Ann Voskamp Quotes

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

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

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

~ Ann Voskamp

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

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

Trust is the bridge from yesterday to tomorrow, built with planks of thanks.

~ Ann Voskamp

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

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

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

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

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

The answer to anxiety is always to exalt Christ.

~ Ann Voskamp

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. 58

~ 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

Do I really smother my own joy because I believe that anger achieves more than love?

~ Ann Voskamp

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

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

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

Without God's Word as a lens, the world warps.

~ Ann Voskamp

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

I wear the lens of the Word and all the world transfigures into the Beauty of Christ and 'everything is eucharisteo'.

~ Ann Voskamp

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

~ Ann Voskamp

Eucharisteo—thanksgiving—always precedes the miracle.

~ Ann Voskamp

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

~ Ann Voskamp

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 gratitude

~ Ann Voskamp

Simplicity is ultimately a matter of focus.

~ Ann Voskamp

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

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

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

Sometimes, too often, I don't want to muster the energy. Stress and anxiety seem easier.

~ Ann Voskamp

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

~ Ann Voskamp

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 130

~ 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