Ann Voskamp Quotes

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

Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering.

In naming that which is right before me, that which I'd otherwise miss, the invisible becomes visible.

Until we call attention to the moments of our lives, we miss our lives.

I started blogging in 2004, light years ago on the Web.

So my blog wasn't about "platform" but really, it was everything you are not "supposed" to do in blogging.

I didn't (and still don't) have comments [in my blog]. It's about simply writing for an audience of One.

God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy.

It's the greatest compliment when the writer becomes invisible in the whole process.

When grief is deepest, words are fewest.

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?

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.

Once you have tasted conviction, you can’t bear to keep swallowing complacency.

Because nothing is greater and we have no greater need, God gives God.

Isn't falling in love always the fullest life?

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

The book [ One Thousand Gifts] took just over a year to write, on the fringe hours, early and late, around home educating 6 kids and farming and blogging.

God appoints people who do disappoint - to point to a God who never disappoints.

Manna today or I starve.

Our [people's] very saving is associated with our gratitude. Which follows: if our fall in the garden was ingratitude, then salvation must be intimately related to giving of thanks.

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.

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.

When we stop fearing failure, we start being artists.

Forget the face of God, and forget your own name is Beloved.

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.

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

Awe ignites joy because it makes us bend the knee.

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.

The joy of small that makes life large.

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)

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)

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

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

How to 'live' in a state of awe when life is mundane and ordinary?

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.

The answer to anxiety is always to exalt Christ.

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”.

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)'.

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'.

That is what a shadow is, and empty space, a hole in the light. Evil is this - a hole in the goodness of God.

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

The parent must always self-parent first, self-preach before child-teach, because who can bring peace unless they’ve held their own peace?

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?

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

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.

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

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

Eucharisteo has taught me to trust that there is always enough God. He has no end.

God holds us in the untamed moments too.

The real problem of life is never a lack of time. The real problem of life - in my life - is lack of thanksgiving.