Hi Friends,

I want to pause this week to give you a personal update.

For the month of April, Shawn and decided to take a break from IHOP. I stopped singing and worship leading, and we visited a different church every week. We are calling it a “church tour”.

To be honest, I thought I was carving out this time to grieve. To step out of the whirlwind of keeping the prayer room going and the plates of life spinning and let myself feel the sorrow of it all. What I never in a million years expected was what I actually felt. I described it to friends, saying it felt like my heart was a book with a well-worn binding that lies flat on the table… wide open.

My heart was light, and wide open to God. And He was right here. I felt present with God and present with my family.

I think I got a taste of “my yoke is easy and my burden is light”. I didn’t realize I was living with a constant hum of spiritual anxiety in the background until those first couple days without it. And I was sleeping at night. (It’s been a struggle for a few years.)

Through this whole IHOPKC crisis, we have felt no more sure of the future than our next step. He wasn’t lighting up our path, He was lighting up just one step ahead. It’s not my preference—I’d rather flip to see how this ends and then proceed with confidence. But that’s not how He met us, so one step at a time it was.

In our month of rest, healing, and connecting with one another, Shawn and I have gotten a lot of clarity both individually and together as a couple. Unity with one another has felt like our greatest gift. And out of that unity…

We have decided to step away from IHOPKC.

I want to be transparent with you. Transparency is what I’ve hoped for from others, and I hope being candid with you will communicate the respect and gratitude I have for each of you. So to be straightforward, the choices IHOPKC has made over the last six months have made it clear to us it’s not where we feel comfortable having our family.

If I could open my heart to be completely transparent with you—translucent even—you would also see the 1.5 million miles of gratitude that thread through my heart for so much of my last 20 years at IHOPKC. I leave with my pockets full of gold—the knowledge of God that I’ve picked up while singing and studying the Word. I’m thankful for the hundreds of singers and musicians with whom I’ve gotten to stand alongside and dig wells through Bible passages. Thankful for friendships that feel like family (that, by the way, I pray never end).

The Lord is reminding me about my beginnings. When I was 17, I went to the “Harp and Bowl” prayer meeting at my local church in Colorado every week to play the flute. When I moved away to college, I often traveled the hour and a half from Boulder to sing with a few others until midnight in an empty room. We were finding God in the pages of the Bible. It made the commute feel like nothing.

I won’t stop singing. It’s how I find Him. It’s how my heart lives in His Word. What will it look like next? I don’t know.

The future is unknown. Does it feel scary? A little. But I plan to just keep doing what I’ve done for these chaotic months: take the step He’s lighting up before me.

And because I apparently can’t even write a life update without throwing lyrics at you, here are a few lines I’ve been singing to the Lord this week:

Like a book with a well-worn binding
I open my heart to You
It lies flat on the kitchen table
You lean in like You always do
We have so much history
I’ll be anxious for nothing

Thank you for walking this road with me, even by letting me pop up in your inbox with what He’s showing me week after week. I’m truly grateful.

–Anna

P.S. I want to share more about what I’ve seen on that church tour. Next week.