Ann Kiemel, an iconic figure in the Jesus Movement days, has gone home to be with the Lord. She died on Saturday after a battle with cancer.
“Ann was embraced by a merciful God early this morning,” reads a post on her Facebook page. “Please continue to pray for Ann’s family as they make decisions and grieve this loss.”
In the 1970s and early ’80s, Kiemel moved millions with her simple faith and desire to share Jesus. Her books, including I’m Out to Change My World, I’m Running to Win and I Gave God Time, sold more than 20 million copies. She inspired crowds at conventions, retreats, churches and coliseums.
Kiemel married Will Anderson at 35 and longed to be a mother. Many miscarriages and operations later, she faced the agony of infertility. But God blessed her with four baby boys, birthed from four different birth mothers.
Kiemel walked off the public stage to raise her children. Excruciating pain from medical complications eventually led to prescription drug dependency. She worked her way through rehab and back to freedom. The ordeal, coupled with her husband’s business misfortunes and cancer death, left her with nothing but a driving hunger for authentic reality with Jesus.
Kiemel’s voice was seasoned with gritty life experience hard-won on the battlegrounds of faith. She empathized with people striving to persevere with God even though their dreams have not gone as hoped—whose “happily ever afters” have been anything but.
