 Radiant Church presents Radiant Stories, a collection of stories that showcase God's faithfulness to take our hopeless situations and craft them into beautiful testimonies of his power, provision, and love. Try not to laugh out loud. All right, welcome back to Radiant Stories. I am Anna Rittering and we are here today with my good friend Anna Asbury. One of her many gifts is art and painting and I have brought her in here today to talk about her ministry in art and within art and the journey through it. So where I'd like to start, Anna, I think, is because you haven't been doing art your whole life and so I wanna hear how it started. I wanna hear sort of the origin story and the Lord moments and who isn't involved and how did it happen. Okay, well, I always loved art. From the time I was a little girl, I remember just being drawn. I mean, I can distinctly remember the artwork that my mom had framed in our house and I would get lost in it. I remember pretending, you know, like Mary Poppins how she jumps in the pictures. I would do that in the, in the just all the different artwork my mom had. So when I was in high school, I did a class in art and I was okay, but there was nothing special at all that came out of that. I mean, I was pretty mediocre. You could put me in, you know, with everybody else. They mean, there was the ones that were really sucking and then there was the everybody's but I was like in the middle and I, but I enjoyed it. But there was nothing from there that went like, you know, the art teacher didn't single me out and go, oh, you might have something in this. Fast forward a little bit. You know, I become a wife and a mother and we are at the time living in Colorado Springs and motherhood for me was this beautiful journey of learning that I'm seen in hiddenness and just encountering God in my home in the 98% of my life with no one seeing it except my kids. And in those times where it was just me and God and, you know, dirty dishes or a dirty diaper or, you know, waking up in the middle of the night, I began to cultivate and practice being in the presence of God and really growing a garden inside of my heart. So a friend of mine, she was like, let's go to one of those art classes where, you know, they teach you how to paint something. I was like, I'm so game. You know, we had little kids. It was fun to get a night out. Our husbands were out of town. We picked this really abstract kind of one and my friend, she like rocked it. It looked amazing and I was so annoyed because she didn't even like to say that she did creative things and then she rocked it. And then mine looked like bad. Like I didn't even, I wanted to trash it right there. But there's, I kept telling everyone like, I know I can do better than this. And, you know, sarcastically, they're all like, yeah, yeah, Anna, can you just admit that you can't be great at everything? Like just let it go. And I was like, no, I really feel like I can do better than this. They were just so annoyed at me. Like just let it go. You can't be perfect at everything. So I went home, trashed the one I did and I sat down and I pulled out Gabriel's, you know, six-pack crayola watercolor thing. And I had this calligraphy paper randomly. So I pulled that out and I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna try this again. I started feeling the Holy Spirit burning inside of me. The same way I have felt him in years past when I am in a moment where I'm prophetically singing something, it's just something that happens that I feel him just the fire of God on me. And I was sitting there and I'm painting. And I was like, okay, I'm paying attention. You were obviously interested in what's going on here. I'm really slowing down and just enjoying his presence while I was painting this. I finished, I looked at it and I was like, oh my gosh. I just painted that. And I take a picture, I send it to Corey. I was like, hey, I just painted this. Corey was like, no, you didn't, there's no way. And I had painted this little buck, this little deer. And just like the face and the horns. And it's nothing amazing, but it was this moment where I created something. And I created it from a place of depth and growth that I, if I would have done that 10 years prior, there wouldn't have been much behind what I had done. But because I had just spent the last 10 years cultivating a garden in my heart, and all of a sudden I sit down and I'm open to try and create something new, but it's from a different place. So I'm 29 years old at the time. And I realized, oh my gosh, I have a gift. I didn't ever know it was there. And it was kind of the secret moment of, God's sake, I just wanted to surprise you. You thought at 29, you found all your things. At 29 years old, you're almost 30, you're thinking, I've just got to build on what I have at this point. And God was like, yeah, no. Actually, I want to throw this new thing into your life. And it was just this beautiful year of me discovering a whole new world of who I was. And a whole new world of creating from wholeness and having something to bring before the Lord and even to offer to other people out of a place of hiddenness where no one's really watching me in that place and it's just a conversation between me and the Father. And I like to do commission work sometimes where I'll prophetically paint for someone. I love doing it for children. And then there's moments where I'm just at home with my three kids and there's not a lot of extra room to create. So it comes in waves, you know? I love it. I feel like even anywhere in your mid-20s to discover a whole new gifting or a whole new part of yourself, I bet it was just thrilling and exciting. It was very thrilling. It was very thrilling too because at the time, Corey, my husband, we're both worship pastors here at the church and that's been a huge part of our lives. But Corey at the time was traveling a lot and I had Gabriel and Lily and it was, I was at home a lot and that was really my life. And it was just this gift. He said, let me give you one more thing to create with me. It was a treasure to my heart. I just love that he saw me. It was like this moment. He's like, I see you and I just wanna surprise you. And I know who you are deep inside. I know you better than you know yourself. And this is inside of you and I'm gonna pull it out. So talk about, it's kind of turned into this beautiful ministry that you have where you will paint prophetically. And so I want you to go into that. I want you to go into the name why you started calling your Instagram and kind of your business name, She Paints Virtue. Well, I'll start with the She Paints Virtue. Lucky, I had been painting just for me for a little while but I started getting this urge to paint for children. And so someone would get pregnant and I would start feeling like this is who this baby is. And so I began painting little pictures for these babies that were coming into the world. I just, there's nothing that makes me more excited than the thought of a little child waking up in their eyes looking at something on their wall that is prophesying over who they are. The first one I did was of a bird, a songbird. And it was bright and it was colorful. And this little girl is the brightest and the most colorful girl you could ever think of. And she, every time she sees me she talks about the painting of who she is that she's a songbird. Anyway, so that started developing and it was thrilling to my heart to be able to think that throughout these children's lives they're going to be seeing this and this is planting foundational things in their heart of who God says they are. And it goes beyond even me because God continued to speak to them through a piece of art beyond what my words or my ability can do. One night I was laying in bed and I just was talking to the father going, okay, if I'm gonna do a business, what's the name? And he dropped into my spirit virtue and I started studying, like just looking at the virtues and things. And I realized, okay, what I'm painting is speaking virtuous things to these people. And so I went along and I was like, well, that's what I'm doing, she paints virtues. So I started that. And there's a couple of the things I did with the virtue stuff, but I just did a show and I did it in Kalamazoo. It was kind of a dream that came about. I never imagined that I would be doing a show with my artwork. I mean, that never even passed my mind ever. That one, I would be asked to do that. Two, that I would be good enough. So there's this beautiful store downtown Kalamazoo. If you haven't been, go check them out. Little, it's called curate and company in this lovely young lady runs the store and she's delightful. But she heard about me and she invited me to come and that was a big learning curve. Oh my goodness. Cause I had to learn how to do prints the right way. And it was just, it was like going to the next level and all of my insecurities went out. It was like, but it was so good for me. So I did and I was so supported by the church. It was so wonderful. A lot of people from Radiant came out and our students from the school and I got to meet other artists. And I set the whole place up and I was down there all night, met so many people from Kalamazoo's had some really cool moments. And yeah, so where I am right now is I'll do them for fun. And it's a fun thing. I could really hard go into business for like a strong like, let's really make this big but it's not the right timing right now. Right now is the timing to create with my kids. I'm homeschooling and there's lots of moments like yesterday that we had together where I'm just sitting with them and we are, we're painting together and we're asking God, what is he speaking? What's he doing? And together we're sitting there and it's not beautiful. I mean, it is, but it's chaos. I mean, we had glue on eyelashes and glitter everywhere. But I'm creating at home and I'm teaching them how to listen and that's where I'm making the most impact right now. And I've got to slow down and take time to do that. Yeah. I remember coming to your show and leaving feeling very proud. I walked away and I felt I was proud to see you and the things that you had cultivated in your hiddenness as you say, in the secret place, in your secret creative place with the Lord, come to fruition, not fully. That wasn't the pinnacle whatsoever. I think that the Lord is gonna move this further along, further up, further in. Who knows what the Lord could do through these pieces of art? And they were so accessible. I just, everything about it made me so happy. It made my heart so full to see you there, especially sitting with Lily and kind of showing her, I mean, this is what the Lord does and this is how your mom says yes to the Lord. You mentioned it's not the right time yet, but what do you see in the future? What's on your heart for the future? For sheep, paints, virtue? For even just your art in general? Well, because you asked. I have this hidden dream and I would love to one day have a children's store and in it, I would like to call it little virtues and I would like to have artwork in there and I would like to have clothing and just look blankies and different things that a community has created that goes out all over the world and whether they're Christians or whether they're not, they're speaking life and hope and love in Jesus. Not outrightly, like I don't have to have Jesus posted all over it, but there's these things, these articles, these paintings, these blankies that children will be able to look at and go, oh, this is who I am, I'm loved, I'm chosen, I'm a warrior, I'm beautiful, I have worth. Wow, that's great. What would you say to a creative that is feeling a little stuck, is feeling like this is all I can offer the Lord? I would say take a moment, go find what inspires you, whether it's a song or going through an art gallery or food, a time with family or whatever it is that brings that moment of inspiration or maybe get outside of your head, outside of the box of what you create in and go back to when you first began to create and what was it that inspired you in that moment? And then from that place, I began to dream again. I think we get stuck and because of different disappointments and a way you thought something was gonna end up and it didn't end up that way or just the mundane-ness of life that sometimes happens, we get a little hopeless or we stop dreaming. And so I would just say go to a place of inspiration and breathe there, take a moment there, be thankful for where you're at, but look and just ask the Holy Spirit to come into that place remembering where you first begin and then create from inspiration, create from connection with God again and try something a little new. Thank you for coming in. I have personally been very blessed by your artwork and it has been a pleasure to see you grow even here in Kalamazoo. I feel like this was, it started in one place and then you guys moved in a different season, we're at a different step in the process and so it's really encouraging to see you not even just pursuing this gift that the Lord has given you but being so in tune with the Holy Spirit that you know that this is a season of waiting, this is a season of being creative with your kids and just pursuing it when it's fun and when your friends ask or something comes up or something like that, you're not hardcore pursuing it but that's a dream in your heart for the future and so I think that will be inspiring to a lot of people because your charge to be dreamers is something that I think is really important to the creative community now because it's such a hustle and bustle and it can so often be just kind of a job and it's so easy to be a workaholic with the thing that you once loved and the thing that once inspired you so. Yeah, God is raising it up right now, creatives. It's on his heart. We all create in some way. I don't want, if someone's listening to this, I don't want them to think, oh gosh, this is about art so it's not about me but actually it is. We have a father. I mean, look at Genesis. He was a creator and he created everything and guess what, he made us in his image and therefore we bear the same desire to create something and like I said, you may be a teacher, you may work construction but you're creating. You don't necessarily have to be in the fine arts to be a creator. I look at radiant, I look at Kalamazoo I mean Kalamazoo is full of creatives right now. Like whether it's painting or whatever it is, I just, I see God raising creatives up and going, let's show the world who I am and let's do it everywhere. It's in us, it's so in us to create beautiful things and anyway, so if someone is listening to this and there's something on your heart, maybe it is flipping houses or attempting in your journal to do like a little painting or whatever, it's beautiful and don't stop trying because it's in us to connect with God and take what is ashes and turn it into something beautiful and in the mundane of life, take those moments to just stop and breathe and get inspired and hear His voice and create something new again. This has been Radiant Stories. Click subscribe to get a brand new story delivered to you every Monday.