Ann Voskamp Quotes & Sayings

Without expectations, what can topple the surprising wonder of the moment? — Ann Voskamp

World has already begun. That suffering nourishes grace, and pain and joy are arteries of the same heart - and mourning and dancing are but movements in His unfinished symphony of beauty. Can I believe the gospel, that God is patiently transfiguring all the notes of my life into the song of His Son? What in the world, in all this world, is grace? I can say it certain now: All is grace. I see through the woods of the world: God is always good and I am always loved. God is — Ann Voskamp

I hunger for filling in a world that is starved. — Ann Voskamp

Life isn't an emergency. Christ is in charge of every moment of the day; nothing catches Him off guard. — Ann Voskamp

The art of deep seeing makes gratitude possible. — Ann Voskamp

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

Eucharisteo makes the knees the vantage point of a life. — Ann Voskamp

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

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

Loving broken people when it is inconvenient is the way to have fuller inclusion in the life of Christ. Teach — Ann Voskamp

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

Count blessings and discover Who can be counted on. — Ann Voskamp

Every day, with every word, we get to decide: Do we mar the world, or mark the world? — Ann Voskamp

Living radical isn't about where you live - it's about how you love. — Ann Voskamp

Real Love truthfully sees the flaws - and still really loves fully. — Ann Voskamp

In counting gifts, to one thousand, more, I discover that slapping a sloppy brush of thanksgiving over everything in my life leaves me deeply thankful for very few things in my life. — Ann Voskamp

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

I am blessed. I can bless. — Ann Voskamp

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. — Ann Voskamp

A lack of doxology leads to depravity. — Ann Voskamp

The weight of God's glory, not illusory or ephemeral, but daily and everywhere, punctures earth's lid and heaven falls through the holes. — Ann Voskamp

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

The joy of small that makes life large. Hadn't I personally experienced it before too, that vantage point that gave a sense of smallness before grandeur? At the tip of the Grand Canyon, peering into the carved earth, the vastness of the hewn and many-hued chasm. A late June night peering into the expanse of heavens nailed up with the named and known stars. A moon field. I hardly dare brush the limitlessness with my vaporous humanity. But the irony: Don't I often desperately want to wriggle free of the confines of a small life? Yet when I stand before immensity that heightens my smallness - I have never felt sadness. Only burgeoning wonder. — Ann Voskamp

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

Really 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 Voskamp

We 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 Voskamp

Eucharisteo is giving thanks for grace. But in the breaking and giving of bread, in the washing of feet, Jesus makes it clear that eucharisteo is, yes, more: it is giving grace away. — Ann Voskamp

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

Every breath is a battle between grudgery and gratitude. Give thanks ... and you win joy. — Ann Voskamp

My husband is Dutch, and his family, when you sat down to eat food at the table, you never left the table until you ate living bread and drank living water. They never left the table until they'd read Scripture together. So morning, lunch, suppertime, Scripture was always read at the table, and then there was prayer to close. — Ann Voskamp

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

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

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. — Ann Voskamp

Gratitude is at the center of a life of faith. It sounds to simple to be true, but isn't that the sign of all deep truth: so simple we're tempted to dismiss it, and so hard, it is exactly what God uses to change our hard lives. — Ann Voskamp

While other creeds endeavor to get us out of the world and into heaven, in Christianity, heaven comes down and Christ comes into this world to get us. To suffer with us. We find favor - only because Christ feels pain. — Ann Voskamp

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

The whole earth is full of His glory. Sky, land, and sea, heavy and saturated with God
why do I always forget? — Ann Voskamp

Communion, by necessity, always leads us into community. — Ann Voskamp

I am a mother-tired, but when my soul doth magnify, my time doth magnify. — Ann Voskamp

How long does it take your soul to realize that your life is full? The slower the living, the greater the sense of fullness and satisfaction. — Ann Voskamp

All God makes is good. Can it be that that which seems to oppose the will of God actually is used of Him to accomplish the will of God? — Ann Voskamp

To receive God's gifts, to live exalted and joy filled, isn't a function of straining higher, harder, doing more, carrying long the burdens of the super-Pharisees or ultra-saints. Receiving God's gifts is a gentle, simple movement of stooping lower. — Ann Voskamp

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

He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs (Zephaniah 3:17). He sings love! In the air, over — Ann Voskamp

There are two kinds of doubt: one that fully lives into the questions, and one that uses the questions as weapons against fully living. — Ann Voskamp

a mothers labor and delivery never ends, and you just have to keep remembering to breathe — Ann Voskamp

Every religion, every program, every self-help book is about steps you have to take. Jesus is the only One who becomes the step - to take you. — Ann Voskamp

I have to seek God beauty. Because isn't my internal circuitry wired to seek out something worthy of worship? . True Beauty worship, worship of Creator Beauty Himself. God is present in all moments, but I do not deify the wind in the pines, the snow falling on the hemlocks, the moon over harvested wheat. Pantheism, seeing the natural world as divine, is a very different thing than seeing divine God present in all things . Nature is not God but God revealing the weight of Himself, all His glory, through the looking glass of nature. — Ann Voskamp

We don't see the material world for what it is meant to be: the means to communion with God ... There is a belief missing, that God is good and that he gives good gifts. — Ann Voskamp

Love doesn't necessarily mean bless or agree with, it means sacrifice for and suffer with. — Ann Voskamp

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? — Ann Voskamp

The frame of a soul was never made for fame. The frame of a soul was made to serve. — Ann Voskamp

That I'd day after day after day greedily take what looks like it's good from Your hand
a child gloating over sweet candy ... but that I'd thrash wild to escape when what You give from Your hand feels bad
like gravel in the mouth. Oh Father, forgive ... should I accept good from you, and not trouble? — Ann Voskamp

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? — Ann Voskamp

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

Life is so urgent and necessitates living slow. It's only the amateurs-and that I've been, and it's been ugly-who thinks slow and urgent are contradictory. — Ann Voskamp

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. — Ann Voskamp

When the purity of Jesus lies over a heart, His transparency burns the cataracts off the soul. The only way to see God manifested in the world around is with the eyes of Jesus within. — Ann Voskamp

God gives God. That is the gift God always ultimately gives. Because nothing is greater and we have no greater need, God gives God. God gives God, and we only need to slow long enough to unwrap the greatest Gift with our time: time in His Word, time in His presence, time at His feet. — Ann Voskamp

Joy is always possible. Whenever, meaning - now; wherever, meaning - here. — Ann Voskamp

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

He withhold that which I believe will fully nourish me? Why do I live in this sense of rejection, of less than, of pain? Does He not want me to be happy? — Ann Voskamp

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

Isn't falling in love always the fullest life? — Ann Voskamp

Going ahead in the midst of the stressful circumstances and giving thanks in that moment - you can't simultaneously feel stress and gratitude at the same time. So as a parent, to go ahead and start to give thanks to God resets the whole family. — Ann Voskamp

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. — Ann Voskamp

As long as thanks is possible, then joy is always possible. — Ann Voskamp

The life that counts blessings discovers its yielding more than it seems. — Ann Voskamp

We're not giving what we're called to give, unless that giving affects how we live - affects what we put on our plate and where we make our home and hang our hat and what kind of threads we've got to have on our back. Surplus Giving is the leftover you can afford to give; Sacrificial Giving is the love gift that changes how you live - because the love of Christ has changed you. God doesn't want your leftovers. God wants your love overtures, your first-overs, because He is your first love. — Ann Voskamp

Pantheism, seeing the natural world as divine, is a very different thing than seeing divine God present in all things — Ann Voskamp

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

God lays down all of His fullness into all the emptiness. I am in Him. He is in me. I embrace God in the moment. I give Him thanks and I bless God and we meet and couldn't I make love to God, making every moment love for Him? To know Him the way Adam knew Eve. Spirit skin to spirit skin. — Ann Voskamp

What was intended to harm, God intended it all for good. And no matter what intends to harm you, God's arms have you. You can never be undone. — Ann Voskamp

Be radical about grace and relentless about truth and resolute about holiness ... — Ann Voskamp

God is always good and we are always loved ... even when what He gives may appear ugly. — Ann Voskamp

The message of Christmas is not that we can make peace. Or that we can make love, make light, make gifts, or make this world save itself. The message of Christmas is that this world's a mess and we can never save ourselves from ourselves and we need a Messiah. — Ann Voskamp

A simplified Christmas isn't about circumstances as much as it is about focus. — Ann Voskamp

Are farmers and they keep trying to breathe, keep the body moving to keep the soul from atrophying. Mama cries when she strings — Ann Voskamp

I'm not a fast writer at all. I come empty and wait upon the Lord. So it really is all a waiting process, a patient process. — Ann Voskamp

Just that maybe ... maybe you don't want to change the story, because you don't know what a different ending holds. — Ann Voskamp

Relationships only get to exist as long as they keep breathing in the air of mutual forgiveness, and he and I have found an uncommon grace. Grace can strike when you are in great pain and light you with the greatest hope. I — Ann Voskamp

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

But wells don't come without first begging to see the wells; wells don't come without first splitting open hard earth, cracking back the lids. There's no seeing God face-to-face without first the ripping. — Ann Voskamp

Homemaking is about making a home, not about making perfection. — Ann Voskamp

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. — Ann Voskamp

The one who lives her life in circles, discovering, entering into, forgetting and losing, finding her way round again, living her life in layers
deeper, round, further in. I know 'eucharisteo' and the miracle. But I am not a woman who ever lives the full knowing. — Ann Voskamp

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

When we know Christ, we always know how things are going to go ... always for our good and always for His glory. — Ann Voskamp

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

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

God is patiently transfiguring all the notes of my life into the song of His Son. — Ann Voskamp

Work-worn, on a gingham towel draped over the cupboard. "All of them stillborn." I smother a sigh with a smile, weak and resigned. He takes it regardless. "Yeah ... " He too smiles soft, a hand letting — Ann Voskamp

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

You know it with startling clarity in that moment - how there's only a singular cord in this knotted mess of a world worth reaching for. It's dangling right there from our impossible tangle, and it's the one hope you need to reach for this Advent. That scarlet lifeline of Christ. — Ann Voskamp

Love comes softly, it cannot be forced ... cannot bear the weight of our expectations. Love always comes in the surrender - in the falling. — Ann Voskamp

Any kind of love that lacks the iron of the Cross in it, is anemic love. — Ann Voskamp

You may believe in God, but never forget - it's God who believes in you. Every morning that the sun rises and you get to rise? That's God saying He believes in you, that He believes in the story He's writing through you. He believes in you as a gift the world needs. — Ann Voskamp

Lord God, Maker of all, when You give manna moments, may I give You thanks for the mystery. Because the manna that makes no sense - You will make it my sustenance. Today, in all the "what is it?" moments, turn me to give thanks for who You are. — Ann Voskamp

Only the Word is the answer to rightly reading the world, because The Word has nail-scarred hands that cup our face close, wipe away the tears running down, has eyes to look deep into our brimming ache, and whisper, I know. I know. — Ann Voskamp

Awe ignites joy because it makes us bend the knee. — Ann Voskamp