Grace is alive, living waters. If I dam up the grace, hold the blessings tight, joy within dies... waters that have no life.
Ann VoskampReally good writing, from my perspective, runs a lot like a visual on the screen. You need to create that kind of detail and have credibility with the reader, so the reader knows that you were really there, that you really experienced it, that you know the details. That comes out of seeing.
Ann VoskampWhen we know Christ, we always know how things are going to go...always for our good and always for His glory.
Ann VoskampJoy is always a function of gratitude - and gratitude is always a function of perspective.
Ann VoskampLosses do that. One life-loss can infect the whole of a life. Like a rash that wears through our days, our sight becomes peppered with black voids. Now everywhere we look, we only see all that isn’t: holes, lack, deficiency.
Ann VoskampOf asking nothing of the reader - but offering a still, quiet oasis in the cybersphere to go vertical with God. An island of stillness to know that He is God.
Ann VoskampNo one told me that it would all happen at the same hallowed time: Mothering is at once the hardest and the holiest and the happiest.
Ann VoskampChristian hands never clasp and He doesn't give gifts for gain because a gift can never stop being a gift - it is always meant to be given.
Ann VoskampParenting is about preparing children to get along with each other, to get along with you and without you, and that it's impossible to get along without God.
Ann VoskampInstead of giving someone a piece of your mind, it turns out far better if you give them a piece of your heart.
Ann VoskampThat which tears open our souls, those holes that splatter our sight, may actually become the thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the heart-aching beauty beyond. To Him. To the God whom we endlessly crave.
Ann VoskampThis day is not a sieve, losing time. With each passing minute, each passing year, there's this deepening awareness that I am filling, gaining time. We stand on the brink of eternity.
Ann VoskampI think God calls us to small things, to faithfulness right where we are, to just do the next thing.
Ann VoskampHow my eyes see, perspective, is my key to enter into His gates. I can only do so with thanksgiving. If my inner eye has God seeping up through all things, then can't I give thanks for anything? And if I can give thanks for the good things, the hard things, the absolute everything, I can enter the gates to glory. Living in His presence is fullness of joy- and seeing shows the way in.
Ann VoskampWe live in a broken world - and for the life of me I can't get it all right. But Jesus takes all our broken messes and He makes them, by His grace, into a mosaic of grace.
Ann VoskampI don't think of myself as an author. But simply as a grateful child of God. John 3:27 has long been a life verse: "A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven." Any more words will only be solely a gift from Him. I can only faithfully wait.
Ann VoskampWhen I fully enter time’s swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of me all here.
Ann VoskampI make soup and I back bread and I know my supreme need is joy in God and I know I can't experience deep joy in God until I deep trust in God. I shine sinks and polish through to the realization that trusting God is my most urgent need. If I deep trusted God in all the facets of my life, wouldn't that deep heal my anxiety, my self-condemnation, my soul holes? The fear is suffocating, terrorizing, and I want the remedy, and it is trust. Trust is everything. If fear keeps our lives small, does a life that receives all of God in this moment grow large too?
Ann VoskampGod gives the world enough of what it needs. All He asks is that we distribute what He gives.
Ann VoskampI glance back in the mirror to the concrete bridge, the one I've boldly driven straight across without second thought, and I see truth reflecting back at me: Every time fear freezes and worry writhes, every time I surrender to stress, aren't I advertising the unreliability of God? That I really don't believe? But if I'm grateful to the Bridge Builder for the crossing of a million strong bridges, thankful for a million faithful moments, my life speaks my beliefs and I trust Him again.
Ann VoskampOur fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren’t satisfied in God and what He gives. We hunger for something more, something other.
Ann VoskampMaybe the man who said that his doctor had pulled him off Prozac because One Thousand Gifts and taking the dare to write 1,000 gifts was healing deep places in him and leading him to *experience* joy.
Ann VoskampLife-changing gratitude does not fasten to a life unless nailed through with one very specific nail at a time.
Ann VoskampYour naked body deserves the honor of being shared only with someone who is covenanted to never stop loving your naked soul.
Ann VoskampReal Womanhood isn’t a function of becoming a great mother, but of being loved by your Great Father.
Ann VoskampWe can worship Christ in our sanctuaries and we can pray to God on our knees, but how we treat - or neglect - the person next door, the poor, every human being, this is how we truly speak to Christ and this is how we really treat Jesus.
Ann VoskampThe bravest love is wildly faithful and it falls hard again every morning... It knows what we seek may be found in what we already have... it's grace and fresh gratitude that can make us strong enough to marvel in the seeming monotony of anything... And the happily married have eyes that look long enough to make the familiar new.
Ann VoskampWherever you are, be all there." I have lived the runner, panting ahead in worry, pounding back in regrets, terrified to live in the present, because here-time asks me to do the hardest of all: just open wide and receive.
Ann VoskampI think it was simply word of mouth that made it a New York Timesbestseller for more than 60 weeks, over a year. People being moved and changed and transformed by the book [One Thousand Gifts] and wanting to share that with hurting people all around them.
Ann VoskampReally, the greatest compliments about a book [One Thousand Gifts] are never about the book, or the author of the book, but about the reader and God and how the pages helped them connect at a deeper level.
Ann VoskampWriting is this act of faith - a bit like driving in the fog: you can hardly see just in front of you. But you trust God's leading you and you just write into the space you can see ahead of you.
Ann VoskampThe cynics, they can only speak of the dark, of the obvious, and this is not hard. For all it’s supposed sophistication, it’s cynicism that’s simplistic. In a fallen world, how profound is to see the cracks? The sages and prophets, the disciples and revolutionaries, they are the ones up on the ramparts, up on the wall pointing to the dawn of the new Kingdom coming, pointing to the light that breaks through all things broken, pointing to redemption always rising and to the Blazing God who never sleeps.
Ann VoskampGod reveals Himself in rearview mirrors. And I've an inkling that there are times when we need to drive a long, long distance, before we can look back and see God's back in the rearview mirror. Maybe sometimes about as far as heaven -- that kind of distance.
Ann Voskamp