Ann Voskamp Quotes

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.

Practice is the hardest part of learning, and training is the essence of transformation.

Sometimes you don’t know when you’re taking the first step through a door until you’re already inside.

Eucharisteo—thanksgiving—always precedes the miracle.

...the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is.

Simplicity is ultimately a matter of focus.

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.

Just that maybe … maybe you don’t want to change the story, because you don’t know what a different ending holds.

Satan prowls but he’s a lion on a leash

And when I give thanks for the seemingly microscopic, I make a place for God to grow within me.

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.

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.

A life contemplating the blessings of Christ becomes a life acting the love of Christ.

The prayers we weave into the matching of socks, the stirring of oatmeal, the reading of stories, they survive fire.

Gratitude for the seemingly insignificant—a seed—this plants the giant miracle.

... be radical about grace and relentless about truth and resolute about holiness...

...life change comes when we receive life with thanks and ask for nothing to change.

Thanksgiving-giving thanks in everything-prepares the way that God might show us His fullest salvation in Christ.

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.

Stress isn't only a joy stealer. The way we respond to it can be sin.

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.

I hunger for filling in a world that is starved.

Who would ever know the greater graces of comfort and perserverance, mercy and forgiveness, patience and courage, if no shadows fell over a life?

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?

Worry is the facade of taking action when prayer really is.

In a world addicted to speed, I blur the moments into one unholy smear.

As long as thanks is possible, then joy is always possible.

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.

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.

God is good and I am always loved.

In our rushing, bulls in china shops, we break our own lives.

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...

Every moment I live, I live bowed to something. And if I don't see God, I'll bow down before something else.

I know the theological answers, but do my blood and my pulse?

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.

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?

Is the height of my chara joy dependent on the depths of my eucharisteo thanks?

I don't really want more time; I just want enough time. Time to breathe deep and time to see real and time to laugh long, time to give You glory and rest deep and sing joy and just enough time in a day not to feel hounded, pressed, driven, or wild to get it all done-yesterday.

All fear is but the notion that God's love ends.

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.

I know there is poor and hideous suffering, and I've seen the hungry and the guns that go to war. I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for early light dappled through leaves and the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.

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.

When 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.

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.

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).

Worry is belief gone wrong. Because you don't believe that God will get it right.

Life is so urgent it necessitates living slow.

Fullness of joy is discovered only in the emptying of will.

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.

Remembering with thanks is what causes us to trust - to really believe.

From all of our beginnings, we keep reliving the Garden story.

God 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.

Christian 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.

The answer to deep anxiety is the deep adoration of God.

The whole of the life -- even the hard -- is made up of the minute parts, and if I miss the infinitesimals, I miss the whole. These are new language lessons, and I live them out. There is a way to live the big of giving thanks in all things. It is this: to give thanks in this one small thing. The moments will add up.

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.

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.

Thanksgiving creates abundance.

If God didn't withhold from us His very own Son, will God withhold anything we need?

Who knows why God allows heartbreak, but the answer must be important enough because God allows His heart to break too.

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.

Joy and pain, they are but two arteries of the one heart that pumps through all those who don't numb themselves to really living.

Life-changing gratitude does not fasten to a life unless nailed through with one very specific nail at a time.

Please hear me, Girl: The world has enough women who know how to do their hair. It needs women who know how to do hard and holy things.

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.

Are stress and worry evidence of a soul too lazy, too undisciplined, to keep gaze fixed on God?

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.

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.

Hurry always empties a soul.

Count blessings and discover Who can be counted on.

Can God be counted on? Count blessings and find out how many of His bridges have already held.

The busyness of your life leaves little room for the source of your life.

Manna today or I starve.

Unless we speak praise, we consistently speak poison. Unless we are intentional about giving God glory throughout the day, our days unintentionally give way to grumbling.

Grace is alive, living waters. If I dam up the grace, hold the blessings tight, joy within dies... waters that have no life.

If trust must be earned, hasn't God unequivocally earned our trust with the bark on the raw wounds, the thorns pressed into the brow, your name on the cracked lips.

When the church isn't for the suffering and broken, then the church isn't for Christ. Because Jesus, with His pierced side, is always on the side of the broken.

The fear is suffocating, terrorizing, and I want the remedy, and it is trust. Trust is everything.

God doesn't want to number your failures or count your accomplishments as much as He wants you to have an encounter with Him.

I only live the full life when I live fully in the moment.

Maybe grieving over plans changed is part of the plan to change us.

MAYBE WHOLENESS IS EMBRACING BROKENNESS AS PART OF YOUR LIFE.

Calm. Haste makes waste. Life is not an emergency. Life is brief and it is fleeting but it is not an emergency.

How do I wake up to joy and grace and beauty and all that is the fullest life when I must stay numb to losses and crushed dreams and all that empties me out?

If you haven't lost Christ, child, nothing is ever lost.

We're called to do more than believe in God, we're called to live in God.

What is time for if not to bless?

The only way to live a truly remarkable life is not to get everyone to notice you, but to leave noticeable marks of His love everywhere you go.

How long does it take for your soul to recognize that your life is full? The slower the living, the greater the sense of fullness and satisfaction. The body and soul can synchronize. page 76

The wrinkled man in the wheelchair with the legs wrapped, the girl with her face punctured deep with the teeth marks of a dog, the mess of the world, and I see - this, all this, is what the French call d'un beau affreux, what the Germans call hubsch-hasslich - the ugly-beautiful. That which is perceived as ugly transfigures into beautiful. What the postimpressionist painter Paul Gauguin expressed as 'Le laid peut etre beau' - The ugly can be beautiful. The dark can give birth to life; suffering can deliver grace.

Do I really smother my own joy because I believe that anger achieves more than love? That Satan's way is more powerful, more practical, more fulfilling in my daily life than Jesus' way? WHy else get angry? Isn't it because I think complaining, exasperation, resentment will pound me up into the full life I really want? When I choose-and it is a choice-to crush joy with bitterness, am I not purposefully choosing to take the way of the Prince of Darkness? Choosing the angry way of Lucifer because I think it is more effective-more expedient-than giving thanks?

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.

You are whatever you love. You are, at your very essence, not what you think, but what you love...We are all compelled not by what we believe is right, but by what we love the most. You are not driven by duties, you are not driven by doctrines; you are driven by what you ultimately desire - and maybe you don't actually really love whatever you think you love.

Jesus embraced His not enough ... He gives thanks ... and there is more than enough. More than enough. Eucharisteo always precedes the miracle. And who doesn't need a miracle like that everyday? Thanksgiving makes time. The real problem of life is never a lack of time. The real problem of life - in my life - is lack of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving creates abundance; and he miracle of multiplying happens when I give thanks - ...it's giving thanks to God for this moment that multiplies the moments, time made enough. I am thank-full. I am time-full. page 72

If it were up to me..." and then the words pound, desperate and hard, "I'd write this story differently."... "Just that maybe... maybe you don't want to change the story, because you don't know what a different ending holds." The words I choked out that dying, ending day, echo. Pierce. There's a reason I am not writing the story and God is. He knows how it all works out, where it all leads, what it all means. I don't.

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

Three persons of the Trinity – Father God, Jesus Christ, and Holy Spirit – gathered close together to imagine you. And God in three persons, uncontainable affection, knelt down and kissed warm life into you with the breath of his love. You are made of dust of this earth and you are made of the happiness of heaven, and you are flesh and you are spirit, and you are of two worlds longing for the home of forever and him. No matter your story before, this is your beginning now: you were formed by Love…for love.

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.

The 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.

My baby is five. She falls asleep in my arms . . . . Her breath is warm on my face, all that is alive and warm and breathing inside of her now, falling upon me, and I can't capture it, hold it, this, her life now, me in this moment. She is leaving me, she's growing up and moving away from me, and she stirs and I sweep back the crop of the golden ringlets. Stay, Little One, stay. Love's a deep wound and what is a mother without a child and why can't I hold on to now forever and her here and me here and why does time snatch away a heart I don't think mine can beat without? Why do we all have to grow old? Why do we have to keep saying good-bye?