One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
I finished this book on April 23, 2017. This book was a gift from a dear friend. Someone who always listens and provides wise advice, too many times to count, even when I didn't listen. I'm thankful for those kind of relationships. I'm thankful for that kind of grace. This book flips the script on how most of us think about our past disappointments, failures, and losses. Instead of getting stuck in the endless cycle of trying to understand why God chose to allow certain things to happen in our lives, we have the choice to give thanks. The practice of giving thanks and counting blessings has changed my life. No longer do I look at life through the lens of my circumstances, but rather I look at life through the lens of a humble servant — thankful for the many blessings — but also thankful for the trials and the valleys. It's in those valleys that you have the opportunity to show your true character, and to continue counting the gifts that God continues to provide... If only we'd all be willing to count the gifts... When I give thanks for the seemingly microscopic, I make a place for God to grow within me. Will you choose to give thanks? I hope you do. It's in giving thanks that I'm finding God is changing my heart, healing my soul, and providing the joy I so desperately longed for — and it's been there all along.
"For decades, a life, I continue to flail and strive and come up so seemingly... empty. I haven't lived up to my christening."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Can there be a good God? A God who graces with good gifts when a crib lies empty through long nights, and bugs burrow through coffins? Where is God, really? How can He be good when babies die, and marriages implode, and dreams blow away, dust in the wind? Where is the grace bestowed when cancer gnaws and loneliness aches and nameless places in us soundlessly die, break off without reason, erode away. Where hides this joy of the Lord, this God who fills the earth with good things, and how do I fully live when life is full of hurt? 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 - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"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 - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"But in the beginning, our eyes were already open. Our sight was perfect. Our vision let us see a world spilling with goodness. Our eyes fell on nothing but the glory of God. We saw God as He truly is: good. But we were lured by the deception that there was more to a full life, there was more to see. And, true, there was more to see: ugliness we hadn't beheld, the sinfulness we hadn't witnessed, the loss we hadn't known."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"He means to rename us — to return us to our true names, our truest selves. He means to heal our soul holes."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"If I don't, I am still making a choice. The choice not to."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"There's a reason I am not writing the story and God is. He knows how it all works out, where it all leads, what it all means."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"How do we live fully so we are fully ready to die?"
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Without exception we all long for happiness... all agree that they want to be happy... They may all search for it in different ways, but all try their hardest to reach the same goal, that is, joy."
― Aurelius Augustine
"The only place we need to see before we die is this place of seeing God, here and now."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"The greatest thing is to give thanks for everything. He who has learned this knows what it means to live... He has penetrated the whole mystery of life: giving thanks for everything."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"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 - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"When one is thirsty one quenches one's thirst by drinking, not by reading books which treat of this condition."
― Jean Pierre de Caussade
"If we are dying of thirst, passively reading books about water quenches little; the only way to quench the parched mouth is to close the book and dip the hand into water and bring it to the lips. If we thirst, we'll have to drink."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Sometimes you don't know when you're taking the first step through the door until you're already inside."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write."
― Martin Luther
"A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit."
― Erasmus
"Practice is the hardest part of learning, and training is the essence of transformation."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"The whole of life — even the hard — is made up of the minute parts, and if I miss the infinitesimals, I miss the whole."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Life-changing gratitude does not fasten to a life unless nailed through with one very specific nail at a time."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Something always comes to fill the empty places. And when I give thanks for the seemingly microscopic, I make a place for God to grow within me."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"The only thing that can change us, the world, is this — all His love."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Prayer without ceasing is only possible in a life of continual thanks."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"You're the one in dire need of time, that thing we can't buy, what we sell of ourselves to get more of what we think we want, what we sacrifice to seemingly gain. They say time is money, but that's not true. Time is life. And if I want the fullest life, I need to find fullest time."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"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 the miracle of multiplying happens when I give thanks — take the just one loaf, say it is enough, and give thanks — and He miraculously makes it more than enough."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Don't I always have the choice to be fully attentive? Simplicity is ultimately a matter of focus."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Daily 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 - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Who will I lose? And that's definite: I will lose every single person I have ever loved. Either abruptly or eventually. All human relationships end in loss. Am I prepared for that?"
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"That is what a shadow is, an empty space, a hole in the light. Evil is that — a hole in the goodness of God. Evil is all that lacks the goodness of God, a willful choice to turn away from the full goodness of God to that empty of His goodness."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"See that I am God. See that I am in everything. See that I do everything. See that I have never stopped ordering my works, nor ever shall, eternally. See that I lead everything on to the conclusion I ordained for it before time began, by the same power, wisdom and love with which I made it. How can anything be amiss?"
― Julian of Norwich
"Who deserves any grace?"
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"When I realize that it is not God who is in my debt but I who am in His great debt, then doesn't all become gift."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"It is suffering that has the realest possibility to bear down and deliver grace. And grace that chooses to bear the cross of suffering overcomes that suffering."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Emptiness itself can birth the fullness of grace because in the emptiness we have the opportunity to turn to God, the only begetter of grace, and there find all the fullness of joy."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Every time you feel in God’s creatures something pleasing and attractive, do not let your attention be arrested by them alone, but, passing them by, transfer your thought to God and say: “O my God, if Thy creations are so full of beauty, delight and joy, how infinitely more full of beauty, delight and joy art Thou Thyself, Creator of all!”"
― Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain
"Beauty requires no justification, no explanation; it simply is and transcends. See beauty and we know it in the marrow, even if we have no words for it: Someone is behind it, in it."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"The glory of God is the human being fully alive and the life of the human consists in beholding God."
― St. Irenaeus
"The parent must always self-parent first, self-preach before child-teach, because who can bring peace unless they've held their own peace? Christ incarnated in the parent is the only hope of incarnating Christ in the child."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"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?"
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Feel thanks and it's absolutely impossible to feel angry. We can only experience one emotion at a time. And we get to choose — which emotion do we want to feel?"
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Ah, I see. The Lord has to break us down at the strongest part of our self-life before He can have His own way of blessing with us."
― James H. McConkey
"All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen."
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I can't fill with joy until I learn how to trust."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"This living a lifestyle of intentional gratitude became an unintentional test in the trustworthiness of God — and in counting blessings I stumbled upon the way out of fear."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Why? Why is remembering and giving thanks the core of the Christ-faith? Because remembering with thanks is what causes us to trust — to really believe."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"If God didn't withhold from us His very own Son, will God withhold anything we need?"
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"If trust must be earned, hasn't God unequivocally earned our trust with the bark on the raw wounds, the thorns pressed into the brow, your name on the cracked lips? How will He not also graciously give us all things He deems best and right? He's already given the incomprehensible."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will. Though it is black and we cant see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Jesus calls me to surrender and there's nothing like releasing fears and falling into peace. It terrifies, true. But it exhilarates. This, this is what I've always wanted and never knew: this utter trust, this enlivening fall of surrender into the safe hands."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"God made man out of nothing, and as long as we are nothing, He can make something out of us."
― Martin Luther
"Expectations kill relationships — especially with God. And that's what a child doesn't have: this whole edifice of expectation. Without expectations, what can topple the surprising wonder of the moment?"
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Is it only when our lives are emptied that we're surprised by how truly full our lives were?"
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"I used to think that God's gifts were on shelves one above the other, and that the taller we grew in Christian character the easier we should reach them. I find now that God's gifts are on shelves one beneath the other, and that is not a question of growing taller but of stooping lower, and that we have to go down, always down, to get His best gifts."
― F.B. Meyer
"Humility is so shy. If you begin talking about it, it leaves."
― Timothy J. Keller
"He must increase and I must decrease — not because that is burden but so that my joy might increase with more of Him!"
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"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."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"And what do I really deserve? Thankfully, God never gives what is deserved, but instead, God graciously, passionately offers gifts, our bodies, our time, our very lives. God does not give rights but imparts responsibilities — response-abilities — inviting us to respond to His love-gifts."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"The secret of joy's flame: 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 winds, 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 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. I can let go."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"I accept the gift of now as it is — accept God — for I can't be receptive to God unless I receive what He gives."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Jesus is about to let flesh be broken with nail, heart be broken with rejection, the chains be broken with bleeding love. And in His last hours before His earthly end, He doesn't run out to buy something or catch a flight to go see something, but He wraps a towel around his waist and kneels low to take the feet of His forsakers gently in hand and wash away the grime between their toes."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"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. Eucharisteo is the hand that opens to receive grace, then, with thanks, breaks the bread; that moves out into the larger circle of life and washes the feet of the world with that grace. Without the breaking and giving, without the washing of feet, eucharisteo isn't complete. The Communion, by necessity, always leads us into community."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Christ's ministry began with His miracle of turning water into wine at the marriage feast in Cana. And at the close of His earthly ministry, Christ turns from the wine of the Last Supper back to the water, the water for the washing of feet."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Passionately serving Christ alone makes us the loving servant to all. 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 its purest state: eucharisteo."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"The work we do is only our love for Jesus in action... 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."
― Mother Teresa
"It's the astonishing truth that while I serve Christ, it is He who serves me. Jesus Christ still lives with a towel around his waist, bent in service to His people... in service to me, as I serve, that I need never serve in my own strength."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Give your life away in exchange for many lives, give away your blessings to multiply blessings, give away so that many might increase, and do it all for the love of God."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Eucharisteo has taught me to trust that there is always enough God. He has no end. He calls us to serve, and it is Him who we serve, but He, very God, kneels down to serve us as we serve. The servant-hearted never serve alone. Spend the whole of your one wild and beautiful life investing in many lives, and God simply will not be outdone. God extravagantly pays back everything we give away and exactly in the currency that is not of this world but the one we yearn for: Joy in Him."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"I see how it is our very presence in each other's lives that makes us the gift. It is by the very function of our being, not our doing, that we are the beloved of God. And so we become the love of God, blessing those He loves."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"I slept and dreamt that life was joy, I awoke and saw that life was service, I acted and behold, service was joy."
― Rabindranath Tagore
"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 - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important."
― C. S. Lewis
"To be a saint is to be fueled by gratitude, nothing more and nothing less."
― Ron Rolheiser
"We're called to do more than believe in God; we're called to live in God. To enter into Christ and Christ enter into us — to cohabit."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Is there a greater way to love the Giver than to delight wildly in His gifts?"
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"Why doubt the dare to fully live? Now and right here. Why not let all of life be penetrated by grace, gratitude, and joy? This is the only way to welcome the Kingdom of God."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
"God is good. Always."
― Ann Voskamp - One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
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