Letters from you
Letters From You
Finding Our Way Home
A letter from Akiane · September 20, 2026
Read the story behind the painting
I asked what led you home. You answered.
My paintings may begin in my studio, but their story doesn't end there. They enter your lives, and somehow, your lives find their way back into mine.
The pieces of your lives you have trusted me with have become part of my own journey — and, inevitably, part of the artist I continue to become.
The letters you share with me have moved me, challenged me, inspired me, and become part of what I carry into everything I create.
When I asked, "When has something you could not yet see clearly still led you home?" I never expected so many of you to write back.
I read stories of love, loss, faith, family, unexpected signs, and moments when the way forward wasn't yet visible. There were far too many heartfelt letters to keep only to myself.
These are your stories.
— Akiane
A nurse on the interstate
I received news my sister was at the hospital undergoing an angioplasty. She was getting a stent put in her coronary artery after experiencing chest pain. I jumped in my car, knowing I had to get to the hospital right away. I am a nurse, and back then I worked in Cardiology. I live in Iowa but worked in Illinois, 50 minutes away, at the hospital where my sister was being treated.
My plan was to get to the hospital as fast as I could, but little did I know God had other plans for me. When I pulled onto the interstate, there was a large van parked off the road with several children and adults standing outside in their bonnets and long dresses, trying to wave down anyone who would stop to help. I knew that it wasn’t wise, being a petite female traveling alone, to stop, but I had stopped multiple times before to help at accidents or stranded pedestrians. Something told me I needed to stop.
When I pulled over, a man got into the front passenger seat, and a young woman got in the back seat. They were grateful I had stopped. They said they were Mennonites who had come to the United States to get treatment for one of their family members, and while heading back home to Canada, they had run out of gas. As I drove them to the next exit, where they got gasoline, then drove them back to their van, I was blessed to be able to hear their story. When we arrived back at the van, the children and other adults ran up to thank me and said that I was their Angel sent to them to help them get home safely.
Sometimes God sends us messengers to get us home, and sometimes God uses us as the messenger to get others safely home. We just have to slow down and take the time to hear Him.
And, in case you were wondering, yes, I did make it to the hospital, where God had blessed my sister. She did great during her angioplasty and went home the next day.
Amy Kappeler
Two dreams, one park
When I first asked my fiancé to be my girlfriend I was so unsure because my last serious relationship was 5 years ago, and it left me with a broken off engagement, and no closure. So I felt very undeserving of a new relationship.
All I knew to do was pray to God for some kind of sign, but it didn’t come until a couple days after I asked her out.
It goes like this: I asked her out one night, then backed out of it the next morning, saying I needed time to pray cuz I didn’t get the peace or certainty I was expecting from the Lord. And she graciously said she would be happy to date and wait for my follow up. (Which she later admitted she had never done before with anyone, she would normally close the door if it was anyone else she said, but she felt a strange peace that next morning.)
Now a couple days in, I had a dream where I picked up her crying daughter and she began to sing and I walked her over to her mom and we were at some sort of park. It was a vibrant and surreal dream to say the least. Then more wrestling ensued and two weeks later I finally asked for a do-over.
I told her why and it was my vibrant dream I kept coming back to, and guess what she said: the night I asked her out, she had a dream that we were at a park with her daughter, but there were two other kids playing and they looked up at her and called her mom. She was also pregnant in the dream!
She’s had many more visions since, of our family and wedding and the delivery room and most recently an ultrasound!
We’ve been together since November 2025, and are getting married next month!
The Lord has spoken so many kind words to her about our relationship and it has only increased my faith in the goodness and kindness of our God.
But to tie it all up, whenever we’re together, it just feels like home. I was just telling her this week, I can’t explain it any other way, but it just feels like home when we are near each other.
All I had was a dream to hold onto and faith that the Lord was nudging me along cuz I knew she was amazing and would make an amazing life partner, but I doubted whether God was giving me green lights. Yet little did I know the Lord was giving her dreams to green light His approval from the very first night I asked her out!
Victor Alumbaugh
Tiny heartbeat
Tiny heartbeat. Felt before it was even heard. Wandering through a season of questioning and chaos, when the Lord led me to consider another child. Why now? Why at this stage of life, when an already full house filled with loud voices was the symphony of my days. Yet there it was. I did not see it — know why or when, but I knew He meant him for me.
Then after walking in faith, and conceiving my son, I heard it. Tiny heartbeat. The reminder that the creator in all His goodness knows what is truly meant for me. Even though I was getting older, even though I had so much to care for already, even though my heart and house was full — there was room for one more. One very special one more.
And the gentle thump-bump, and the sweet baby’s breath against my chest were well worth the cost of saying yes to more "chaos". Because with him in my arms, this is home.
Joy McCain
“You would if you believed”
I am by no means a poet, but more than often words come to me. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night and feel an urgency to write down a phrase or sentence.
Just recently my 41 year old nephew lost a fight with brain cancer, but was ushered into the arms of Jesus. I was feeling so much grief for our precious boy. Each time I would talk to him or FaceTime him he was the one who encouraged me. On his chest he had a tattoo of a lion and the words Lion of Judah. My faith only grew.
So the words of this poem were heaven sent and led me back to the truth of who Jesus is, why he came, the sacrifice he made and the assurance he had prepared a place for us in his kingdom. One day we will be reunited again.
God bless you sweet girl. Keep listening to the Holy Spirit. He speaks to our hearts and minds.
Robby had a print of the picture you painted of Jesus hanging on the wall of his bedroom. A few hours before he passed he said to my brother, "Daddy, do you see that picture of Jesus glowing?" My brother said, "No son. I don’t see it glowing," and Robby said to him, "You would if you believed."
Vanessa
He did not take him from me
In life we all live through things that for a long time we don’t understand the why or the what. I am about to celebrate my 65th birthday and this life has been one thing after another, but I know that we ALL have a story.
For me it began at a very young age. I was the child of divorce and my parents hated each other, and I was stuck in the middle. On top of that I had stepparents who made sure I knew I was a stepchild. Abuse. I pushed through and survived, only by the grace of God — my safe place, my HOME.
I met my husband when I was 16, and we got married when I was 16, but not because I was pregnant. It felt like God sent him to me to save me. I truly, madly, deeply love my husband. We have 2 kids and 5 grandkids, and a great grandbaby on the way. BLESSED. God how I cherished the life me and my husband lived.
On July 14, 2020 he literally dropped dead while at work. He had recently had surgery so we figured it was a blood clot. I have cried for him every day for the past 6 years. We would have celebrated our 48th anniversary this year. I never imagined a life without him. I don’t know how to do this life without him. But I get through each and every day with lots of prayers and faith.
I have had so many people ask me if I’ve ever been angry at God for taking my husband. I’ve always found that question offensive. As much as I still LOVE my husband, as much as I still miss him, I KNOW that it was his time. I KNOW that he’s in a better place and I KNOW he’s waiting for me. God did not take him from me. He took him HOME.
I have been through a lot of grief, a lot of disappointment, a lot of hurt. BUT I’ve been able to get through all of it with God’s blessings. I know that at the end of the day, at the end of my life, all that will matter will be God’s love — my safe place, my HOME.
Even from a very young age I knew that I just needed to pray, to seek God, because HE WILL ALWAYS HELP ME FIND MY WAY HOME. It’s a blessing to know that even though we have never seen God, we KNOW that He’s ALWAYS with us. I KNOW that whatever happens, God WILL see my safety HOME.
Maria (Christy) Arias
I stand at a crossroads
When I was 40 years old, suppressed memories of childhood abuse rapidly surfaced and I was thrown into Acute Adult Delayed Onset Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Within a matter of a couple weeks, my partner of fifteen years realized he could not handle being around the pain I was going through. I was laid off from the job I loved. I was in such a state of trauma, I could barely make it to the mailbox.
Living from therapy session to therapy session, weeks turned into months, months to years. I was making progress, but the hardship of the process, and the challenges of my upended life, were overwhelming.
One morning, I was at a crossroads. I could not continue as I had been living. But I could not imagine ending my life. It was not an option. With nowhere to turn in that moment but to God, I sat in silence in my tiny bedroom with my open journal and a pen in my lap, and an all-consuming question in my heart — how was I to live? With the full strength of my need, I waited for an answer. A vision surfaced from the depths of my inner world. Picking up my pen, I quickly translated it into a poem that for me contained the power and certainty carried in the message of the vision. Here is that poem:
I stand at a crossroads
I turn toward faith—
I feel an opening, an expansion
I see light, I feel the future
I turn away from faith—
there is darkness, a wall, entropy
I turn toward faith
I am drawn into a future filled with hope
Somewhere in this experience there was substance, something real and worthy of my attention, worthy of my faith. But what is faith? The Bible says faith is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” I’ve never seen faith. But today, thirty years after my vision, I have learned that when I turn to my sense of it with purpose, I am headed in the right direction. Drawn deeper and deeper into that future filled with hope, I am home, one step at a time, one day at a time.
Anonymous
