I read Psalm 23 every morning, and I pray on it. It helps me feel grounded for the day ahead. No matter what the day brings, I know I have peace in Jesus and He comforts me. I think of Him as a peaceful, loving shepherd leading me beside still waters. No matter the circumstances, He is with me, and therefore I can rest in Him.
These words are jotted down in a little brown journal titled “Ania’s Notebook.” The cover is decorated in pink pen by a child’s hands, the creative work of her daughter. She had written out her testimony a few months back to share with a class at church. Yet, even now, tears fall on the pages.
It wasn’t always like that.
Ania Shepler was born in 1984, in Swidnica, Poland. She was raised in the Catholic faith and attended Sunday Mass faithfully with her parents and younger brother. However, the older Ania became, the less of a personal interest she took in religion.
“I am thankful to my parents for raising me in faith, instilling in me religious values, church traditions and rituals,” she said. “I grew up knowing God and watched my parents being faithful servants. I am grateful to both for giving me a spiritual foundation that only grew once I became older.”
“When I was in high school, I started drifting away from church, because some of my friends would question it – they would ask me things about God or the Bible and I would never have the answers. So, I started questioning myself – what is it that I really believe? And in that era, when I was in college, that’s kind of where I was. I’d only go to church when I’d come home to visit my parents – I wasn’t involved, I had no interest.”
In college, Ania traveled with her friends over the summers to countries like England and Sweden. They slept in hostels and got summer jobs to make some money, travel, and learn English. “That’s just what people in Europe do,” she said.
Ania landed in the United States for the first time while earning her master’s degree in international relations. “I came here through my university for an internship,” she said. “I worked at Bleacher Bums, a sports merchandise store.” For the next 5 months she worked, gaining experience, refining her English, and meeting new people.
Four days before she left for home, she met the man who would one day become her husband.
“I met Mike at a birthday party a week before I went back to Poland,” Ania said. “We literally fell in love with each other, like love at first sight. I can’t even explain it. I just remember that I was wearing Christmas pajamas with a puppy wearing Christmas lights. I had braces with fluorescent green bands, so not very cute.”
For the rest of the night, Ania and Mike sat and talked, exploring what felt like every topic under the sun. The next morning, he brought her a coffee and told her he wanted to see her again. “You better hurry up,” she replied, “because I go back to Poland on Thursday.”
Ania and Mike stayed in touch, maintaining a budding relationship from afar. The following summer, he visited Poland for her college graduation, and they spent some time sightseeing together. While backpacking in Spain, Mike proposed, and they were married the next year.
Suddenly, Ania found herself navigating the uncharted waters of two huge milestones – a new husband, and a new country. It was a massive culture shift, as central Pennsylvania was nothing like the Poland she knew and loved. She began to feel isolated, but masked her feelings beneath a vibrant, outgoing personality.
The words in her notebook continued:
By far, moving here, leaving my parents, family, friends behind, uprooting from Poland and trying to fit into this new, and very different, culture was the hardest thing I ever did. My ground was shaking and I didn’t know peace. I struggled with anxiety and depression, but other than Mike, no one knew. Always smiling, laughing, looking out for others, ready for fun, but inside me there was a storm with big heavy clouds.
“It was a whole decade of just trying to find a place of belonging,” she remembered.
For ten years, Ania attempted to ground herself in various aspects of her identity – marriage, children, work, friendships – all of which were good things, but not enough to fill the emptiness in her heart. Her unseen struggles were exhausting to hide and began taking a toll on their marriage.
Knowing they had to do something, Mike and Ania started listening to an online sermon series about the pursuit of a godly marriage. “We both knew that faith was somewhat important to us, even though we didn’t quite understand what it meant,” she said. “We were both realizing that we were doing church completely wrong. Just going to church on Sunday was not enough. We don’t read the Bible. We don’t even think about Jesus.”
It was the summer of 2021, eleven years after coming to the United States, that Ania, Mike, and their two young daughters walked into the worship center of West Shore for the first time. They had visited a handful of churches over the years. But this time, something felt different.
“For the first time, we just sat there and listened to the music. I just started crying. I felt so filled with what I called back then, the ‘energy of the room,’ but really it was just the Holy Spirit grabbing onto me.”
Time after time, Mike and Ania returned to West Shore. And in the weeks and months that followed, Jesus slowly began to take hold of Ania’s heart – mostly in still, quiet moments like walks, where she would declare her love for Him and her desire to live the way He wanted her to live.
“It was here that I learned about a personal relationship with Jesus. And I realized I didn’t really have one, nor did I fully understand it,” she added.
I started reading the Bible, seeking Jesus’ presence, inviting him into my heart, submitting. I would sit there in stillness, waiting, listening, and He heard me. He filled me with an overwhelming sense of peace and belonging to Him.
The biggest transformation of all, however, was that drawing nearer to Christ helped Ania redefine what it means to be home. ‘Home,’ she discovered, was neither Poland nor the United States, but a deeply real sense of belonging. Through Jesus, who gave His life to forgive her and restore her relationship with God, Ania rests in knowing she is fully forgiven, fully loved, and fully secure in an everlasting home in Heaven.
“Once it fully happened, I felt so much lighter. I gained a whole new vision for my life. I feel like I understand that I’m planted here for a reason, and I fully trust that. And because of that, I have this indescribable peace and comfort in my heart.”
In the words of Ania’s testimony,
Jesus tells us in John 16:33 that ‘in me, you may have peace. In this world you may have tribulation. But take heart, I have overcome the world’. I am so grateful that the King of Heaven took a hold of my heart, calmed my tribulation, gave me peace, and made me whole. We all have our own stories to share. And we know that with Jesus we can overcome any tribulation. And that is what God’s peace means to me.
