Ann Voskamp Quotations

I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on summer 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.

Giving thanks is that: making the canyon of pain into a megaphone to proclaim the ultimate goodness of God when Satan and all the world would sneer at us to recant.

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.

Comparison is a thug that robs your joy. But it's even more than that - Comparison makes you a thug who beats down somebody - or your soul.

In a storm of struggles, I have tried to control the elements, clasp the fist tight so as to protect self and happiness. But stress can be an addiction, and worry can be our lunge for control, and we forget the answer to this moment is always yes because of Christ.

By default, most of us have taken the dare to simply survive. Exist. Get through. For the most part, we live numb to life - we've grown weary and apathetic and jaded... and wounded.

Romance isn't measured by how viral your proposal goes. The Internet age may try to sell you something different, but don't ever forget that viral is closely associated with sickness - so don't ever make being viral your goal.

When we can't bottle our tears up anymore, God catches every one in His bottle. God's catching every falling tear because He won't let us fall apart.

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.

Gratitude's not a natural posture. The prince of darkness is ultimately a spoiled ingrate, and I've spent most of my life as kin to the fist-shaker.

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.

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

I think the fall in Eden was ultimately a failure to give thanks.

Pick up a yardstick to measure your life against anyone else's, and you've just picked up a stick and beaten up your own soul.

Measuring sticks try to rank some people as big and some people as small - but we aren't sizes. We are souls. There are no better people or worse people - there are only God-made souls.

Get this, kids - how a man proposes isn't what makes him romantic. It's how a man purposes to lay down his life that makes him romantic.

Scales always lie. They don't make a scale that ever told the truth about value, about worth, about significance.

Counting one thousand gifts, I discovered I could count on God.

The real romantics imagine greying and sagging and wrinkling as the deepening of something sacred.

Whatever I'm writing comes organically out of my life.

I write a chapter, then edit it and edit it and edit it and edit it. I don't think we mine creativity from within. It's bestowed from on high, from God.

Adults are tempted to produce and perform Christmas for their kids and their families, and they arrive at Christmas Day weary and disillusioned.

I came into this world the way every person on the planet does - with clenched fists.

If I don't have words, it's a sign I'm not reading enough.

The real romantics are the boring ones - they let another heart bore a hole deep into theirs.

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.

Like the wind, Grace finds us wherever we are and won't leave us however we were found.

It's habits that can imprison you and it's habits that can free you. But when thanks to God becomes a habit - so joy in God becomes your life.

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.

There is unwavering peace today when an uncertain tomorrow is trusted to an unchanging God.

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...

Busy is a choice. Stress is a choice. Joy is a choice. Choose well.

The moment when you are most repelled by a child's behavior, that is your warning light to draw the very closest to that child.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Your naked body deserves the honor of being shared only with someone who is covenanted to never stop loving your naked soul.

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

Real joy is not found in having the best of everything but in trusting that God is making the best of everything.

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

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.

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.

God’s purposes are not for me to understand His plans: His plan is for me to understand Who He is.

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

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.

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.

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

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

We give thanks to God not because of how we feel, but because of Who He is.

Homemaking is about making a home, not about making perfection.

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.

Faith thanks God in the middle of the story.

You can give up the need to compete in the world- when you accept being complete in Christ.

Real Womanhood isn’t a function of becoming a great mother, but of being loved by your Great Father.

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.

Being joyful isn't what makes you grateful. Being grateful is what makes you joyful.

And the earth under your feet, the rain over your face upturned, the stars spinning all around you in the brazen glory: this is for you, you, you. These are for you-gifts-these are for you-grace-these are for you-God, so count the ways He loves, a thousand, more, never stop, that when you wake in the morning you can't help turn humbly to the east, unfold your hand to the heavens, and though you tremble and though you wonder, though the world is ugly, it is beautiful, and you can slow and you can trust and you can receive each moment as 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 don't want a Christmas you can buy. I don't want a Christmas you can make. What I want is a Christmas you can hold. A Christmas that holds me, remakes me, revives me. I want a Christmas that whispers, Jesus.

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?

God only allows pain if He’s allowing something new to be born.

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.

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

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.

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

Simplicity is ultimately a matter of focus.

Hurry always empties a soul.

Gratitude is the most fruitful way of deepening your consciousness that you are a divine choice.

We were made to live in a posture of grateful worship, and when we live in praise we live our purpose, and all the pieces fall in place, us all falling down in thanks.

The only way to care for the disadvantaged - is to disadvantage yourself -which is guaranteed to turn out for your advantage.

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.

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.

No 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.

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.

God is good and I am always loved.

Thanksgiving creates abundance.

Satan prowls but he’s a lion on a leash

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.

God doesn't want your leftovers. God wants your love overtures, your first-overs, because He is your first love.

Only speak words that make souls stronger.

Only speak words that make souls stronger -\-\ for once words are spoken, they may be forgiven, but may be not forgotten.

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?

Motherhood is a hallowed place because children aren’t commonplace. Co-laboring over the sculpting of souls is a sacred vocation, a humbling privilege. Never forget.

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

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.

You love as well as you are willing to be inconvenienced.

Because One died for me that I might breathe this breath...It's all a gift.

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.

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.

Praying with eyes wide open is the only way to pray without ceasing.

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

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

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

We want clarity -- and God gives a call. We want a road map --- and God gives a relationship. We want answers -- and God gives His hand.

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

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.

You've got to use the life you've been given to give others life

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.