#iam_beloved
Presence of God: Meet Anne Evans
One year to the day her son, Stewart, was in a fatal accident, Anne Evans arrived at Belóved Gallery to take a tour of Akiane: The Early Years. It also happened to be Good Friday.
As soon as she walked in, her heaviness lifted. “I could feel the presence of God right away and instantly started crying. When I got to the room with the Prince of Peace, I wanted to look at that face forever. I got lost in those eyes. I couldn’t even speak words out of my mouth, but I was speaking them from my heart. It was like meeting Him face to face.”
And then, something happened.
“I heard the words, ‘Anne, I believe in you,’” she shared with Team Belóved after her tour. “When I was feeling weary and wanted to be with my son in Heaven, He said to me ‘I believe in you!’ It was exactly what I needed to hear – not to cut my race short but to finish it.”
Anne first saw Akiane speak at Bethel Church in Redding, California when Akiane was 14 years old and was deeply moved by her artwork, especially Prince of Peace.
“Akiane experienced the same thing with her portrait of Jesus. A loss and then a resurrection.” Some don’t know that the painting was lost for almost two decades before being miraculously recovered. “It’s helpful to hear another person’s story about restoration. It confirms the hope that is in our hearts and mirrors what God is doing in my life and my daughters’ lives. He is restoring the grief.”
Stewart suffered an anoxic brain injury. He lost consciousness immediately and never regained it before passing on. While the doctors couldn’t confirm it, they speculated Stewart also had a C2 fracture and was paralyzed from the neck down.
Anne recalled the last moments of Stewart’s time on earth. The family circled around his hospital bed, holding hands and praying. “As he took his last breath, Stewart slowly raised his arms, turned them toward heaven, and lifted his back off the back of the bed. Then, he slowly lowered them and laid back down. He was gone. It was God’s kiss to us all to see through his body what was going on spiritually.”
An anoxic brain injury means Stewart didn’t even have 1% of life on his brain. The doctors confirmed it was medically impossible for him to do what he did at the end.
Months after her first visit, Anne returned to the Belóved Gallery and again was in awe of the Prince of Peace painting. “When I look into the left eye, I feel all the compassion and the mercy that God feels for people. How much He loves mankind and that He’s so sorry for their pain. And then, in the right eye, there is so much hope and promise. When you have a great loss, you want hope restored. People are coming to Belóved Gallery for a reason that maybe their soul doesn’t know but their spirit is drawing them here.”
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Your generosity powers Belóved Gallery’s mission to inspire faith through art. Every dollar helps us bring the Prince of Peace painting to over one million in-person viewers, share moving Stories of Faith, and create sacred spaces for reflection. Your support directly advances our core pillars: Experience the Story. Inspire Faith. Share Belovedness.
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Want to join the mission? We are currently looking for volunteers to help lead tours of Akiane: The Early Years. Volunteers have a special front row seat to the many exciting things happening at Belóved Gallery and represent Belóved’s mission to the public.
