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I want to see beauty. In the ugly, in the sink, in the suffering, in the daily, in all the days before I die, the moments before I sleep.Ann Voskamp
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From all of our beginnings, we keep reliving the Garden story.Ann Voskamp
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I am a hunter of beauty and I move slow and I keep the eyes wide, every fiber of every muscle sensing all wonder and this is the thrill of the hunt and I could be an expert on the life full, the beauty meat that lurks in every moment. I hunger to taste life. God.Ann Voskamp
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The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world.Ann Voskamp
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Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I've ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing.... Through all that haste I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away.Ann Voskamp
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They say time is money, but that's not true. Time is life. And if I want the fullest life, I need to find fullest time... the busyness of your life leaving little room for the source of your life... God gives us time. And who has time for God?Which makes no sense.Ann Voskamp
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On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgement and effort to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur.Ann Voskamp
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This 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 Voskamp
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Christian hands never claspand He doesn't give gifts for gainbecause a gift can never stop being a gift - it is always meant to be given.Ann Voskamp
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A life contemplating the blessings of Christ becomes a life acting the love of Christ.Ann Voskamp
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...the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is.Ann Voskamp
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It is in the dark that God is passing by. The bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors. Dark is the holiest ground, the glory passing by. In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will. Though it is black and we can't see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us..Ann Voskamp
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Lament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who has His ear to our hearts, a God who transfigures the ugly into beauty. Complaint is the bitter howl of unbelief in any benevolent God in this moment, a distrust in the love-beat of the Father's heart.Ann Voskamp
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Joy is the realest reality, the fullest life, and joy is always given, never grasped. God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy.Ann Voskamp
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The practice of giving thanks...eucharisteo...this is the way we practice the presence of God, stay present to His presence, and it is always a practice of the eyes. We don't have to change what we see. Only the way we see.Ann Voskamp
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How 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 Voskamp
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Fullness of joy is discovered only in the emptying of will.Ann Voskamp
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Who would ever know the greater graces of comfort and perserverance, mercy and forgiveness, patience and courage, if no shadows fell over a life?Ann Voskamp
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Thanksgiving-giving thanks in everything-prepares the way that God might show us His fullest salvation in Christ.Ann Voskamp
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The true Love Dare. To move into His presence and listen to His love unending and know the grace uncontainable. This is the vault of the miracles. The only thing that can change us, the world, is this- all His love.Ann Voskamp
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At the last, this is what will determine a fulfilling, meaningful life, a life that, behind all the facades, every one of us longs to live: gratitude for the blessings that expresses itself by becoming the blessing.Ann Voskamp
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When we stop fearing failure, we start being artists.Ann Voskamp
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He does have surprising, secret purposes. I open a Bible, and His plans, startling, lie there barefaced. It’s hard to believe it, when I read it, and I have to come back to it many times, feel long across those words, make sure they are real. His love letter forever silences any doubts: “His secret purpose framed from the very beginning [is] to bring us to our full glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7 NEB). .Ann Voskamp
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Practice is the hardest part of learning, and training is the essence of transformation.Ann Voskamp
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Just that maybe … maybe you don’t want to change the story, because you don’t know what a different ending holds.Ann Voskamp
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We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks. Because how else do we accept His free gift of salvation if not with thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives. Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our Yes! to His grace.Ann Voskamp
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Forget the face of God, and forget your own name is Beloved.Ann Voskamp
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The highest form of prayer is to the goodness of God.. .. God only desires that our soul cling to him with all of its strength, in particular, that it clings to his goodness.Ann Voskamp
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I hunger for filling in a world that is starved.Ann Voskamp
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But, someone, please give me–who is born again but still so much in need of being born anew–give me the details of how to live in the waiting cocoon before the forever begins?Ann Voskamp
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Who would ever know the greater graces of comfort and perseverance, mercy and forgiveness, patience and courage, if no shadows fell over a life?Ann Voskamp
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When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? For us?Ann Voskamp
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Stress isn't only a joy stealer. The way we respond to it can be sin.Ann Voskamp
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Is the height of my chara joy dependent on the depths of my eucharisteo thanks?Ann Voskamp
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Awe ignites joy because it makes us bend the knee.Ann Voskamp
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While I may not always feel joy, God asks me to give thanks in all things because He knows that the feeling of joy begins in the action of thanksgiving.Ann Voskamp
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Joy is a flame that glimmers only in the palm of the open and humble hand. In an open and humble palm, released and surrendered to receive, light dances, flickers happy. The moment the hand is clenched tight, fingers all pointing towards self and rights and demands, joy is snuffed out. Anger is the lid that suffocates joy until she lies limp and lifeless.Ann Voskamp
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The joy of small that makes life large.Ann Voskamp
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Joy is the realest reality, the fullest life, and joy is always given, never grasped. God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy. (Page 57)Ann Voskamp
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How does it save the world to reject unabashed joy when it is joy that saves us? Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering. The converse does. (Page 58)Ann Voskamp
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It is true, I never stop wanting to learn the hard eucharisteo for deathbeds and dark skies and the prodigal sons. But I accept this is the way to begin, and all hard things come in due time and with practice. Yet now wisps of cheese tell me gentle that this is the first secret step into euchaisteo's miracle. Gratitude for the seemingly insignificant - a seed - this plants the giant miracle. The miracle of eucharisteo, like the Last Supper, is in the eating of crumbs, the swallowing down one mouthful. Do not disdain the small. The whole of life - even the hard - is made up of the minute parts, and if I miss the infinitesimals, I miss the whole. (Page 57) .Ann Voskamp
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Time, what God first deemed holy above all else (Genesis 2:3). Thank God for the time, and very God enters that time, presence hallowing it.... I awake to I AM here. When I'm present, I meet I AM, the very presence of a present God. (page 70)Ann Voskamp
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... be radical about grace and relentless about truth and resolute about holiness...Ann Voskamp
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The mind would rather fret about the future or pine over the past – so the mind can cling to its own illusion of control. But the current moment? It cannot be controlled. And what a mind can’t control, it tends to discount. Brush past. . over. It’s the battle plan of the enemy of the soul – to keep us blind to this current moment, the one we can’t control, to keep us blind to Him, the One who controls everything.Ann Voskamp
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Life is so urgent it necessitates living slow.Ann Voskamp
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I only live the full life when I live fully in the moment.Ann Voskamp
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Humbly let go. Let go of trying to do, let go of trying to control, let go of my own way, let go of my own fears. Let God blow His wind, His trials, oxygen for joy's fire. Leave the hand open and be. Be at peace. Bend the knee and be small and let God give what God chooses to give because He only gives love and whisper a surprised thanks. This is the fuel for joy's flame. Fullness of joy is discovered only in the emptying of will. And I can empty. I can empty because counting His graces has awakened me to how He cherishes me, holds me, passionately values me. I can empty because I am full of His love. I can trust.Ann Voskamp
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Trust is the bridge from yesterday to tomorrow, built with planks of thanks.Ann Voskamp
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Eucharisteo, remembering with thanks, this is the bread. We take the moments as bread and give thanks and the thanks itself becomes bread. The thanks itself nourishes. Thanks feeds our trust.. Manna with thanks, eat the mystery of the moment with trust, and am nourished another day - or refuse it.. and die. Jesus calls us to surrender and there's nothing like releasing fears and falling into peace. This is what I have always wanted and never knew: this utter trust, this enlivening fall of surrender into the safe hands. There is no joy without trust! Page 158 .Ann Voskamp
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I 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 Voskamp
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When bridges seem to give way, we fall into Christ's safe arms, true bridge, and not into hopelessness. It is safe to trust! We can be too weak to go on because His strength is made perfect in utter brokenness and nail-pierced hands help up. It is safe to trust! We can give thanks in everything because there's a good God leading, working all things into good. It is safe to trust! The million bridges behind us may seem flattened to the earthly eye, but all bridges ultimately hold, fastened by nails. It is safe to trust.Ann Voskamp
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Losses 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 Voskamp
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How to 'live' in a state of awe when life is mundane and ordinary?Ann Voskamp
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To get where you want to go, the first question you always have to answer is Where am I? ... We only find out where we are when we find out where He is. We only find ourselves... when we find Him.Ann Voskamp
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The answer to anxiety is always to exalt Christ.Ann Voskamp
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That 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 Voskamp
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Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering the converse does. The brave who focus and all things good and all things beautiful to give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agent to bring the fullest night to all the world.Ann Voskamp
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With memories of gravestones, of combing fingers through tangled hair, I wonder too. . If the rent in the canvas of our life backdrop, the losses that puncture our world, and our own emptiness, might actually become places to see. To see through to God.That which tears open our souls, those holes which splatter sight, they 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. But how? How do we choose to allow the holes to become seeing through to collect places? How do I give up resentment for gratitude, anger for spilling joy, so focus for God communion. To fully live to fully live grace enjoy with all that is beauty internal it is possible.Ann Voskamp
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Could a name be any shorter? Three letters without even the flourish of an e. Ann, a trio of curves and lines. It means “full of grace”.Ann Voskamp
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Here I can become the blessing, a little life that multiplies joy, making the larger world a better place. God can enter into me, even me, and use these hands, these feet, to be His love, a love that goes on and on and on forever, endless cycle of grace.Ann Voskamp
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I speak the unseen into seeing and I can feel it, this steady breathing in the rhythm of grace--'give thanks (in), give thanks (out)'.Ann Voskamp
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We 'have' all received on grace after another, but we only recognize the glory of God in this moment 'when we wake to the one grace after another'.Ann Voskamp
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When we lay the soil of our hard lives opened the rain of grace and let Joy permeate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? for us? The clouds open when we mouth thanks. p. 58Ann Voskamp
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That is what a shadow is, and empty space, a hole in the light. Evil is this - a hole in the goodness of God.Ann Voskamp
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Do I really smother my own joy because I believe that anger achieves more than love?Ann Voskamp
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The only way to fight a feeling is with a feeling.Ann Voskamp
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The parent must always self-parent first, self-preach before child-teach, because who can bring peace unless they’ve held their own peace?Ann Voskamp
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How can I help this son of mine see when I can't see? The parent must always self-parent first, self-preach before child-teach, because who can bring peace unless they've held their own peace?Ann Voskamp
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Our 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 Voskamp
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Without God's Word as a lens, the world warps.Ann Voskamp
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And it's the 'Word of God' that turns the rocks in the mouth to loaves on the tongue. That fills our emptiness with the true and real good, 'that makes the eyes see', the body full of light.Ann Voskamp
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I wear the lens of the Word and all the world transfigures into the Beauty of Christ and 'everything is eucharisteo'.Ann Voskamp
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Sometimes you don’t know when you’re taking the first step through a door until you’re already inside.Ann Voskamp
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Eucharisteo–thanksgiving–always precedes the miracle.Ann Voskamp
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Gratitude for the seemingly insignificant–a seed–this plants the giant miracle.Ann Voskamp
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Thanksgiving creates abundance.Ann Voskamp
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Life-changing gratitude does not fasten to a life unless nailed through with one very specific nail at a time.Ann Voskamp
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If the heights of our joy are measured by the depths of our gratitude, and gratitude is but a way of seeing, a spiritual perspective of smallness might offer a vital way of seeing especially conducive to gratitudeAnn Voskamp
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...this counting blessings was the unlocking of the mystery of joy, joy, "the gigantic secret of the Christian, " joy hiding in gratitude. .. God had used the dare to give me this; led me all he way to give me this, live fully, fully live. Page 83Ann Voskamp
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Hurry always empties a soul.Ann Voskamp
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Simplicity is ultimately a matter of focus.Ann Voskamp
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Every moment I live, I live bowed to something. And if I don't see God, I'll bow down before something else.Ann Voskamp
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Wherever 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 Voskamp
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When service is unto people, the bones can grow weary, the frustration deep. Because, agrees Dorothy Sayers, "whenever man is made the center of things, he becomes the storm-center of trouble. The moment you think of serving people, you begin to have a notion that other people owe you something for your pains.. You will begin to bargain for reward, to angle for applause.. When the eyes of the heart focus on God, and the hands on always washing the feet of Jesus alone - the bones, they sing joy and the work returns to it's purest state: eucharisteo. The work becomes worship, a liturgy of thankfulness. "The work we do is only our love for Jesus in action" writes Mother Theresa. "If we pray the work..if we do it to Jesus, if we do it for Jesus, if we do it with Jesus.. that's what makes us content." Deep joy is always in the touching of Christ - in whatever skin He comes to us in. Page 194.Ann Voskamp
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Sometimes, too often, I don't want to muster the energy. Stress and anxiety seem easier.Ann Voskamp
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I know the theological answers, but do my blood and my pulse?Ann Voskamp
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Why do I lunge for control instead of joy?...do I thin Jesus grace too impotent to give me the full life... Whenever I am blind to joys well, isn't it because I don't believe in Gods care? P 130Ann Voskamp
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I receive grace. And through me, grace could flow on. Like a cycle of water in continuous movement, grace is meant to fall, a rain...again, again, again. I could share the grace, multiply the joy, extend the table of the feast, enlarge the paradise of His presence. I am blessed. I can bless.Ann Voskamp
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Trauma's storm can mask the Christ and feelings can lie. I draw all the hurting voices close and I tough their scars with a whisper: sometimes we don't fully see that in Christ, because of Christ, through Christ, He does give us all things good - until we have the perspective of years. In time, years, dust settles. In memory, ages, God emerges.Ann Voskamp
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Eucharisteo has taught me to trust that there is always enough God. He has no end.Ann Voskamp
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Eucharisteo means 'to give thanks, ' and give is a verb, something that we do. God calls me to do thanks. to give the thanks away. That thanks-giving might literally become thanks-living. That our lives become the very blessings we have received. I am blessed. I can bless. Imagine! I could let Him make me the gift! I could be the joy!Ann Voskamp
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When it gets dark, it's only because god has tucked me in a cleft of the rock and covered me, protected, with His hand? In the pitch, I feel like I'm falling, sense the bridge giving way, God long absent. In the dark, the bridge and my world shakes, cracking dreams. But maybe this is true reality: It is in the dark that God is passing by. the bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors. Dark is the holiest ground, the glory passing by. In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will. Though it is black and we can't see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us, I-beam supporting in earthquake.Ann Voskamp
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God holds us in the untamed moments too.Ann Voskamp
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Who trusts the Bridge Builder when you wake to snow on your blankets and winter blasting through cracked walls and dinner for four is a fifty cent box of Kraft Dinner rationed in half and your dad tells you every single day that he just doesn't know how there is ever going to be enough? How do you count on life when the hopes don't add up? A morning in late November, joy shimmers. The hopes don't have to add up. The blessings do..count blessings and discover who can be counted on.Ann Voskamp
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When service is unto people, the bones can grow weary, the frustration deep. Because, agrees Dorothy Sayers, 'whenever man is made the centre of things, he becomes the storm-centre of trouble. The moment you think of serving people, you begin to have a notion that other people owe you something for your pains.. You will begin to bargain for reward, to angle for applause.' When the laundry is for the dozen arms of children or the dozen legs, it's true, I think I'm due some appreciation. So comes a storm of trouble and lightning strikes joy. But when Christ is center, when dishes, laundry, work, is my song of thanks to Him, joy rains. Passionately serving Christ alone makes us the loving servant to all. When the eyes of the heart focus on God, and the hands on always washing the feet of Jesus alone - the bones, they sing joy, and the work returns to it's purest state: eucharisteo. The work becomes worship, a liturgy of thankfulness.Ann Voskamp
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The real problem of life is never a lack of time. The real problem of life - in my life - is lack of thanksgiving.Ann Voskamp
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God can enter into me, even me, and use these hands, these feet, to be His love, a love that goes on and on and on forever, endless cycle of grace.Ann Voskamp
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I 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 Voskamp
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I am blessed. I can bless.Ann Voskamp
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I am a mother-tired, but when my soul doth magnify, my time doth magnify.Ann Voskamp