was a stay at home mom. This was my wage earner. What was I going to do? I was 52. I mean, did work as a portrait artist for ten years.
Anne:I did shows, and I had just stopped doing them because I had this idea that I wanted to do. So the EMDR, I only had four sessions and he And released he said, A lot of people feel guilty because they feel so much better so quick, But I want you to know that your people would want you to feel better, wouldn't they? I was like, yeah, they really would. So I determined that I was going to, you know, live life to the fullest. And I read a book and she talked about, I mean, her husband was found on the floor like mine, and she said, just have to take these vacations and do these things for the both of you now.
Christina:So during those sixty days, I mean, of course, I'm sure for everyone, Job comes to mind. Did you ever say like, what the heck God? Or what's going on? I how did that impact your did, but you know, I
Anne:really had because of the way that my mom had lived and my sister had died so quickly, I really knew in my heart that if it's not your time to go, you're not going to go. And if it is your time to go, nothing's going to keep you here. So I just, I was never angry at God. You know, they say all those five stages of grief, but those, those really refer to the person who's dying, that they go through all those stages. Real grief is just kind of like spaghetti bowl of everywhere.
Anne:There's no straight lines. There's no, you know, it's all over the place. So yeah, I would wake up in a panic and I had a few neat little things. I was on my husband's computer one day, his laptop, and on my AOL account, which was my original email, I still use it, up pops an email from my husband. He's been gone two months.
Anne:No. It was nothing but a photograph of the two of us on our favorite beach the last time Well, you were that's kinda weird. Isn't that weird? Yeah. Because I took the picture, so you know, it would have been me sending to him, So I just kind of knew that he was with me, and there were a lot of little things that happened that I just knew that when I became Catholic, two things that made sense were, number one, the Eucharist, becoming the actual body and blood of Christ.
Anne:I never got the do this in remembrance of me. I don't get it. Well, made sense when I was explained about the Eucharist. And then the other thing was the communion of saints because I always believed that I'm a Christian because my ancestors prayed for me. So I had done 46 weekends a year as arts and crafts shows and mall shows and all these festivals and different things.
Anne:And I would take pictures or they would send me pictures and I would do the portraits at home, and then I would ship them to them. And the more you do, the better you get. So I probably did 1,000 a year. I'm not kidding. Mean, not all of them were color.
Anne:Some of them were just black and white sketches, but it's like a sport or an instrument. The more you do, the better you get.
Christina:And you did this while homeschooling and raising your children.
Anne:Yeah, and raising my family. So I was really tired of setting up and tearing down by myself and traveling. I would go like an hour or two one way and always came home. We did take a couple vacations, my husband and I, just the two of us, went to Corpus Christi or Florida and did a show. You know, we had a nice time.
Anne:But I wanted out of that, but I needed to do something to supplement the income. And I talked to a friend and she was like, We have this thing here called Flashes of Hope. She works at Riley. She said, you know, they take black and white pictures of our cancer kids and they put makeup on them and dress them up. And sometimes they crop off their little bald heads, but sometimes these are the last photos these families have of these kids.
Anne:And she said it's a nonprofit. And so I started looking into, I said, I really enjoy doing portraits of people who have passed away. I feel like people value it. So I started looking into it. I kind of wanted to be under an umbrella, like maybe the American Cancer Society or something.
Anne:And I talked to the guy there and he was like, it'd be more expensive for us to do that than for you to do it on your own. Just need to start up your own Bible one.
Andrea:Just go ahead and start your own.
Anne:So when my husband died, I was in pretty much a panic and shock. And my sister said, I'll help you set up this nonprofit. So I was like, that sounds like a great idea to me. And so we got together a board of directors, sent out some letters, and not everybody responded, but some of them did. Ended up with my spiritual director from when I converted as the vice president.
Anne:My husband's best friend from high school, they were still good friends. He was the president, and my sister's the secretary. Chris's cousin was the treasurer at the time. We had a funeral home owner as So part of the original we started it up October 30. And on my anniversary the following year, we got approval for the May, and an article came out in the paper about us.
Christina:And what are you called?
Anne:Face to Face Fine Art Commemorative Expressions, which is like F A C E. But we eliminated commemorative expressions. I mean, it can go either way legally. So we call it face to face.
Christina:You only do portraits for people who've experienced a traumatic loss. Sudden, unexpected, or traumatic loss.
Anne:Or a child, any time. And sometimes, if it's a young child, if the parent died of cancer, we want them to have that image for them, so we'll do that.
Andrea:And this is free to the families.
Anne:Correct. Yeah, we have to raise money for that.
Christina:Yeah, the first time I'd heard of you was when you did Deb Perry's picture, which is beautiful. You. So how long have you
Anne:been doing that now? Fourteen years in October. It's thirteen now. That's amazing.
Christina:But you were doing that before I was doing all these a Okay.
Anne:But I wasn't doing
Christina:So face to this came out of your experience of grief.
Anne:And you know, it started out with nobody was sick or dying when I had the idea, but I felt like God orchestrated a lot of things. Before my husband's death. We went on a vacation, the whole family went and it just was God's doing. So
Christina:you wrote a book about your experience. What inspired you to do that?
Anne:The board thought that that would be a good idea. I try to give it to the recipients of the portraits or anybody that I know that's, you know, going through a time with grief.
Andrea:What was it like writing the book?
Anne:It took me five years and it was pretty much journaling.
Christina:It's called Balm for the Heart.
Anne:My Journey Through Awesome Bereavement.
Christina:And so Andrea's read it. I have. What is kind of the purpose of this book if someone was to read it?
Anne:It just talks about how I dealt with the grief. One thing I'll say is when you're faced with tragedy of any kind, or a storm, or a valley, you can run to God, or you can run away from God. I chose to run to God, and I strongly advise people to do that because there's really no hope in running away from Him. Also started going to adoration, and that, I journal when I'm there and I write down everything I'm feeling. And then I sit in silence for a little while and listen to what God's speaking to me, I write that down.
Anne:And he has never failed to show up So when I show
Christina:what are things that you learned you should not say to someone when they're grieving?
Anne:That might help you. I know how you feel. How are you doing? We laugh about that at the grief groups because you just paste a smile on your face and you go, I'm doing fine. You because you don't want to know how I'm doing.
Anne:Yeah. I'm dying. I'm dying inside. That's the way you feel for for a while. I mean, used to say, Please, just take me with Him.
Anne:I just want to go. I would never do anything.
Christina:Yeah, yeah. Right.
Anne:But I didn't want to be here. And you have to search for God's purpose for your life. I mean, this is another thing. I was a wife and mother of five kids. My youngest child was going to be a senior in high school.
Anne:All the rest had flown the nest. We were getting ready to be empty nesters. And suddenly, I'm not a wife. I'm really not a mother raising children anymore. I don't have to drive anywhere.
Anne:All the things that you have to do.
Christina:Finding that identity.
Anne:What am I? What am I? You know, I was a homemaker and I didn't have everybody make a home for, really. Yeah, I say people are like, Oh, I love this portrait of my family member. But I always say, I probably got more out of it than you did.
Anne:Because I pray for the people when I'm doing them, and I pray that the Lord will bless it and make it a source of good memories and not bad. I mean, some, you know, one lady, her grandson, who was in the hospital with tubes running in and out of him, that's the last picture she has in her So, head of you know, we did him sitting in a bucket of water, you know, laughing.
Andrea:So not all of us are artists like you. So what can we do for someone who's grieving? How can we help?
Anne:I will tell you a couple things that people did for me that have just stuck in my mind. And I mean, people showed up at my door with trays of cold cuts. I probably had five of them in the refrigerator at one time. And they'd say, I didn't know what to do, but I just cooked. So, you know, they, and then one of my really good friends came and she's like crying to me.
Anne:Why are you not crying? Why am I? You know, but she's the one that on the day of the funeral, she did not go. She and her daughter came to my house and cleaned it from top to bottom. I mean, had people sleeping on the floor.
Anne:I had all kinds of family members in and out, and clothes everywhere, and dishes everywhere.
Christina:That's amazing.
Anne:Yeah, that's the best thing. Send them a DoorDash card, gift card. I mean, you don't make meals, which I don't anymore. I'm cooking for one here. So I do that.
Anne:Or just be there for the person. Don't say, Call me if you need anything. That just doesn't happen. They're not gonna reach out to somebody. I have a couple prayer partners that I still go to, not about grief, but about life situations, yet you don't want to ask for help when you're so lost in a fog.
Anne:You know, they call it grief brain that you can't really think to ask what you need. I remember learning I had to put two alarms on my phone for every event. And if I could do more, I probably should have, because I forgot major things. Yeah, I'm sure. You you walk into a room and you can't remember why you're there, and you think, I'm losing it.
Anne:And that was one of the things that the first grief group that I went to, it was called Wounded Healers, and they had a video, and they were really old and poor quality, but they had a video of symptoms of grief and different psychologists would talk about grief. You realize you're not crazy, you know, because everybody has these crazy thoughts when they lose somebody. And then they would break into groups of people who were grieving the loss of a spouse, of a child, a suicide or addiction loss, you know. And I made lifelong friends. I've traveled with some and we're still close, close friends fourteen years later.
Anne:One lady had two daughters that were brutally murdered. Then four months later, her husband's cancer came back and he died. So she lost three people and she didn't have any other family. She didn't have any siblings, just terrible. Yeah.
Anne:Was bad. But we connected because of that, you know? We had that in common. So nine years after I lost my husband and my sister and my mom, I lost my 37 year old daughter to acute fentanyl poisoning. She was in addiction, but I don't think she would have knowingly taken fentanyl.
Anne:And she had an 11 year old daughter. Her significant other, my granddaughter's father, had died in 2015 of an overdose. So she was severely depressed and using. And you know, I was there. The Lord got me there before she died.
Anne:And I was able to pray over her, put a rosary that was blessed by the Pope on her head and told her that we loved her and we were proud of her and that we wanted her back, but if she couldn't come back, that she should just know that we would take care of her daughter. And ten minutes later, her heart stopped. And I had to watch them do CPR for twenty minutes, and they kept saying, Do you want us to continue? Do you want us to continue? They had already told us that there was no way she could have any brain function.
Anne:I mean, had spent hours trying to get her heartbeat going regularly. So, granddaughter went to live with her aunt for a year, then I moved down here in 2020, and she moved in with me, we've been together ever since. She's a senior at Zionsville High School.
Christina:That's amazing.
Anne:Graduate in May, God willing.
Andrea:And throughout all of this, you know, what could have been debilitating four times over started a nonprofit and you've painted over 300 paintings so far.
Christina:Raised a granddaughter.
Anne:Yeah. I always say, you know, I have a group of ladies here at the church that we pray for each other and they have prayed us through some really tough times. And people will say, oh, you did such a great job. No, really. I was just the one who didn't leave.
Anne:That's all I'll take credit for is I didn't leave. You're still here. Yeah. I mean, she would have left at times if I had a letter, she would have gone to live with other family members.
Andrea:Well, I feel like we all could say that, you know?
Christina:So I want to know about this in the back of your book. There's a picture of your face. When my, When
Anne:my daughter died, I knew about Kintsugi. It's Plain, an old Japanese art where they take rosin and mix it with gold powder and cement this piece of ceramic pottery back together when it's been broken. And there are holes sometimes, but we say that's where the light can shine through. So I did a lot of them. I sold some, I gave a lot of them away.
Christina:Portraits or the actual pottery? Pottery. I
Anne:still do them occasionally. I have a few at my house. And I did a portrait of myself, and then I painted the gold cracks on it. So that's what you're looking at.
Christina:And so what does that mean to you, that painting with
Andrea:I've the cracks on been
Anne:broken, but God's put me back together. So, you know, like Humpty Dumpty.
Andrea:In a beautiful way, right?
Anne:Yeah, I think, I mean, I think my life has more meaning maybe now than it did.
Christina:Why is that?
Anne:Just because I can hopefully help other people who are going through, I mean, you have no idea until you lose a spouse or a child what it's like. There are broken people walking around, the Walking Dead, you know? And they don't know how to get help. I mean, a lot of the people, I've established a lot of relationships with those 300 portrait recipients, And some of them start out really angry at God, don't want to hear about God, don't want to hear what I have to say about God. And then I see him come around.
Anne:And I was in some chat groups, like on Facebook, for parents who have lost a child, and I had to get out because there were people who said, My life is never going to be the same. I don't care what you say. I just want to not be here. And you have to move forward. One of the big things at that first grief group was you are a survivor, not a victim.
Christina:Oh, I like that. And
Anne:I've tried real hard to be that. I mean, I can't say that I don't have days where I just want to stay in bed. And I say, Why all this loss? But it's not mine to question why, you know? It's God's will and I just have to learn how to deal with it.
Christina:Yeah, asked you before this, your view of suffering. You said, I don't have an answer. I mean, I don't think any of us do, but it is amazing to me how they always say God permits suffering because he can bring good out of it.
Anne:Kelly's book on the Eucharist, consecration to the Eucharist. And today's reading was about suffering and how Jesus suffered for us. Talked about in this one town in Bosnia, Herzegovina, they have a zero divorce rate. Wow. They've never had a divorce there that they know of, because they are so committed to Jesus and what he did for them, and suffering is part of it.
Christina:And I think that's what we miss because I know I went through a phase where I was angry with God, And then you read scripture and it's all over that we are gonna experience suffering and pick up your cross. And again, you have the choice to pick it up or run away. And I just think, I don't know if we just don't always get that message that that's part of it.
Anne:You know, I just wanted to be with my people eventually. So, you know, I wanted to be as close to God as I can be so I can go to heaven where they are. And, you know, I don't know. I know my husband had a really strong faith. I know my daughter believed one of the last texts I got from her, was like, I'm going to meditation, which was adoration, a few times a week, and it really is good to just sit in silence.
Anne:And she said, Well, and it looks good on you, mom, but you're religious and I'm not. I believe in God, but I'm not religious. So I just let it go. And then the priest did come, unfortunately, after she passed and absolved her of her sins
Christina:prayed So over
Anne:I believe that she's in heaven. I've had lots of confirmations of that. I have a thing I've written called The Brambles of Addiction, and it talks about how sheep get into brambles to get the berries, and they fight to get out. And that's the way addiction is. You know, they get into it for the high, and they can't get out.
Anne:And the more they wrestle against it, these sheep strangle themselves unless the shepherd comes and cuts them out. And I did a picture of a sheep with ramen.
Christina:That's really beautiful.
Anne:Yeah. So I just feel like, and a lot of people came to me and said, you know, Jesus left the '99 and went after year one lost sheep and put her on his shoulders and carried her home.
Christina:I mean, you know, with mental health, just, and we believe God's merciful. We can't just judge that we don't know what's going on
Andrea:in people's hearts. She had the biggest heart too.
Anne:But I do think one of the factors for addiction is that they don't feel connected. In last week's revival, the last night, talked about, and I had several people come up for prayer. You know, I was on that prayer team. I'm really lonely. And the church has got to reach out.
Anne:I mean, 26 times in the Bible it tells us to take care of the widows and the orphans.
Christina:I know. And I get very frustrated by, our society just don't, doesn't prioritize community anymore. And I don't understand why.
Anne:I don't know. I don't either.
Christina:And I know Catholics, that's something that we've just lost touch with is that sense of why community is important.
Anne:Yeah. So when I did the Grieving with Great Hope with Mike and Sarah Eindherst, they really created a sense of community because we all shared a lot. Mike would come in with questions about, you know, how do you feel about this now that your person's gone? And we all have a bond from being in that And many of us went back for subsequent sessions. So I think that's important.
Andrea:Yeah. So would you encourage We do have Grieving with Great Hope coming up, and again, like I said, you're going be leading it for us in April. Would you encourage someone who's done it before to come back?
Anne:Absolutely. I've already talked to a couple of people that were in it when I was in it that are coming back. And it doesn't have to be a fresh loss. It can be twenty years ago. We do portraits for people.
Anne:I didn't want of a guy who died fifty years before, but he had a special needs daughter who was at the end of her life. And her sister felt like if she could see a picture of her dad, it would be comforting to know that she was going to go be with him.
Andrea:So you're still journeying through too. You're leading, but you're still right. Know,
Anne:oh, I've arrived. I no longer feel sad about, you know, comes in waves. I mean, this, this year, my husband would have retired in 2025 and you know, we would have been off on a new life and that's not happening.
Christina:Is it ever hard seeing people your age who are empty nesters who can go travel the world together that you lost
Anne:It's hard to see people who are in worse health than my husband ever was. And they're still married and they're still doing it. But I've just learned to just be thankful that they have each other. I used to have a hard time on Facebook congratulating them.
Christina:I don't even like being
Anne:on Facebook.
Andrea:So how long does it take you to do a portrait?
Anne:All right, I'll just tell you. On two things your mother told you never to be, fast and I'm cheap.
Christina:What's that mean, you use cheap paint?
Anne:Yeah, I don't charge as much as a lot of people do.
Andrea:It just comes naturally to
Anne:you. I can do one in an afternoon or two afternoons. It just depends on how I feel. I've got one sitting in my living room right now that's half done and I need to just get back to it. It is therapy for me to do artwork and I'm talking to myself right now.
Anne:I need to just every day do something.
Christina:Yeah, it's like an outlet. Yeah. That's cool. I always wish I could, I got a C in drawing in high school, so I don't think I have an artistic gene. I argued with the teacher.
Christina:I said, How can you grade my God given talent? I mean, that seems really unfair, but Of course you argued with the teacher about I've always envy people who have artistic talent, or even musical talent. It'd just be such a nice outlet.
Anne:Know, my husband never had to take an art class. He could draw out of his head anything. That's amazing. He did a painting of the sister ship of the Titanic, the Mauritania. It has every wire and bolt
Christina:you know. That's amazing.
Anne:Out of his head. Cool. He was a military historian, so he was into all that stuff.
Christina:That's really cool.
Anne:But it was not his passion. History was his passion, military history.
Christina:Isn't that amazing?
Anne:I had to work at it. Didn't start out being able to do portraits that weren't very good. I mean, do remember taking a class in junior high at IUSB, and we had live models and I did a portrait and I was like, Wow, that's kind of nice. So that's when I started. And I've been doing them for over fifty years.
Anne:That's cool. Interesting. That's amazing. The more you do, the better you get.
Andrea:Right?
Christina:Well, maybe when I retire. Yeah. I'll try again.
Anne:Good luck with that.
Andrea:Start with John. You can start.
Christina:I just said I was a learned guitar about eight years ago and John's always like, how are those guitar lessons going? It's still sitting in the corner.
Andrea:Oh, interesting.
Christina:When I have time, I'll learn a plan. It'll probably never get used.
Anne:My father-in-law was a great artist and he would say, when I retire, I'm going to paint more. And he died like a year and
Christina:a half. Yeah. Never know.
Anne:No. Yeah. Well, we
Andrea:are really grateful that you came to talk to us today. Your story is just so fortunately and unfortunately so interesting. I mean, obviously a lot of it's God, but a lot of it is you stopping to listen and talk to him and journey through all of it with him and trust in him, to know that there's a purpose for you on the other side. He is faithful.
Anne:He never leaves us or forsakes us. He's always there. He loves us more than we can even comprehend. And that's what my journals are full of, you know, just all these messages of hope.
Christina:What advice would you give someone who feels like, I don't have that kind of relationship with God? Don't start with an hour, I
Andrea:can tell you that. You mean in adoration?
Anne:Yeah. Or even journaling or Just little bites. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. And so I remember listening to Matthew Kelly's testimony.
Anne:I was in my car and it was on relevant radio in Northwest Indiana. And I was driving to a destination and I got there and I had to shut it off before it was over. Well later that evening I got in the car and it was on at the exact
Christina:same No, God needs you
Anne:to And it was about him being a high schooler and he played basketball with a priest and the priest said, Just spend ten minutes a day in the church in silence. And so we started with that and he's got this full blown ministry worldwide. Wow.
Andrea:And in reading your book too, I think, you do say a few times about how you live by faith and not by fear and you make your decisions that way. Or at least you try to, you try to, and that really has stuck with me. Just as a reminder to, if I'm scared and God tells us what, how many times in the Bible, do not be afraid. I need lots of reminders.
Anne:One thing that I really think is important is to spend a lot of time being thankful.
Christina:Doctor. Ittle said, I thought that was very poignant.
Anne:And I do the same thing. I'm like for hot and cold running water, for heat and air conditioning, for all these things. But when you focus on what and who you have right now, you're not looking over your shoulder at who and what you used to.
Christina:Yeah, I like to, because the question was, how do you find joy in this suffering? And he said gratitude. And that really stuck with me.
Anne:Yeah. But for me, it's really important because I could sit and say, I had this big house
Christina:on a golf
Anne:course and I'm living in a two bedroom apartment. I had five kids that were all home and they're all grown
Christina:and have I their own think the point you made, which is something to remember, like we have a choice.
Anne:Then there's memories too. Some people never had a child to lose. Some people never had their one true love. I had thirty six years, thirty seven years with my daughter, years with my husband.
Christina:One of my favorite quotes, and I don't know what Psalm it is, but it talks about like your life, you know, kind of like it talks about how life is like, it's like the span of a breath. Some have a long one basically, and some have a short one. I don't remember what the words are, what Psalm it is, but it always strikes me because yeah, we don't, we're not guaranteed a long life. No. And it doesn't.
Christina:There are people
Anne:that say you're guaranteed seventy or eighty years. Well, says that
Christina:in the Bible, some lives, the strong live 70, some live 80, but obviously not everyone in But it's just, but yeah, I think especially in our modern society, in the old days people, you know, all of our grandparents probably had 12 kids and saw half of them die as children. So death and suffering was just something that they were familiar with where in our day we're just not and suffering something we didn't want to put in a closet and not talk about. And it's just, it's such a part of our lives and that perhaps is why people are so lonely is like, they think what they're experiencing is not normal when it is. And we need to not make it such a bad thing to talk about.
Anne:Yeah. And community needs to
Andrea:step up for sure.
Anne:Yes. You know, when was the last time we invited a single person over for dinner?
Christina:Yeah. Or a widow or someone. Yeah. Who's alone.
Anne:He sets the solitary in families.
Christina:Yeah, sure. Well, thank you, Anne, for coming on. Yes. Thank you for having lost me. A lot of people with your story.
Andrea:Yeah. We're so grateful that you're going to help us out. Especially, I'm especially grateful for that.
Anne:Going to be. You don't have
Andrea:to do it. Cause I don't have to do it. Well, and you said this in your book, if you lead a group like this, you become a professional griever. You're welcome. I've gotten you your professional title.
Anne:I was an amateur griever and then I was a media mediocre griever and now I'm professional griever.
Andrea:Yeah. You're, mean, professional survivor.
Christina:This is what you're supposed to do. I mean, you went through this
Anne:God. Let's hope that something good can come
Christina:from Exactly. I mean, you're gonna be able to walk and accompany other people through that and you can, you know what not to say.
Anne:Well, I hope I do, but yeah. I probably stick my foot in my mouth. I'm sure we
Christina:all do too. Yeah. Anyway, but thank you.
Anne:Thank you.