Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 111
December 3, 2018
Feel Dumb to Keep Hoping? The Secret to Finding a Way Forward (Or: First Candle of Advent- Hope)
I’ve never lost hope down some rabbit hole — I’ve lost it looking into reflections in mirrors.
I’ve lost hope looking straight into my own eyes and feeling like there’s no way out of your own skin, out of your past, out of your own tattered story, no way to rip out the smeared and ugly pages of your one story.
I thought I lost hope when life tore a hole in my back pocket of my heart, and my creased and worn-out hope fell out when the bottom of things fell out — you know:
Hope has an inner map and will always wing its way back to you.
when the door clicked close for the last time, when that email landed and kicked hard right in the gut, when the doctor shook his head slow and the room kinda spun, when too many mattering things felt impossibly wrecked, and it’s your life that can feel sorta totalled, and how do you keep going on hoping — when it’s the important parts of your life that are write offs?
But who knew that folded and creased hope unfolds into wings?
Turns out: You can think you’ve lost hope, or you can try to shield yourself from it, abandon it, mock it, guard against it or try to trash it.
But hope is a rising thing and flies to you.
No matter where you are — in the unknown and unfamiliar — Hope is like a homing pigeon that knows how to find its way back home to you.
Because Hope has an inner map and will always wing its way back to you.
You may feel like you’ve lost hope — but Hope never loses track of you.
Hope is always coming home to you.
I’ve lit the first Advent candle, Hope, and I’ve looked long at its reflection in windows and saw myself in the pane. Maybe we’re not meant to find hope in anything in this world, meant to lose hope in things here.
We don’t hope in anything of this world — we hope in God.
Maybe we replace one three word strand — Absolutely no way —- with a 3 word cord that is a lifeline that will never let us go: Hope. In. God.
Hope only seems lost — when you can’t find a way forward.
But maybe:
You can’t lose Hope — because Hope has a name and His name is Jesus and He is the homing wings of heaven who never stops returning Hope home to your heart.
You don’t need to know the way forward, because Hope has a map, and Hope has a name, and His name is Jesus — and Jesus is The Way and when He is your way, there is always a way forward.
Advent whispers:
You always have Hope, because Hope has a map, and He knows the Way forward, because He is the Way, the Truth and the Life and He always makes a way — because that is who He is. Because of the Way — Hope knows the way forward— and Hope always comes back to you to make a way forward.
Hope in God.
And I touch the window pane, touch reflection of face and Advent flame, touch all kinds of pain — and maybe that’s what I feel, how I’m found, how Hope is found … and I can feel Hope’s returning:
You can’t lose Hope — because Hope has a name and His name is Jesus and He is the homing wings of heaven who never stops returning Hope home to your heart.
And then makes a way forward — a way deeper into His own heart.
This year, let His wonder to awaken you again, captivate you, capture your heart!
More Of Jesus Only — and have a STRESS-FREE, HOPE-FULL Christmas.
Just a little invite? Come experience a Christmas like you’ve always dreamed?
So come Christmas morning — you’ve unwrapped the greatest gift you yearn for — more of Him.
And here is an heirloom, a Christmas tradition, a wonder for the child in all of us!
Gather around the Greatest Story this year for the whole family with all 3?
The Greatest Gift (adult edition),
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (family read aloud edition),
and The Wonder of the Greatest Gift (pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)So you don’t miss out on Jesus this year & the The Greatest Christmas.
December 1, 2018
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [12.01.18]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you right here:
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
because sometimes? we all need to snuggle
The Greatest Sermon Nature Ever Gave
so who knew?!?
5 Ways to Free Your Family from Phone Addiction
cheering wildly at this idea: they’re turning baskets courts into work of art… together as community
George the Mouse in a log pile house
George the Mouse in a log pile house
George the Mouse in a log pile house
so they discover a family of mice in their yard? and they build them a village like no other
what. a. ride.
Man-eating fish, Tower of Babel revealed on ancient mosaic
Archaeologists discover even more remarkable biblical scenes on the floor of a 1,600-year-old synagogue in Israel
for parents: Force creates resistance. But great relationships build autonomy
thank you for these words, Scott Sauls:
When You Feel Damaged, Invisible, Irrelevant, and Ashamed
perspective… and kindness right here
The Omaha World-Herald funeral notice for Stanley Stoltz. (Facebook/Omaha Police Department)
Hundreds attend funeral of Vietnam vet with ‘no known family’
so she’s really onto something here: The pop-up supper clubs helping to tackle homelessness in London
this: The Memories, The Sorrow, and the Joy
because we are the hands and feet
enjoy the ride, friends!
pause and ponder right here: O Holy Night
…it’s a crazy ole beautiful, hurting world out there & it can feel like it’s getting crazier & more desperate for HOPE by the minute.
It’s high time for some HOPE people — some HOPE people who believe things can really change for the better, who HOPE for impossible things to turn around, who HOPE for better days ahead:
FOUND: The Secret to Not Losing Hope
just released: The Christmas Song
JoyWares
JoyWares
JoyWares
JoyWares
… that wonderful time of the year to pull out one of our most favourite family traditions:
Our 24 hole wooden Advent wreath, with Mary on a donkey, headed toward the manger and the coming of Emmanuel.
please don’t miss this one:
After a tragic accident, a family’s faith stands as their only hope for a miracle
And we all get to begin together TODAY,December 1!!
The (Gentle) Way Into The Advent that You Need (with Printable Night Before Advent Kit)
yes, yes, yes: Thrill of Hope, with my friend, Christy Nockels
Live near (or know anyone?) New Berlin, WI? Palos Heights, IL?
Last 2 events are tonight and tomorrow!
You should come! We make you a promise:
A spectacular night of wonder …
an unforgettable night of light and hope …
a night that will be the beginning of the kind of Christmas you’ve always dreamed of.
I would absolutely love to meet you as I join Christy Nockels (I mean — this woman’s heart! No one leads to the feet of Jesus quite like this woman) and her beautiful family for the final two nights of her Night of Hope Christmas Tour this year.
Really — gather your people and come: we’d love to meet you! All the details are here.
Post of the week from these parts here:
…right there in the middle of your mess…THIS, this, is the heart-bursting, soul-reviving love story that’s been coming for us all since the very beginning:
How to Prepare for an Easy Advent: While Your Life Feels Like a Mess
on repeat this week: Emmanuel, God with us
yeah… just a little invite? to come experience a Christmas like never before?
Come experience a Christmas like you’ve always dreamed of…
So come Christmas morning, you haven’t missed Him?
So come Christmas morning — you’ve unwrapped the greatest gift you yearn for — more of Him.
Don’t miss out on the gift of the life you’ve always wanted.
December is here!
Maybe this month, we all just need the gift of Joy… a bit of Hope? To stand together — FOR each other — knowing that an act of kindness, giving it forward, can be more powerful than any sword in starting movements that move us all toward Love.
Want the gift of light breaking into all the broken places, into all the places that feel kinda abandoned? These pages are for you. It’s possible — abundant joy is always possible, especially for you. Break free with the tender beauty of The Broken Way & Be The Gift …
And if you grab a copy of Be The Gift? We will immediately email you a link to a FREE gift of THE WHOLE 12 MONTH *Intentional* Acts of Givenness #BeTheGIFT Calendar to download and print! Just let us know that you ordered Be The Gift over here.
You only get one life to love well.
Pick up Be The Gift & live the life you’ve longed to
… so whatever this new day has looming, in this new month that can feel like the hardest month of all, there’s this quiet Advent resolve:
This season isn’t about things — it’s about Him. His coming, His story, His glory. This week, this day, this moment — is simply about Him.
Simplicity isn’t a matter of circumstances — it’s a matter of focus. And a Simple Christmas — simply foc uses on Christ…
Sometimes: You don’t think of Jesus as everything — until you have nothing but Jesus. And this week, this season? We want nothing but Jesus — because we’re brave enough to believe He is our everything.
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
Milwaukee! Chicago! You Should Come This Weekend!
You should come this weekend!
It’s the most wonderful way to begin Advent!
We make you a promise:
A spectacular night of wonder …
an unforgettable night of light and hope …
a night that will be the beginning of the kind of Christmas you’ve always dreamed of.
I would absolutely love to meet you as I join Christy Nockels (I mean — this woman’s heart! No one leads to the feet of Jesus quite like this woman) and her beautiful family for the final two nights of her Night of Hope Christmas Tour this year.
Come. Your heart wants this the most.
To pause and exhale in the holy hush of His presence —
and the wonder of blazing hope that will not only transform your holidays this year —
but it will change your heart for the coming year.
Really — gather your people and come: All the details are here
I’ll see you there,
Your farm girl,
Ann
November 30, 2018
The (Gentle) Way Into The Advent that You Need (with Printable Night Before Advent Kit)
When I found this little ceramic Christmas tree from the 70’s — that had no star?
Just a table-top tree with translucent multi-colored bulbs, up on the upper shelf of a piled and tilting thrift store?
Yeah, I rescued a sting of childhood memories and brought that chipped star-less tree home.
Love always lightens us.
Because it’s almost December the 1st, and the hype ends now, like someone, thank God Almighty, duct-taped all the grating noise and made a sacred space of sane stillness.
These are loud and wounding days of right reckoning. News streams are a torrent of pain. A lady yells at me on the way home with this blister of 40 tongue-lashings.
And I’m telling you: When we dash one person’s light — we dash a world of light, because we tend to pass on our pain, instead of passing the peace.
Maybe when we are most disillusioned with each other, is when most need to be blaze illumination for each other.
JoyWares
JoyWares
And before I tuck her in for the night, we open up The Wonder of the Greatest Gift — and there it is — she has a tree, her very own tree, right in her lap.
The practice of Advent is participating in the ancient expectancy of the Messiah — and ardently expecting Him again.
And we read December 1st’s reading — and she holds in her hands the story of her family tree, the family tree of Jesus, the grafted-in family tree of the people of God — and her eyes light, and she opens the first of those 25 Advent flaps, and hangs the first Advent ornament, and I can’t help blink it back in all this light.
“Can I, Mama?” She looks up. “Can I take out the star, Mama?” And I nod and she cups the star in her hand and beams.
And I don’t notice it until I tuck the covers in underneath her chin, stroke her hair back, brush one last kiss on the top of her head: she’s fallen asleep holding the star in her hand.
The Girl’s becoming a little Light Poker.
The Girl’s sleeping with Light. The Girl’s becoming Light. All His light.
Now is the season to be a star that shatters the dark.
You see it everywhere you turn these days of Advent:
What breaks any dark
is the courage of just one star.
And we all get to begin together!
Just a little invite? Come experience a Christmas like you’ve always dreamed?
So come Christmas morning — you’ve unwrapped the greatest gift you yearn for — more of Him.
Gather around the Greatest Story this year for the whole family with all 3?
And we all get to begin together on December 1!!
The Greatest Gift (adult edition),
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (family read aloud edition),
and The Wonder of the Greatest Gift (pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
annnnd?
The Whole “Night Before Advent” Kit is free for you right here [just scroll over the photo, and then click on download]
The Free Printable Advent Calendar is here for you in red, or in snow blue or chalkboard black [just scroll over the photo that pops up, and then click on download]
And the printable bookmark of the poem: “The Night Before Advent”
Click over to The Greatest Christmas and Check out our whole library of free printable ornaments, cards, gift tags, gifts boxes, Sticky Notes for Your Soul, Advent Calendars and more — our gift to you for The Greatest Christmas!
November 29, 2018
FOUND: The Secret to Not Losing Hope
She’d dropped her voice when she told me that first Sunday of Advent that the kid had tried to kill himself.
That there had been texts, photos of a rope, proof of how it was going to be done.
And then this call to 911.
This was the part that she didn’t have words for.
Her hands flailed a bit, like she was drowning, like her flooding tears were drowning her, and she choked and flailed, reached for words to steady herself, as if she could just find words, she could drag herself up out of the depths.
How do you make words stretch around an entire ocean of ache?
When your heart is detonated on an unassuming morning and this whole dam lets go and you’re swept away in this flood of pain?
Joy Prouty
JoyWares
She stood there in front of me like a woman underwater, like a woman underwater who kept talking, as if words were coming out, as if I could hear them, but there were no sounds. Only this death gurgle.
There was nothing that seemed right except to look right into her eyes and not look away. Death gurgles can’t be helped up to air by words, by mere, smothering words.
Death gurgles only gasp relief with the gift of presence, by someone taking you close, lifting you with the soundless warmth of themselves.
I reached for her hand. We found our legs and stood. We went for a walk. Yeah, no chocolate therapy. Neither one of us drink. So you do what teetolaters and 40-something women who don’t need anymore calories can actually do – I asked her if she had time to step into the conservatory down by the river.
The butterfly conservatory on the first Sunday of Advent. The first Sunday of Advent when everywhere there is this lighting of the Hope candle. When hope rattled more like a death gurgle in her and the boy was somewhere in the bowels of a pyschiatric ward where they try to wrench you from ropes and bed sheets and your own strangling demons.
Maybe if she saw the lighting and flying, maybe she could believe in things unseen?
I held the conservatory’s door open for her.
It’s what hit you when you first stepped into the glass dome — the lightness of the air in here. Here, for a moment, she could breathe here. The waterfall kept murmuring of things coming from somewhere else. Wings, everywhere wings, lighting and lifting, a thousand wings.
She did put one foot in front of the other. This can be biggest brave.
We all need to believe that things can change.
And what she was feeling were actual facts — the boy had been pummelled. People who should have loved him had abused him of all dignity. Places that should have carried him had mercilessly, mockingly crushed him. Promises that should have helped him up had laughed loud and kicked him in the gut. How busted up can you be before your only future is to bust up everyone else?
How do you sand down the razor shards of a shattered heart and piece them together enough so they don’t go around blithely slashing everyone else? How do you hope unlikely things because you love someone to death?
We stood for a long time and stared at the chrysalises.
Thin sheens hung by threads. It didn’t seem possible – that out of silken threads, wings unfolded wet. But we watched it happen.
There were no words. Simply witnessing. We sat at the waterfall. We waited.
“A blue one….” she said it quiet.
“I need just one photo of a blue morpho butterfly, and then we really have to go.” Yes, the morpho butterfly — whose very name means changed. We all need to believe that things can change.
So we tried.
Hope lights on you and Hope’s just up ahead nodding that it’s going to be okay — you will be okay.
Like wanna-be hunters on some scam safari, weilding cameras for just one shot, we slunk up quiet to this bloom with its mouth opened like a candy bowl of tempting nectar, we snuck behind that lily and this leaf, and the whole farce was good comic relief, us looking more like bad detectives in a cheap 1970’s rerun. Everywhere morpho butterflies slapped shut their inner blue wings, stared back steely at us with their drab outer brown wings.
Please, Lord – just give her one open spread of blue wings. For crying prayers out loud, just a bit of hope to take out of here.
We waited. Did what the wisest have always done: Waited and Hoped. And the morpho butterfly just outwaited us.
Flitted blue now and then, always a flash on the periphery, glanced us with possibility, but wherever we spun, it locked us out with a determined bland brown.
We’re standing there with our waiting cameras and our frames of brown, without a hint of blue —
and I look over at my friend and you can read it like a headline, her flat resignation.
Like she’s struggling to breathe again.
A walk through a butterfly conservatory that was supposed to be this metaphor of hope — is fast turning into this mockery of hope.
Sometimes believing in a miracle feels like living in a mirage. You can feel like a fool, walking around with your pitcher. Waiting for a picture.
Really, God? Really?
“My battery is about dead…” She looks down at her camera. She doesn’t have to tell me that there’s a lot more deadened than that. “Let’s go.”
I turn my camera off, nod. What else do you say to a woman who just can’t stand the teasing evasiveness of hope mocking her one moment longer?
So I duck under some leaves across the conservatory walkway and a conservatory park ranger brushes past me and I look for the door – and the park ranger whispers: S.T.O.P.
“One of the morphos has landed on you. Right on you.”
I don’t move. I turn slow to look for his stubborn outer brown wings.
“And he’s wide open blue.” The park ranger kneels. “You don’t understand — they don’t do this. They’re the ones that don’t land on people. And they about never rest in their wide open blue.”
My friend nods, she knows, mouth wide open, raising her camera, she knows.
She clicks, snaps, shoots, takes more. More people stop, take more photos. The park ranger asks for my camera, takes a few more. “You don’t understand,” he whispers… “it’s about impossible to get photos of them with their wings in their open blue.”
I nod – whisper it over the indigo wings open there on my shoulder: “And then sometimes — the impossible unfolds into the possible.”
I look over at my friend… who is brimming. Spilling.
Tears are never a sign of weakness. Tears are always the sign of an open heart.
And I mouth it to her, like it’s more certain without any sound, like I don’t want it to slip away from either one of us:
“HOPE.”
It’s the first Sunday of Advent. Hope candles are lit everywhere. God is giving you Hope.
Hope — for you.
For you with the kid that seems to have no way through, for you with the heart beaten right down, for you with so much black in front of you that you can’t find the light, for you who can’t see tomorrow being any glint bit better than today —
Hope lights on you and Hope’s just up ahead nodding that it’s going to be okay — you will be okay.
My friend, she’s nodding at me. Nodding at this wide open blue butterfly on my shoulder. And her face is right wet, an ocean of ache running like a waterfall of hope now, right off the edge of her chin, and she chokes it out — “How could we ever not believe? How can we ever not hope in impossible things now?”
The butterfly refuses to close its wings — refuses to do anything but remain open.
And I nod yes, yes because it’s a paradox: the way to hold fast to what you’re hoping for, is to hold that Hope with openness.
With openness, hold fast to that Hope — for if the Hope ebbs away, you become a broken wing who cannot fly.
No matter how we’re hurting — it’s only when we lose hope that the real horror happens.
She’s shoulder wracked, wet, heaving with the relief of it and I pull her close and pray like we’ve been touched, like He’s come near the very first Sunday of Advent and Hope candles blazing everywhere unwavering and there’s a boy who can believe — and live — and there’s a weary woman who’s rising and there’s Christ who comes to give us the gift every one wants more than anything — a future and a hope.
“25 minutes.” She whispers. “That morph butterfly has sat on your shoulder for almost 25 minutes.”
And I nod. Of course.
The very least you can do with your life is welcome in Hope. And He has a name.
And the very best you can do with your life is build a life with Hope.
Live right under a roof of Hope.
Sure, hope feels risky. Sure, hope feels like you’re under a fragile roof that could implode, a roof that could get ripped off and leave you staring up at the sky.
But then you’d just stand and look and trust you were meant to see stars.
You’d just stand and look and trust that you were meant to soar.
The morpho butterfly rests with these open wings on me.
And we rest with these open hands in Him.
And we walk on through, the winged thing never leaving, never leaving, never closing, and it’s a bit like what Dickinson said, but different, and it all still clings to me —
“Hope is the thing with wings
That lands at the end of you
And shows you how to open to possibilities
So you never close again.”
This year, let His wonder to awaken you again, captivate you, capture your heart!
More Of Jesus Only — and have a STRESS-FREE, HOPE-FULL Christmas.
Just a little invite? Come experience a Christmas like you’ve always dreamed?
So come Christmas morning — you’ve unwrapped the greatest gift you yearn for — more of Him.
And here is an heirloom, a Christmas tradition, a wonder for the child in all of us!
Gather around the Greatest Story this year for the whole family with all 3?
The Greatest Gift (adult edition),
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (family read aloud edition),
and The Wonder of the Greatest Gift (pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)So you don’t miss out on Jesus this year & the The Greatest Christmas.
November 28, 2018
How to Prepare for an Easy Advent: While Your Life Feels Like a Mess
Snow’s coming down here now like confetti for a party that just won’t stop and the orchard just keeps on welcoming the whole thing.
Yeah, so only a few days now.
That’s what Advent means — coming.
Only a few more days now and it’s Advent — this waiting for the coming of the holy party.
And Kai’s shaking trees like a big kid at the party and grinning that there are apples still hanging on the trees in the orchard in the middle of all our shaking snow globe.
Kai’s got the trees feting him now and the dog’s romping like some circus act under the shaking branches —
and if snow falls off trees in the orchard does anybody hear the sound of wonders coming?
This, this, is the love story that’s been coming for you since the beginning.
It happens when you open the pages of Scripture to read of His coming, of this first Advent, before you ever read of the birth of Jesus — you always have the genealogy of Jesus.
Yeah, maybe that’s the way the Gift unwraps: you have to have Christ’s family tree . . . before you have a Christmas tree.
We’re standing out there in trees and the snow coming down and it feels like relief:
If you don’t come to Christmas through Christ’s family tree and you come into the Christmas story just at the Christmas tree — it’s hard then to understand the meaning of His coming.
Because without the genealogy of Christ, the limbs of His past, the branches of His family, the love story of His heart that has been coming for you since before the beginning –— how does Christmas and its tree stand? Its roots would be sheared. The arresting pause of the miracle would be lost.
Because in the time of prophets and kings, the time of Mary and Joseph, it wasn’t your line of credit, line of work, or line of accomplishments that explained who you were. It was your family line. It was your family tree.
It was family that mattered. Family gives you context, and origin gives you understanding, and the family tree of Christ always gives you hope.
The coming of Christ was right through families of messed-up monarchs and battling brothers, through affairs and adultery and more than a feud or two, through skeletons in closets and cheaters at tables.
It was in that time of prophets and kings, the time of Mary and Joseph, that men were in genealogies and women were invisible. But for Jesus, women had names and stories and lives that mattered.
The family tree of Christ startlingly notes not one woman but four. Four broken women—women who felt like outsiders, like has-beens, like never-beens.
Women who were weary of being taken advantage of, of being unnoticed and uncherished and unappreciated; women who didn’t fit in, who didn’t know how to keep going, what to believe, where to go—women who had thought about giving up.
And Jesus claims exactly these who are wandering and wondering and wounded and worn out as His. He grafts you into His line and His story and His heart, and He gives you His name, His lineage, His righteousness. He graces you with plain grace.
Is there a greater Gift you could want or need or have?
Christ comes right to your Christmas tree and looks at your family tree and says, “I am your God, and I am one of you, and I’ll be the Gift, and I’ll take you. Take Me?”
This, this, is the love story that’s been coming for you since the beginning.
You don’t want to miss it — miss Him.
So there’s this pause and investing in what matters. There is a Stilling. Pondering. Hushing. Each day of Advent, He gives the gift of time — so we 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.
There, here, in the midst of the inconceivable, the loud claims, the hard sells, the big spectacles, Christ comes small, the micro- macro-miracle who comes in the whisper and says, Seek Me.
Just where you are, look for the small glimpses of God-glory breaking in, breaking out, sprouting, shooting, unfurling, making a Kingdom, remaking the world, bearing fruit.
The theology of the Tree, of the Cross, always seeks the presence of God in the belittled gifts of the world.
The small Babe of Bethlehem, the dismissed Son of God, the stripped and beaten Messiah hanging exposed on the Tree — He begs us to spend the attention of Advent on the little. On the little, the least, the lonely, the lost.
Because in the rush, in the hurry, in our addiction to speed –— there might be miracles if we slow and don’t step on the unassuming shoot that sprouts from the stump.
When Kai turns with Shalom to run in from the orchard with the dog, you can see it — hear it.
The apple trees hanging out in the orchard — they look ornaments hanging waiting even in these moments, like the decking has begun.
And when snow falls off a tree in the orchard and you are there to hear it — maybe it makes the sound of grace?
Advent, it is made of the moments —
all this slow unfurling of grace.
This year, let His wonder to awaken you again, captivate you, capture your heart!
More Of Jesus Only — and have a STRESS-FREE, WONDER-FULL Christmas.
Just a little invite? Come experience a Christmas like you’ve always dreamed?
So come Christmas morning, you haven’t missed Him?
So come Christmas morning — you’ve unwrapped the greatest gift you yearn for — more of Him.And here is an heirloom, a Christmas tradition, a wonder for the child in all of us!
Gather around the Greatest Story this year for the whole family with all 3?
The Greatest Gift (adult edition),
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (family read aloud edition),
and The Wonder of the Greatest Gift (pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)So you don’t miss out on Jesus this year & the The Greatest Christmas.
November 27, 2018
HEART EYES: Have you SEEN this St. Louis! St. Paul! New Berlin! Palos Heights!
Live near (or know anyone?) St. Louis, MO? St. Paul, MN? New Berlin, WI? Palos Heights?
You should come!
We make you a promise:
A spectacular night of wonder …
an unforgettable night of light and hope …
a night that will be the beginning of the kind of Christmas you’ve always dreamed of.
I would absolutely love to meet you as I join Christy Nockels (I mean — this woman’s heart! No one leads to the feet of Jesus quite like this woman) and her beautiful family for the first four nights of her Night of Hope Christmas Tour this year.
Come. Your heart wants this the most.
To pause and exhale in the holy hush of His presence —
and the wonder of blazing hope that will not only transform your holidays this year —
but it will change your heart for the coming year.
Really — gather your people and come: All the details are here
I’ll see you there,
Your farm girl,
Ann
November 26, 2018
You + THIS = Your DREAM Christmas
Okay, so here’s the deal: Your DREAM Christmas?
It can be simple — & it’s not too late.
It can be easy — & it’s what you’ve always wanted.
It’s the dream you’ve always hoped for your Christmas — because (promise):
This, right here? It can center your heart every day between now & Christmas morning–
so you don’t miss out on the kind of Christmas your heart wants most.
It’s our family’s absolute favorite time of year — because we simply do this:
Recapture the wonder — the kind of wonder you long for every Christmas
First, each night simply: Light a candle. And then take just these 5-ish minutes:
Take just 5-ish easy (centering, calming and thrillingly beautiful) minutes each day of from December 1st till Christmas morning to read that day’s bit of glorious wonder and light — and unwrap the dreamy gift your heart wants most. And we promise?
These aren’t your average Advent reads. Because?
1. Each of the 25 devotionals begin where you never expected — and will end where you only dreamed.
These Advent journeys tell the whole story — from the very beginning of time. And show how all Stories are telling Jesus’ love story for us.
2. Each are your own larger-than-life Advent Calendar, opening up to 25 wondrous stories that tell the family tree of Jesus — and our own family tree that we’ve been grafted into — right from Creation to His Coming — so you are captured again by the wonder of the WHOLE STORY!
These Advent Journeys — will not only be telling Jesus’ love story for you — but will have you falling in love with Jesus’s love letter for you, His Word, all over again.
Talk about recapturing the wonder — the wonder for HIS WORD!
Annnnnd?
3. Each day’s story has its very own ornament, one for each day of Advent — all unwrapping a bit more of a story that’s far better than the greatest fairy tale you’ve ever read —- because this Story is all true. So come Christmas day — your family — and your Christmas tree with all 25 ornaments– , will be telling the WHOLE love story of Jesus’ coming, right from the very beginning!
Each page’s like a needed embrace during the racing pace of the season.
For the Whole Family:
Adults? The NYT Bestseller, The Greatest Gift,
Named by Christian Retailer’s Association as Best Devotional of the Year for 2014
Family Read Aloud? NYT Bestseller, Unwrapping The Greatest Gift,
Named by The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association as Best Inspirational Book of the Year for 2016
For all ages?
Open up this book and be surprised (!!!) The Wonder of the Greatest Gift
Your own POP-UP SURPRISE 14 inch tree,
25 day small booklet of short readings,
25 day very real advent flaps,
hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments (!!) to hang on your very own POP-UP TREE!
What better gift to give the whole family this Christmas —
than the wonder of the WHOLE love story of Jesus?
This is the year — to have a
DREAMY LITTLE CHRISTMAS.
Simple — over stress
Wonder — over worry
Holy — over hype
The Greatest Gift — over all the other gifts
Really want a DREAM-COME-TRUE Christmas?
Your most fulfilling Greatest Christmas — Unwrapping the Greatest Gift —
Easiest Way to have the Most WONDERful Little Christmas — Instead of a Stressful Christmas
So this turns out to be the tenderest relief, just 5 Mondays from Christmas Eve:
When the holidays hit this year, we’re all choosing holy days more than hyped-up days.
Holy days — over hyped-up holidays. Falling in love — over falling in debt. Wonder — over worry.
When the holidays hit this year, we’re all not choosing to fall more in debt because of consumerism, but were choosing to fall more in love because of Christ.
When the holidays hit this year, we’re all not going to be hit by all the worry — we’re choosing to be hushed by all His wonder.
Holy days — over hyped-up holidays. Falling in love — over falling in debt. Wonder — over worry.
The wonders of His love are everywhere — if you are in love with the wonder of Him. This is how the brilliant live.
So when she opens it up, I stop everything, and kneel right down.
“Look, Mama!” She laughs like a shower of stars.
Our baby girl’s eyes are saucers — awed.
I’m lit by her brazen wonder, her unabashed enthusiasm.
Enthusiasm always blazes within the best life — because enthusiasm comes from entheos — which literally means “God within.”
She holds this book wide open with contagious, igniting enthusiasm — God’s within, God’s within.
The book she’s holding in her hands, I wrote as a surprise, when she was just a prayer I was holding in my heart for all I was worth.
And now the wonder of her is here with us — and she’s holding this book for all her pudgy little fists are worth: “The Wonder of The Greatest Gift.”
When the holidays hit this year, we choose wonder — because wonder is one step toward choosing a wonderful life.
Nothing wonderful happens in our lives without wonder. Wonder makes this a wonderful life. Wonder nurtures wisdom.
If the next generation is to have any wisdom, then this generation must choose wonder now.
Wonder now over grace and mercy and the ways of Jesus, because we have never needed His ways more than now.
And I grin, witnessing her fascination over that rising tree. Because the legacy we’ve got to leave, to centre the next generation, is the knowing that at the centre of our Garden Beginning and His Christmas Coming and our Calvary Saving, there always stands a tree that roots them forever and sets them free for eternity.
And nothing stands firmly anywhere, unless its rooted in the very beginning and the tree of Calvary, and the wonder that we’re grafted into the family tree of God.
She leans over the open book, her little fingers groping along the edges of the Advent flaps, one by one — wide-eyed, wonder seeking.
God’s within. God’s within.
Behind one of the 25 Advent flaps, she finds an ornament — a tree stump with reaching green shoots — to hang on her risen tree.
Him shall the nations, and the next generation, seek.
This Christmas, the nations, and our generation, and the next generation, are ultimately seeking, not more plastic, not more pixels, not more products — we are seeking, whether we know it or not, more of the presence of Jesus — the Greatest Gift.
She’s turning the more than 100 pages of that booklet behind the first flap, that tells story after story from the Greatest Story ever told, from Creation to the Creche — of how nothing ever has stopped His love from coming for us.
“Nothing is worthwhile compared to this—searching Scripture…seeking the truth of God’s Word,” Elie Wiesel once said.
For the nations— and the next generation — to seek Him — this generation can seek nothing less.
And I nod, knowing— this is the year.
This is the year to forget whatever the bombardment of ads keep trying to pummel us all into believing.
This is the year to give the wonder of living in the land of the living.
Forget burying our kids in more plastic trinkets, forget piling the debt and a culture of death on them, forget giving them what cannot last.
Nothing is more important than leaving to the next generation the land of wondrous living, and nothing is more at risk. Just turn on the news.
The legacy we, the people, want to leave to our children, the next generation, is the wonder of dwelling in the land of the living, a land where our roots are nourished in the truth of miracle of Whose we are, and the shattering grace of where we come from, and the astonishing hope of who we’re meant to be.
This is the year — we give our people the gift of our story — so they know the story — their story —their family tree. Right from our genesis beginning to our King’s coming under Bethlehem’s star — this is our story.
And I lean in and kiss the of my baby girl’s head. She will know who she is, Whose she is and she will know her story.
This story is our inheritance — The Greatest Story ever told. And we will claim our inheritance.
When we reclaim the wonder of Christmas — we reclaim the wonder of living.
The wonder of living in the land of the real, wondrous living. W e could get to live a wonderful life.
Our baby girl grins a whole world wide as she turns back the 25th flap and pulls out that star.
She’s bursting, tangible joy as she leans in to places that glowing atop her own tree, her own crowning, Christ-formed story.
What matters more? Our children will know their whole story, know their beginning, know their roots, know their place in the family tree of God — there, right next to His heart. Beloved.
God’s within. God’s within.
This is the year: The way to get our Christmas MOJO back — is More Of Jesus Only.
Christmas is about: JOMO for MOJO — the Joy Of Missing Out (on all the pressure!) — for More Of Jesus Only (all of His presence!)
#JOMO for #MOJO
JoyOfMissingOut …. for … MoreOfJesusOnly
When she smiles over at me, I blink it back — she’s holding her own story — and the Wonder of the Greatest Gift.
And it’s hers. All of ours.
Christ came and claimed us and we claim our inheritance of the land of the really living and all the wonders of His love.
This is a gift of hope, of love, of wonder — that all of our hearts long to be captivated and captured by — and released into the gift our hearts want most– HIM!
This is an heirloom, a Christmas tradition —- a wonder for the child in all of us!
And there’s all this golden light flooding the place, lighting up her very own tree — the Tree for all of us.
All this wonder that all those living too long in the shadows — can now feel a great light dawning.
She laughs.
The enthusiasm — the wonder.
God within. God within.
This year, let His wonder to awaken you again, captivate you, capture your heart!
More Of Jesus Only — and have a STRESS-FREE, WONDER-FULL Christmas.
Just a little invite? Come experience a Christmas like you’ve always dreamed?
So come Christmas morning, you haven’t missed Him?
So come Christmas morning — you’ve unwrapped the greatest gift you yearn for — more of Him.And here is an heirloom, a Christmas tradition, a wonder for the child in all of us!
Gather around the Greatest Story this year for the whole family with all 3?
The Greatest Gift (adult edition),
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (family read aloud edition),
and The Wonder of the Greatest Gift (pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)So you don’t miss out on Jesus this year & the The Greatest Christmas.
November 24, 2018
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [11.25.18]
Happy, happy, happy weekend, JUST BEFORE ADVENT!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you right here:
Jelena Simic Petrovic
Jelena Simic Petrovic
Jelena Simic Petrovic
you’ve gotta just take a minute to take in all the wonder of this life
choked up here : kindness is everywhere
can’t get enough of this one this week
for your encouragement: 4 ways to raise kids who love Jesus
heart kinda undone
Sabrina Boem The Catographer
Sabrina Boem The Catographer
Sabrina Boem The Catographer
she captures the love and logic of monorail cats
what a story – and it’s only just beginning: “I was just following God”
You should come!
Live in St. Louis? St. Paul, MO? New Berlin, WI? Palos Heights, IL?
Come to the best way to start off this Christmas season?
Come see us both at Night of Hope Tour: A Family Christmas!
just. so. much. love.
10 Years After Loss. Ways God Used the Death of Our Daughter…For Good
inseparable friends are the best kind of friends
Finding Hope in the Ashes:
How to Respond to the California Fires
This could be the Christmas to just be kinda crazy grateful for all the gifts around us everywhere
this is just too good to miss:
The Traveler’s Guide to iPhone Photography
Let us always remember: Time is a crazy, beautiful gift
Joni Eareckson Tada Receives New Cancer Diagnosis:
“Jesus is ecstasy beyond compare and if new hardships draw us closer to Him, I’m more than content with it.” ~Joni
this beautiful wedding walk sorta defied all the odds
amazed: Without Limbs He Conquered the Impossible
4 Life-Changing Holiday Words…
because we’re all trying to figure out Holidays? Life? What’s Next? Where To Go?
And these 4 Life-Changing Words Are a Compass Forward.
Wish I had known just this far far sooner
He loves us, restores, us, makes us clean: this Christmas find freedom, this Christmas be seen.
… that wonderful time of the year to pull out one of our most favourite family traditions:
Our 24 hole wooden Advent wreath, with Mary on a donkey, headed toward the manger and the coming of Emmanuel.
could not love this more: don’t give up. He’s always listening.
watched and sent to a few people we love: Love…is a gift
POST OF THE WEEK FROM THESE PARTS:
Why It’s Okay For the Holidays to Start Feeling Dark
on repeat this week: Noel: the story of amazing love
yeah… just a little invite? to come experience a Christmas like never before?
Come experience a Christmas like you’ve always dreamed of…
So come Christmas morning, you haven’t missed Him?
So come Christmas morning — you’ve unwrapped the greatest gift you yearn for — more of Him.
…so it kinda looks like: the one thing we must pray to be great at is thanksgiving — because it’s the one thing that makes God great in our lives.
And it kinda looks like: No matter what the headlines shout, the world only has two stories: bless God or curse God.
No matter what the world tries to sell, we all only get to choose from two shelves: Give God thanks or Give God the door.
No matter what we’re facing, there are always only two roads: thanksgiving to God or dismissing of God.
And you know — if you let something steal your thanksgiving, you let something steal your joy, and if you let something steal your joy, you let something steal your strength.
Let nothing steal your thanksgiving to God – so that in everything you can stand strong in God.
Bottom line: We will give thanks to God not because of how we feel, but because of who He is.
No disaster, no storm, no cancellation, no termination, no catastrophe will stop us from giving thanks.
Because we know:
No matter where we are, every thanksgiving always brings us home — because giving thanks always bringing you home to the heart of God.
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
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