01c. 1973 ADGod 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 / quote ↗
02c. 1973 ADI make soup and I back bread and I know my supreme need is joy in God and I know I can't experience deep joy in God until I deep trust in God. I shine sinks and polish through to the realization that trusting God is my most urgent need. If I deep trusted God in all the facets of my life, wouldn't that deep heal my anxiety, my self-condemnation, my soul holes? The fear is suffocating, terrorizing, and I want the remedy, and it is trust. Trust is everything. If fear keeps our lives small, does a life that receives all of God in this moment grow large too?Ann Voskamp / quote ↗
04c. 1973 ADI am a mother-tired, but when my soul doth magnify, my time doth magnify.Ann Voskamp / quote ↗
05c. 1973 ADBut the irony: Don't I often want to desperately 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. Is it because within each frame of finite flesh lies the likeness of infinite God? In all things large and spectacular, we recognize glimpses of home and the call to our own deeper chemistry. Do we writhe to peel out of our smallness and into the big life because that fits our inborn God-image?Ann Voskamp / quote ↗
07c. 1973 ADSo now we pause. Still. Ponder. Hush. Wait. Each day of Advent, He gives you the gift of time, so you have time to be still and wait. Wait for the coming of the God in the manger who makes Himself bread for us near starved. For the Savior in swaddlings who makes Himself the robe of righteousness for us worn out. For Jesus, who makes precisely what none of us can but all of us want: Christmas.Ann Voskamp / quote ↗
08c. 1973 ADAll those years thinking I was saved and had said my yes to God, but was really living the no.Ann Voskamp / quote ↗
09c. 1973 ADLong, I am woman who speaks but one language, the language of the fall--discontentment and self-condemnation, the critical eye and the never satisfied.Ann Voskamp / quote ↗
11c. 1973 ADCan God be counted on? Count blessings and find out how many of His bridges have already held.Ann Voskamp / quote ↗
12c. 1973 ADWhen 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.Ann Voskamp / quote ↗
13c. 1973 ADDaily discipline is the door to full freedom, and the discipline to count to one thousand gave way to the freedom of wonder and I can't imagine not staying awake to God in the moment, the joy in the now.Ann Voskamp / quote ↗
14c. 1973 ADJesus 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 72Ann Voskamp / quote ↗
16c. 1973 ADThis. I live in this place, make porridge, scrub toilets, do laundry, and for days, weeks, I am brave and I do get out of bed and I think on this. I study this, the full life, the being fully ready for the end. I start to think that maybe there is a way out of nightmares to dreams? Maybe?Ann Voskamp / quote ↗
18c. 1973 ADAdults are tempted to produce and perform Christmas for their kids and their families, and they arrive at Christmas Day weary and disillusioned.Ann Voskamp / quote ↗
19c. 1973 ADA simplified Christmas isn't about circumstances as much as it is about focus.Ann Voskamp / quote ↗
20c. 1973 ADI 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.Ann Voskamp / quote ↗
21c. 1973 ADRomance 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.Ann Voskamp / quote ↗
22c. 1973 ADIn 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.Ann Voskamp / quote ↗
23c. 1973 ADGet 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.Ann Voskamp / quote ↗
