Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 119
July 14, 2018
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [07.14.18]
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:
From our family’s week together in Israel:
Levi Voskamp
Levi Voskamp
Levi Voskamp
love seeing the world through our Levi’s eyes
From our IG this week: #VoskampsInIsrael #TheWayWhereThereIsNoWay
You too were praying for those precious Thai boys trapped in the cave? No. kidding.
Check out this excursion through the largest cave on planet earth
when hospital employees pray for their patients
… so what does it look like to just live a life away from the noise of it all — making an island of your own?
if you every thought about finding your own island?
need to cool down right about now? you too?
Samuel Bloch
Samuel Bloch
Samuel Bloch
calm long at the wonder & wonder of His creation
love grafts us all in and we all – every single one of us, no matter what — get to belong
.. one of my very dearest friend, Joy Prouty with the tenderest story:MARTIN’S FAMILY ADOPTION
“Abide in me, and I in you.” ~ John 15
Spiritual Growth is Not an Accident
“I’m doing my best to accept things as they come, to trust in God’s plan.”
She’s a cherished, wise friend: Ginny thinking about ‘working’ at relaxing
the week that my Dad makes the news & I could just hug him the absolute tightest for his brave
I just love my Dad something fierce for the brave of trying to love our farm hometown back to life
You really need to get to stand in awe of God and His glory at Yosemite this summer
This is kinda what it means to become like little children — and isn’t it the best?
Let’s just go out and love each other like this today!
In writing my books, The Broken Way, and Be The Gift, I wrote of how my father, a seventh-generation farmer, spoke of seeds and how the process of growth looks like devastation: ‘For a seed to come fully into its own, it must become wholly undone. The shell must break open, its insides must come out, and everything must change. If you didn’t understand what life looks like, you might mistake it for complete destruction.’ What I attributed to my father appears to have originated with author Cynthia Occelli, was used without correct attribution or permission, and I humbly apologize for any confusion, and am profoundly grateful to make the correct attribution to Cynthia Occelli.
You only get one life to love well.
Break free with the tender beauty of Be The Gift …
“The greatest thing we can do is to help somebody know they’re loved,” Rogers says in an interview in the movie. To dramatize this conviction, he ended every show by looking right into the camera and saying with a smile “You always make each day such a special day—by just your being you.”
Mr. Rogers: Won’t you be my neighbor?
Five Star. What the Farmer and I have been listening to. This is profoundly worth every moment of your time
What can Christianity offer our society in the 21st century?
“Supposedly the brain excretes endorphins when a person’s mind is stimulated, when a person is thinking imaginatively and creatively. Endorphins are opioids, as you may have heard; they have a similar chemical structure to morphine.”
Reading good books is like bliss for your brain.
A reason to go to the library this weekend: Let us now praise libraries, librarians
“You can live your life wishing you are something else, but you still have got to enjoy what you have.”
Have you heard the pretty incredible wonder of this girl? Little Nora (The Banjo Prodigy)
“A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.” – George A. Moore …
a needed soul stirring walk this weekend At home | A Journey Back to Greece.
the beauty of the Imago Dei, the image of God, is everywhere:
this is kinda remarkably wonderful: Giving Artists with Disability a Space to Thrive
“Look everywhere. Go look next door. You don’t know what you’ll find.”
… loving each other is kinda the best
okay, let’s all pile in to do more of this!
need to power up this weekend?
oh yeah: now is the time to cheer each other on, folks!
…watching this our daughter and we both choked up over the realest good news.
Absolutely undone: This is the Gospel
yep, the world’s hurting — and this is a lot of the joy for the world right now
you were singing with them too, aren’t you?
… so a girl of ours cranked this week in Israel
…and we’ve been playing it on repeat all week
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.
The post Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [07.14.18] appeared first on Ann Voskamp.
July 11, 2018
When You’re Tired of Pretending Everything’s Okay
So you can look up at the calendar today and exhale:
It’s okay to feel bone tired — you have One who gives His bone and His body for you and beckoned: Come Rest.
It’s okay to feel disillusioned — you have One who destroys cheap illusions of perfection and offers you His.
It’s okay to feel done — you have One who listens to the last nail be driven in and proclaims all the hellish things finished.
It’s okay to feel battered and bruised — you have One who storms your battles, takes back everything that needs a comeback, and proves His side won.
It’s okay to feel a bit like a fool — you have One who proves that real love always makes anyone the wisest fool who gives more, lives more, forgives more, because love defies logic, because love is the self-giving, cruciform foolishness that is the ultimate wisdom of the universe.
It’s okay to feel behind — you have One who is the Head and the Author and the Maker and the Finisher and the Carrier and the Warrior and nothing is over until He carries you over the finish line.
Levi Voskamp
Levi Voskamp
Levi Voskamp
Levi Voskamp
Levi Voskamp 
Levi Voskamp
Levi Voskamp
Levi VoskampIt’s okay to feel on the outside — you have One who is passionate about you on the inside, who wants to be with you so desperately, He moves into you, gets into your skin, so you’re never alone, dwells in you, moves into your empty places, your rejected places, your abandoned places and fills you with chosenness and wholeness and with-ness — because He knows the fulfilled life is an inside job.
You have One who left the clamor of the 99, to find you, remind you, remake you, rename you, release you.
It’s okay to feel spent — you have One who pays you all His attention, who says you are worth costing Him everything — and then He bought you back from the pit because you are priceless to Him.
It’s okay to feel whatever you feel — “because you don’t judge your feelings; you feel your feelings—and then give them to God.”
“Feelings are meant be fully felt and then fully surrendered to God.”
“Pain begs to be felt—or life will beg you to feel not one emotion at all. Emotion means movement — and emotions are meant to move you toward God.” ~ The Broken Way
It’s okay to not feel okay — because you have One — who made you His one.
You have One who left the clamor of the 99, to find you, remind you, remake you, rename you, release you.
You have One who is more ready to forgive what you’ve done, than you are to forget,
His love for you is magnetic, His welcome of you is galactic, His purpose through you is cosmic, His commitment to you is stratospheric, and His hope in you is meteoric.
One who is more ready to give you grace, than you are to give up,
One who is more than ready to always stand with you, than you are to run.
One who is a greater lover, rescuer, saviour, friend— than you have ever imagined Him to beeven when your love for Him is most on fire.
This week, these worries, this world, may leave you feeling a bit depressed — but you have a God who is obsessed with you.
His love for you is magnetic, His welcome of you is galactic, His purpose through you is cosmic, His commitment to you is stratospheric , and His hope in you is meteoric.
It’s beautiful how that goes:
Whatever the story is today — it’s okay. Because we know the ending — and how it will be the beginning of the truest happily ever after.
Whatever the story is today — it’s okay. Because the Writer of the story has written Himself into the hardest places of yours and is softening the edges of everything with redeeming grace.
You find yourself at a crossroads every day — and what you need to know is the way to abundance.
How do you find the way that lets you become what you hope to be?
How do you know the way forward that lets you heal, that lets you flourish, the way that takes your brokenness — and makes wholeness?
How can you afford to take any other way?
The Way of Abundance — is the way forward that every heart longs for.
The post When You’re Tired of Pretending Everything’s Okay appeared first on Ann Voskamp.
July 9, 2018
A way forward for the muddy, wandering, try-hard woman
Katie M. Reid is a to-do list kind of woman, who closely identifies with biblical Martha. She didn’t choose to be a doer, God designed her to be one. And that’s a good thing! Yet Katie knows firsthand that your greatest strength can become your biggest weakness. For almost forty years, Katie wandered in a spiritual desert of tiresome self-effort; striving to be enough. But through a surprising turn of events, Katie discovered that grace is a gift to be received, not a prize to be earned. And that has made all the difference. It’s a grace to welcome Katie to the farm’s front porch today…
In an effort to find myself, buried beneath real and self-imposed responsibilities and on a mission to recover fragmented parts of a weary heart, I started writing.
Under all the words, under all the stories, was someone who needed to be found: a daughter waiting to be reborn.
My husband noticed a transformation as I wrote.
Under the guise of ministry, sandwiched between good works and moving words, I became a workaholic.
A more fully alive version of myself surfaced. I smiled more easily and wasn’t bogged down with typical annoyances, because my creativity had a steady outlet.
But as my fingers tapped on the keyboard, I started grasping for more, trying to fill an insatiable hunger for validation that began when I was a young woman.
Under the guise of ministry, sandwiched between good works and moving words, I became a workaholic.
And in the process of following a great dream, I was careless with my greater dream of being a devoted wife and attentive mama. Sometimes I even neglected my posts at home for my posts online.
The tension of two callings threatened to snap me in two and sting those closest to me. I was so focused on the result that those dearest to me felt invisible at times.
I wandered from home in an emotional and spiritual sense.
I tried to implement strategies that could improve the situation, but the changes were short lived. It was as though I couldn’t help myself—true signs of an addict.
I wanted better boundaries, more balance, to be able to pause in the middle of a project (without resentment), but I didn’t know how.
So one day, on a country road east of our home, I reluctantly let God dig up the dirt in my heart as I ran (okay, jogged). From a place of desperation, with some trepidation, I prayed something like this: God, help! I’m scared to surrender, but I give You the right to control, again. I want to be made well, even though I don’t know what that process might look like. Please turn my heart home.
I took a wobbly step back toward Dad, with birds overhead and cornstalks as witnesses.
Not too long after this heartfelt prayer, Adam and I made time for a much-needed getaway. We dispersed our four children to various family members so we could reconnect during an exhausting summer.
It was wonderful to have time with Adam, no other responsibilities, just enjoying each other’s company. It was as if we were newlyweds again.
We had always talked about having five children. God had miraculously brought our fourth child to us through adoption, and we were planning on adopting again. But in an unbridled moment of trusting God, no matter the outcome, I found myself expecting shortly after our getaway. God knew just what I needed to be made well. Funny, because I sure felt sick during the first trimester.
God answered my roadside prayer in a most unexpected way, with a miracle.
He responded to my need for restoration with new life.
God turned my heart home.
While I was a long way off, He saw me. He could have reprimanded me for straying, but instead He met me there, mightily, in the middle of the mud, with grace.
He didn’t hold me at arm’s length but wrapped me up tight. He treated me as a daughter, not the hired help.
He gave me a gift when I deserved punishment.
He provided forgiveness when I admitted I was unable to pull myself away from the pen.
And if that weren’t enough, He went so far as to provide new life.
Thousands of years ago God’s people longed for a King to rule and reign and establish peace on their behalf. God answered their cries by sending them a baby, and many of them missed the answer. Jesus was more than the King of the Jews; He was the King of kings, who came to restore the people to their heavenly Father.
Sin had separated them from God, but He made the way for them to come home, both on earth and for eternity.
And Jesus did not come for just the Jews; He came for all of us.
He died and rose that you might have new life, no longer branded by sin, no longer an orphan but a daughter.
It’s so simple and so unbelievable at the same time. We deserve punishment, yet God offers a gift instead.
We bring Him our lack and He readily supplies us with enough.
When you find yourself in the middle of a harried or desolate season, or a wandering or returning season, may these truths remind you that Christ is already enough for you:
~ I don’t have to prove my worth by overcommitting. Christ already proved my worth through His commitment and follow-through to die for my sins (Romans 5:8).
~ Just because I am good at something does not mean I am obligated to say yes. Christ has specific assignments for me just as God has specific assignments for Christ (Ephesians 2:10).
~ Even when I act unrighteously, God’s righteousness remains on and within me because of my faith in Christ’s lasting and permanent work of salvation (Romans 1:17; 2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 John 2:1).
~ When my offering seems meager and my resources are lacking, God can miraculously multiply and supply more than enough for the need at hand (Luke 9:16–17; Philippians 4:19).
~ God’s love for me does not fluctuate based on whether I do too much or not enough. Through Christ’s doing enough on the cross, and my belief in Him, I am loved and in right standing with God (Romans 8:33, 38–39).
Katie M. Reid is a firstborn overachiever and a modern-day Martha. As an avid blogger, Katie provides posts, articles, letters, and other resources for try-hard women on an ongoing basis. She encourages others to unwind in God’s Presence–through her writing, as well as through her speaking–as they find grace in the unraveling life. Katie has published articles with Huffington Post, Focus on the Family, iBelieve, Crosswalk, MOPS, (in)courage, God-sized Dreams, Purposeful Faith, Inspiring Families, and many other websites. She is also a contributing writer for iBelieve.com and Lightworkers.com and has been syndicated on ForEveryMom.com.
Though she didn’t sit at Jesus’s feet like her sister Mary, biblical Martha was loved just as she was — and you are too. The new book, Made Like Martha, invites modern-day Marthas to sit down spiritually as they exchange try-hard striving for hope-filled freedom without abandoning their doer’s heart in the process. This practical resource is an invitation for overachievers to discover what it means to rest as God’s daughters without compromising their God-given design as doers. Doers need to be affirmed in their innate design to do rather than sit, yet also be reminded that they don’t have to overdo it in order to be worthy. This book is not an exhortation to add or subtract things off your to-do list, but it is an invitation to embrace the “good” of the Good News. It’s an offer to step into your position as a daughter of God and to enjoy life as a doer.
[ Our humble thanks to Waterbrook Multnomah for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
The post A way forward for the muddy, wandering, try-hard woman appeared first on Ann Voskamp.
July 7, 2018
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [07.07.18]
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:
Kyle Fredrickson
Kyle Fredrickson
Kyle Fredrickson
just too extraordinary not to share: he’s captured some places that will stir your soul
now if this doesn’t make you smile?!?
they’re giving trash in the ocean a second chance: 5,000 Indian Fishermen Now Collecting Ocean Plastic to Build Roads and Prosperity
because we all need a friend
just — beautiful, in every way. #BeTheGift #TheBrokenWay
this is the best: they’re working to get food from the people who have it to the people who need it
how these 2 woman have stepped up to save their community don’t miss
what a story they have…this family has been sailing around the world for 9 years
this so good: How to Bring the (Whole) Bible to Life for Kids
they share food and love at this tiny restaurant every Tuesday
a teacher’s dying wish fulfilled… helping hundreds of needy kids
we gathered ’round this one… can you even?!?
Paweł Pluciński Fotografia
Paweł Pluciński Fotografia
Paweł Pluciński Fotografia
all the earth is full of His wonder!
the wonder of this second chance
this art studio? they’re focusing on people with disabilities: “Oftentimes, people with disabilities do not realize they have gifts in the arts”
A Syrian refugee’s path to the “American Dream” – he’s now a doctor and mentoring those coming behind him
a beautifully vulnerable interview of love & loss with gymnast Shawn Johnson
you’ve got to meet her: School cafeteria worker feeds the hungry well after lunch hour ends
thank you, John Piper: How to Conquer Temptation
Post of the week from these parts here
Dear You: a letter for the long haul
for the women
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 from home or at your local print shop! 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
on repeat: What Would Heaven Look Like
…sometimes it’s ridiculously hard to know how to live through the stuff we’re facing in our life and in our world — & you know, maybe this is it, just this on our Friday: “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving” and experience that in His “presence there is fullness of joy” Ps100:4, Ps.16:11
Gratitude will always move you past gates & into the presence of God — and in His presence is fullness joy!
There are three small keys to open the door to joy: “Thank. You. God.”
Joy is always possible as long as thanks is possible — and there is always, always, always something to be thankful for! Deep breath–it’s going to be a pretty amazing day and weekend: You get to decide how joyFUL you’ll be because you get to decide how grateFUL you’ll be.
We will GIVE THANKS for new mercies, we will GIVE THANKS for amazing grace & we will GIVE THANKS to our God who is always GOOD & we are always loved & there is always, always, ALWAYS something to be THANKFUL FOR.
[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.
The post Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [07.07.18] appeared first on Ann Voskamp.
July 5, 2018
Dear You: a letter for the long haul
Dear you,
Dear Self and me and you and us,
Really, it’s all going to be okay.
You’re going to be okay.
Promise.
Remember when you were 16 with that ridiculous hair?
And how you’d thought that by the time you got to here, to now, it was going to be good? That by now everything would be all good.
That by now you’d know down in the very marrow of your bones, what it’s like to really live loved. That you’d be known. Fully known. And wholly embraced.
That the Big Dream would have happened, that the peace and the purpose and the Big Point would be under your skin, that the awkward would be gone and that you’d finally fit and that your life made a real difference, you’d made a real mark, and that you really mattered.
You don’t have to worry: We all get to make one unforgettable mark. And every day, with every word, we get to decide: Do we mar the world, or mark the world?
Because the thing really is: Do we ever really know which mark we make — that will matter the most? The extraordinary things happen nowhere else but in the everyday and today can always be the beginning:
That card you signed and sealed and put in the mail, the way you smiled and nodded to the white-crowned woman bent over the still-green bananas, the way you dug around in the dirt and and left that seed or that gift of the knees and that prayer whispered for a stranger or that glass of water you handed to someone and winked because you just knew — You’ve got to remember: we don’t know when and how we are leaving the greatest marks on the world. It all matters.
Believe it: Every tremor of kindness might erupt in a miracle on the other side of the world.
And the only way to ever leave beauty marks on the world is with bits of yourself — and this will hurt. Things of realest beauty don’t bring us glory — but Him glory.
Dear you, and self, and me, and us, — Just For Today — take these words, words of Dag Hammarskjold[image error], Secretary-General of the United Nations, words that you can take to the bank, take to eternity: “It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for … the masses.” Christ left the ninety-nine for the one.
Where you are, with that one child, that one street, that one call, it is a noble, Christ-called thing. It only takes one person to change the world — and one individual, one soul, can be all your world.
Really, beautiful You: The most exquisite marks anyone makes with their life — are the marks done in secret. The mark that no one — but One — will ever see.
And tell yourself this when you feel forgotten and invisible and unimportant: So the celebrities get their celebration here.
But the wise are the hidden who hold out for heaven — and the applause that comes from God.
This is to choose the far greater.
I know you’re brave … and you’re scared. Because you keep doing big things that seems so small and you wonder where all this is really going and you only get one life here —
And though you’re weary, you do hard things and you keep getting out of bed and this is always the hardest part — and you keep believing that Christ didn’t leave this world until He showed us His scars — and He won’t ever let you leave this world until you leave your most beautiful mark. To show Him.
So Just For Today — listen: you’ve got to keep going.
His Kingdom is Upside Down and in Him your part is large and lovely and needed and art.
So go get the milk and take out the trash and throw in the laundry and wave giddy to the neighbors because there is a plan and there is a purpose and there is a God in heaven who didn’t just ink you onto the palm of His hands but etched your name right into Himself with nails and He’s hasn’t just got your number, He’s got your heart.
He sees you, hidden in Him, and you aren’t ever forgotten because God can’t forget those right in Him. You’ve never missed the boat when you’re holding onto the Cross.
So really — you’ve got to believe it for your 16 year-old-self and 56 year-old-self and for yourself right now: really, it’s all working out okay.
Because God’s writing your story and He never leaves you alone in your story, and His perfect love absorbs all your fear and His perfect grace carries all your burdens, and your story is a happily ever after because Christ bought your happily ever after so you always know how this story ends:
You’re going to be okay.
Dear Self, tuck this away to read again whenever you need to know it again — and promise me, you’ll laugh and sing and dance a bit today?
Heaven and His Kingdom and The Feast is coming! — so go ahead and pass down the fudge brownies.
Love,
Me.
Pick up our story of The Broken Way and how to love a brokenhearted world. This one’s for all of us who have felt our hearts break a bit…
This one’s for the brave and the busted and the real and dreamers and the sufferers and the believers.
This one’s for those who dare to take The Broken Way… into abundance
July 2, 2018
When you need to know how to hold the overwhelming sadness within your heart
You know peace is one of the most elusive things you could ever find amidst the noise and chaos of our lives. And yet oh how we all yearn to experience calm amidst chaos. Ever gentle and compassionate, Kimberly Miller has discovered some secrets to tending to your soul so that you can become the most peaceful person you know. Kim’s passion for inner harmony prompted her to start Leading Wholeheartedly, a ministry that helps Christian leaders cultivate their inner lives, resulting in more sustainable service to others. In her new book, Boundaries for Your Soul, Kim writes wisely, generously, and with great kindnessabout how to befriend the sometimes challenging parts of the soul and create harmony within. I am thrilled to welcome Kim to the farm’s front porch today. . .
When I was less than a year old, my parents divorced and my biological father moved to Europe.
Even at that young age, a part of me absorbed the impact of the loss.
Apart from my summer visits with my older sister to see him, he was mostly absent from our lives. He was a fun-loving Disney Dad during our annual trips—perpetually entertaining!
But he was also emotionally superficial.
I don’t remember many times that he shared authentically in ways that truly connected our hearts. As I grew up, I acutely felt his absence. I had a hole in my heart the shape of a charming but distant father.
When I was eight, my devoted mom remarried a caring psychotherapist. I had a loving family, but the subtle, chronic ache in my heart from my father’s absence wouldn’t subside.
I found myself drawn to distant men who, in one way or another, reminded me of my dad.
All the while a well-intended part of me was telling me I must have done something wrong.
This struggling part of me thought the best strategy to address my heartache was to try to make me more worthy of love.
In my early twenties, as a graduate theology student, by all appearances I was breezing through life. No one would have guessed that internal boundary conflicts threatened to derail me.
That is, not until one evening in Vancouver, when my dear friend Jo-Anne and I were visiting in my apartment.
I asked her if she had any ideas about how to make my chronic longing go away.
Wise beyond her years, somehow my friend understood that we can comfort ourselves when we get space from our pain.
The psalmist demonstrated this concept when he said, “I have calmed and quieted my soul” (Ps. 131:2 esv).
Jo-Anne handed me a throw pillow from my couch and suggested I hold it as if it were this younger, sad part of myself. The experience helped me realize that my pain was only one aspect of my soul—it wasn’t the sum total of my personality.
I felt immediate relief, and curiosity. I wanted to find out why embracing my pain worked so effectively.
Looking back, I realize that Jo-Anne had taught me how to focus on a hurting part of my soul, which still felt the experience of abandonment as if it were continuing to happen.
The ability to get some space from, and observe, this troubled part, stuck in the past, gave me the perspective I needed in order to pray for it and do something about the grief it was so bravely bearing.
To help me focus, I hung on my bedroom wall the last picture taken of my mother, father, sister, and me together. I was the baby perched on my father’s shoulders, and we were sitting on the stairs of our yellow house with yellow carpet and white scalloped trim.
I looked at that picture each night and let twenty-five years of sorrow stream down my cheeks as I fell asleep.
Praying for the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit, I focused on my heartache with compassion and curiosity, providing the connection this part of me needed.
As the pain subsided, I felt relief.
Ironically, when I welcomed my sorrow in this way, it took up less space in my soul.
I was able to appreciate more fully the blessings in my life, including many wonderful male friends and mentors, and a devoted stepfather who has become a role model for me.
With God’s help, I put a gentle boundary around my sorrow, so it could settle comfortably in one chamber of my heart rather than threaten to overwhelm me.
I felt an affinity with Teresa of Avila who wrote, “I began to think of the soul as if it were a castle made of a single diamond or of very clear crystal, in which there are many rooms.”
*********
God gives us the ability to gain distance from—or differentiate from—suffering parts of our souls.
Biologists observe how cells differentiate and become more specialized as they divide.
Psychologists use the same term when they speak of gaining some distance from another person.
Likewise, the process of internal differentiation refers to gaining distance from parts within yourself.
Differentiating internally empowers you to recognize that a part of you is not all of who you are. That realization alone can bring relief from hurting thoughts and feelings.
Once you have differentiated from a part of yourself that is hurting, you can then connect to it from where the Holy Spirit dwells inside of you.
Beloved author Henri Nouwen wrote in his book The Inner Voice of Love, “You have to trust that there is another place . . . where you can be safe…. Maybe it is wrong to think about this new place as beyond emotions, passions, and feelings. Beyond could suggest that these human sentiments are absent there. Instead, try thinking about this place as the core of your being—your heart, where all human sentiments are held together in truth.”
From this place, you can invite Jesus to be with the sad or conflicted parts of your soul, and you can witness His power at work. In partnership with God, you can befriend and lead the wounded and lonely parts of yourself into an abundant life (John 10:10).
Jesus said: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit” (John 15:5). All parts of you can abide in Christ, as He abides in you.
I have learned that as I gain some distance from a part of myself that is suffering, I develop compassion for myself and others.
Instead of criticizing myself for feeling a certain way, I am able to care for this wounded part of myself.
When lovingly held within healthy boundaries in our hearts, vulnerable parts of our souls can transform into beautiful aspects of our humanity —
channels of empathy and grace.
Kimberly J. Miller, MTh, LMFT, is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist specializing in helping leaders avoid burnout. Prior to working as a counselor, she served as a campus minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Harvard University and worked with a micro-enterprise organization serving farmers in Central America.
The story she shares today is from her newly released book, Boundaries for Your Soul: How to Turn Your Overwhelming Thoughts and Feelings into Your Greatest Allies, in which Kim shows you how to calm the chaos within. This groundbreaking approach will help you know what to do when you feel overwhelmed; transform your guilt, anxiety, sadness, and fear into strengths; welcome God into the troubling parts of your soul; and move from doubt and conflict to confidence and peace. Boundaries for Your Soul includes relatable anecdotes, helpful exercises, an engaging quiz, and opportunities for personal reflection. Gathering the wisdom from the authors’ twenty-five years of combined advanced education, biblical studies, and clinical practice, this book will set you on a journey to become the loving, authentic, joyful person you were created to be.
[ Our humble thanks to Thomas Nelson for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
June 29, 2018
For all the Anniversaries & Weddings: the secret to having a better marriage (or how to save a marriage)
He had hair, and I had poodle-permed hair, and it can turn out the what we thought was good hair days — was simply just a good day.
How can it already be twenty four years ago that a vow was spoken into space — and space evaporated and two became one, and how do you tell another human being with all of the moments of your life:
My home is your heart.
How we receive each other’s reach — eventually determines if we ever get to hold each other’s heart.
There have been years that rose like tsunamis, threatening to destroy us and all hopes of being a roof.
I have wanted to run. Outrun my ugly selfishness, my elusive expectations, my own bloated feelings.
I hadn’t known: Working hard can be a kind of running hard.
I’ve stood over pots at the stove, and kneaded soft dough into bread by the window, and read long and late into the night — and it’s true: working away can be a kind of running away. Turns out: You can distance yourself in very small rooms.
And I have thought it often — after a chain of nights staring at the ceiling, our bed feeling like a growing gulf of impossible impasse —
What has made a way — is that promise that we made.
A promise made can make a way — through the wilderness to the Promised Land.
Sometimes a promise holds you together when don’t know how to hold on to each other.
And one day — (or was it over a long string of weeks, months?) — I looked in the mirror and wondered if we had made it through, if we had made to the other side.
Because it had happened:
I stopped wishing he would become someone better — when I realized how deeply I wished I was someone better— and yet he still took me.
The act of being truly chosen, is what makes us act more the way we always truly hoped.
He’d pull up the bed covers every morning, and cover over my shortcomings with a long patience, and when he could have destroyed me with a handful of words, he’d reach for my hand, and only use words that made souls stronger.
No one had said that this happens with vows:
For all my worse — he still takes me — and that makes everything better.
He still takes even me. I had finally stared long into the mirror, looked into my cracked depths, and saw the ugly truth of the brokenness that lies there, and honestly — how could I not be utterly taken with the one who still takes me?
Both my man and the Son of Man.
Maybe it should have been part of our vows:
Humility is the key to intimacy.
It’s only taken me more than two decades to wake to that blaze of two-fold epiphany of humility, like the sun for the day, and the moon for the night:
Go lower
and you’ll grow closer.
And:
Share brokenness —
and you’ll share closeness.
Humility is the key to intimacy. Share brokenness — and you’ll share closeness.
I reached for his bare arm in the dark, laid my scars next to his.
And that has been our healing, the remaking, the rising: realizing that every word, every comment, every act — all the small talk, all the big discussions, all the movements of the day — is a reach. A thousand times a day, in a thousand different ways, he is reaching — and does he meet me?
Meet my seeking eyes, meet my lingering gaze, meet my attentive ear — my waiting hand, my ready smile, my open mind — meet my embracing heart.
Mentioning the weather — is a reach to see whether you care enough to listen.
Pointing out something, anything — is a reach to point out if you have some time, any time.
I listen to farm reports and play-by- plays of tractor engine overhauls and he listens to synopsis of books, chapter by chapter and leadership is listening and love is listening and really living is listening.
How we receive each other’s reach — eventually determines if we ever get to hold each other’s heart.
I make him coffee and we make time, (and it has to be made), to simply listen and linger. Find a seat on the porch. Watch the zinnias, the tomatoes, the sunflowers grow. He sits more. I ask more questions. We find each other’s eyes. Steam rises from the coffee. Sunflowers reach for the sun.
The together life is messy and it is hard and it is broken and we are all that — and there is no perfect and there is no easy, and when I think that, it can be hard to breathe.
But — when I think this? When I rest in the essence of marriage being only and simply this — there’s the unhurried rhythm of hope:
Marriage is a long reach in the right direction.
Turning in the right direction — can start to turn things right around.
The sunflowers keep reaching for the light.
Keep reaching for each other’s hand — because marriage is a long reach in the right direction.
Because for us what matters, is not that we chose someone perfect — but that we chose and we are chosen.
Because the truth that’s changed us is this:
The act of being truly chosen, is what makes us act more the way we always truly hoped.
Chosen simply for being— makes us become more how we want to be.
And he reaches over and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.
And I smile, we smile — and how do you tell another human being with all of the moments of your life:
When the world is a storm, you are my safe.
When the world is a desert, you are my drink.
And when I don’t know where in the world I belong, you open your arms and whisper: Here.
June 27, 2018
One Needed Key to Love & Success
They broke ground the other day, the way you break open a piñata and the breaking makes you believe in good things coming.
It’s been a late spring.
Cold and wet. As if the sun’s been hiding, grieving a loud and polarized world.
Holding different opinions never has to stop us from holding on to each other.
When the sky finally leaked itself dry, the Farmer and one of his freckled girls, they head to the barren fields with their seeds and their willing hands.
The Farmer wore the same sweatshirt he’s had the last 12 years — since before she was born. The man likes familiar things, worn denim, beat up ball caps.
She wore a smile a mile wide.
You can relax into an easy smile when you trust that your father holds your world.
Levi Voskamp
Levi Voskamp
Levi Voskamp
The girl’s never broke the earth before. Never swung up onto a tractor seat and shifted that brute into gear and dropped that cultivator into the dirt and tore up the field.
So he hauls off the planter dropping thousands of seeds into the earth — walks across the field to show her how to run the cultivator, how to make a seed bed in front of him with the planter. How to drop those teeth down into the dirt and break up the soil under her, so that he can come behind and lay down those seeds.
I watch how he shows her, how the father shows his girl —- how she will have to shift the gears, how she will have to run the hydraulic levers, when to lift and when to drop, and when to turn and co-ordinate the whole dance. She never takes her eyes off him, nodding, repeating, memorizing.
She believes him: A field has to be broken open before it can grow anything up.
And he says what he always says: “Just stay steady. No fits and starts — just stay steady. Trust it as it comes.” I hear too… nod too. Steadiness is a balm to brokenness.
And I’m watching her eyes and say what I always say, maybe for me the most: “Don’t be afraid — don’t even be afraid of being afraid.”
And she winks, “Got it.”
Spring’s warming on our shoulders.
You can feel fear — but you don’t have to be afraid of being afraid.
When you aren’t afraid of being afraid — you transform fear into friend.
Sure, she may be a bit intimidated by the beast of a tractor she’s wheeling down the field, by the managing of the cultivator dance she has to choreograph, but the thing is:
Feelings get to accompany you — but they don’t get to control you.
Feelings get to inform you — but they don’t get to form you.
Feelings get to keep you company — but they don’t get to keep you in bondage. Only God Himself keeps you, cups you, carries you.
The girl drops the cultivator in… and again, always again, you just let the brokenness come.
The field smells earthy, like loamy possibility.
Brokenness never has to be the end— brokenness can always be the beginning.
Brokenness can be the beginning of growth.
The only way for anything to grow— is for something to break. Growth only happens when the status quo is broken.
Change can only happen when what is — is broken.
Only a broken field yields.
And our girl pulls down the field, breaking open the earth, so that seeds can be buried deep and break in the darkest places where they seem abandoned — and then resurrect to abundant life.
And I sit down on the edge of the field and watch her break soil and there’s that cross drawn this morning on my wrist.
What looks more broken than the Cross — but what wins more than the Cross?
Yet the Cross doesn’t look like it’s winning. The Cross doesn’t make Love look like it’s really winning.
The Cross is losing, pouring out, being given — to those who don’t love at all.
The Cross conquers everything —- but looks more broken than anything.
The Cross proves it: Love may not seem self-fulfilling, or look self-fulfilling, or feel self-fulfilling.
In actual fact: Deepest love — may look deeply broken.
The Cross nails it down: Love wins — when it looks broken. When it looks broken and given and poured out. Only a broken field yields.
Relationship is the essence of reality — and to have a relationship, you have to learn how to suffer — and to suffer like Christ, because this is love. Tell that to the newly weds, the new parents, the new graduates, this brave new world.
When you are most loving — suffering will most likely result.
Doing the right thing may not look like success but like suffering — and that may be the most successful of all.
Doing the right thing — may mean suffering through things — because things are broken in this world.
But this isn’t the sexy or trendy thing to concede, so nobody’s trying to hawk this on the social media streams or the shelves of Target and my heart kind of breaks.
Watching the breaking up of the earth down the expanse of the field, it can come:
Is God’s definition of love about breaking our happiness — or breaking us free from the self-love that threatens to imprison us all?
This is the question that can reshape our world.
God is love — doesn’t translate into: God is about my desires.
God is love — doesn’t mean God is about self-fulfillment.
God is love — means to deny self.
God is love — means God is about suffering. God is about being broken open and poured out.
Love doesn’t win if you’re really just loving your self.
We can forget: God isn’t called to affirm our desires — but He may call us to firmly nail those desires to the Cross.
And the beauty of Christianity is that what dies — will rise.
When you are called to a Cross — God is always calling us to our greatest good.
The wind blows across the field behind one girl who is being brave behind the wheel. There are truths that will blow where they will and change the world because they never change.
The girl looks over to her Father — and they catch each other’s eye and I witness that smile. She lets the brokenness come and trusts her Father to plant what will rise and this is the beauty of brave.
Walking back across the field to the pick-up parked at the road, the open and willing ground crumbles bit under my every step and I can’t help but ache a bit with surrendered beauty of here, just as it is, just as it comes.
Only a broken field yields.
When one of your own farm boys takes an eye to the sky over his Farmer dad & our broken fields ( or — one of the reasons why I flat-out love farming. A yielded life yields. )
Pick up our story of The Broken Way and how to love a brokenhearted world. This one’s for all of us who have felt our hearts break a bit...
This one’s for the brave and the busted and the real and dreamers and the sufferers and the believers.
This one’s for those who dare to take The Broken Way … into abundance
June 25, 2018
How to Navigate Growing Older: What Is Good For Us to Do All Our Days Under the Sun?
I’m telling you, this woman, is a kind of brilliant and her words never fail to ignite. Leslie Leyland Fields is my sister-friend who works the Alaska ocean with her husband and six children as we work the Canadian fields — with our hands and our hearts. I’m more than happy to welcome her back to my front porch. God keeps weaving our lives together in surprising ways (see below!). She’s stopping here today with a piece of her new book that tells God’s honest joyful truth about aging, fear and the second half of our lives…
guest post by Leslie Leyland Fields
I stood at the edge of my father-in-law’s grave, wind whipping my hair.
Forty of us, clutching our coats, stood in clusters in the grassy hillocks, the ocean foaming behind us.
We tried to sing against the wind, “Be Thou My Vision,” “Amazing Grace.” Each of the three sons spoke in turn. Above the casket, the sun was as bright as I’d ever seen it.
It looked as though the skin of the world had been peeled back to its viscera: the grasses, the wind, the ocean foaming white and blue at our backs, everything noisily throbbing and pulsing with life.
How could a burial be so beautiful?
As the sun rises and sets from decade to decade, what is it all for?
Then it was my turn. I gripped the piece of paper tighter, and pitched my voice above the wind,
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
I know no better words to read at the end of a life than words from Ecclesiastes. The writer, who calls himself “the Preacher” asks hard questions.
He sounds anything but holy, opening with a phrase that sounds like a teenager high on cynicism, or the lyrics from a existential rock song, “Meaningless, meaningless, everything’s meaningless.”
The Preacher wanders and circles through most of life’s paradoxes and confusions.
He’s brutally honest:
“Everyone comes naked from their mother’s womb,
and as everyone comes, so they depart.
They take nothing from their toil.”
He keeps circling back to that thorniest of questions, the question we don’t ask until we’re forty, or fifty: the question we’re all been asking in these “Wonder Year” pages:
As the sun rises and sets from decade to decade, what is it all for? What is it good for us to do all our days under the sun?
When I turned 40, I went for a walk on the loop of our gravel road, my husband and our kids.
It was November. The kids dragged sticks in the road and chased each other. I kicked the sparse alder leaves fallen to the road’s edge and thought about getting old.
About what kind of old woman I wanted to be.
I had just started to color my hair, which was greying around my face. I didn’t want to blanche into pale translucence and fade away with a whisper. I didn’t want to disappear. When I was 80, I would go shopping in a purple jogging suit. I would wear bright red lipstick until I died, I decided. I would be kind. Generous. I would stay interesting. I would not grow old.
When I turned 50, I woke up that morning with an eye infection and my husband threw me a party. A houseful of friends came for lunch.
The night before my mother and sister had jumped out of a closet, flying all the way from the east coast to surprise me.
We ate huge cold-cut sandwiches, drank root beer and lemonade and laughed. I asked everyone to bring a recipe or a story. We spoke around the table, one by one.
Sue, ten years older than me, gave me the best present of all: “I loved my fifties. It was the best decade ever,” she smiled at me.
Then the sun rose and set, the rivers drained into the ocean, my kids grew. We laughed around the table every night. Mothers and fathers died. I scattered stones. I mourned. I wondered how to live with such griefs.
Now I am 60. I am not old yet, but I am closer than I was.
I have a daughter who’s a professor. I have married sons and two sons still at home.
I spend days locked in closets wrestling with God, writing books.
I travel. I teach. I pluck the grey from my eyebrows. I try to hide my wrinkles.
I am happy to be alive. I wear bright lipstick every day. I try not to hate or to kill. I have gathered a lot of stones.
I am ready for peace.
I wonder if I am loving well. (And do I have to grow old?)
After the blustery graveside service, I stuffed the Preacher’s verses into my pocket, and we filed down to our warehouse. We had set up sawhorses with plywood on top for tables, draped them with white sheets and adorned them with sunny jars of wild flowers. We ate grilled salmon, pasta salad, salmonberry pies and homemade bread and shared stories about DeWitt.
He lived a large, happy life.
Three times the Preacher answers his own question. In my favorite rendition he advises,
“Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do. Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil.”
Can I live like this all the way to the end? Can we?
Can we always eat and drink with gladness and joyful hearts, even when our legs tremble, when our eyes grow dim, when our flesh fails?
The Preacher ends his book with solemn words of warning to “Fear God and keep his commandments.” Amen, yes and always.
But I cannot end this post of wisdom and wonder there.
I must end with the words of God Himself, who answers our deepest fears about the years ahead:
Even to your old age I will be the same,
And even to your graying years I will bear you!
I have done it, and I will carry you;
I will bear you and I will deliver you.”
(Isaiah 46:4)
Amen.
Set the table, sisters!
Leslie Leyland Fields lives in Alaska and is the happy mother of 6, who have all grown up way too fast. She’s also sent off ten books into the world, including Crossing the Waters: Following Jesus through the Storms, the Fish, the Doubt and the Seas, and Forgiving Our Fathers and Mothers. She’s an international speaker and the founder of The Harvester Island Wilderness Workshop, a writing workshop that has welcomed Luci Shaw, Philip Yancey and this year, Ann herself will be Leslie’s guest writer. (Can God really be this good?) Join Leslie for her weekly adventures here.
The Wonder Years: 40 Women over 40 on Aging, Faith, Beauty and Strength brings together the extraordinary voices and wisdom of Brene Brown, Ann Voskamp, Elisa Morgan, Kay Warren, Joni Ereackson Tada, Madeleine L’Engle and many others, guiding us all toward aging honestly, beautifully, and faithfully, with surprises all along the way. It’s never too late to become the women God desires us to be! (A Study and Discussion Guide is also available for book clubs and small groups.)
June 23, 2018
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [06.23.18]
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:
Dirk Dallas via FromWhereIDrone.com
Dirk Dallas via FromWhereIDrone.com
Dirk Dallas via FromWhereIDrone.com
kinda never get over the whole extraordinary earth being full of His glory
this teacher in Brooklyn? He’s going the extra mile to take his students overseas
“I want students to see for themselves the value that travel has. When students put themselves in another world, they discover themselves at a new level.”
because we all need a friend
Delivery man goes above and beyond to make boy’s dream come true
it was 10 years in the making: how this community dims it’s lights – to appreciate the beauty of the night sky
wow: This 101-year-old Florida man still volunteers for Meals on Wheels
you must come see how he’s training young homeless people
cheering wildly: Four siblings raised in poverty by a single mother ‘beat all the odds,’ earn master’s degrees
first impressions never really tell the whole story
Ginny Sheller
Ginny Sheller
Ginny Sheller
just too beautiful not to share
Grace is a gift
Isn’t the Joy-Centered Life Just an Emotional Roller Coaster?
so did you know? these are just a few of the lasting effects exercise can have on the brain
and he’s mentoring kids along the way
how can churches care for and support the missionaries they have sent out?
Ashley Coston Taylor
kinda undone: how this Kindergarten Class Has Helped One Nonverbal Student Find His Voice
‘Do the unexpected’. That’s what this graduating senior with autism, who is normally nonverbal, wants everyone to remember through his powerful speech which got a standing ovation from his classmates
the extraordinary efforts of a 10 year old to honor another
YES: He is an Expectation-Exceeding God. Thank you for this, Christine Caine
Esther Havens
Post of the week from these parts here
The world feels like it is on fire. Kinda everywhere. And it’s kinda really worth it to figure out how to breathe hope right into the face of dragons:
When the World feels like it’s on fire: How to Breathe Hope Into the Face of Dragons
Grateful for the work of World Relief as they empower the local church to serve the most vulnerable
For more than 70 years they have they have touched the lives of millions of people in more than 100 countries
just so good: This is the story of how one daughter made her father question everything
singer and songwriter Zach Williams’ shares his story of surrendering to Jesus
on repeat this week: Fear is a Liar
…sometimes it’s ridiculously hard to know how to live through the stuff we’re facing in our life and in our world — & you know, maybe this is it, just this on our Friday: “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving” and experience that in His “presence there is fullness of joy” Ps100:4, Ps.16:11
Gratitude will always move you past gates & into the presence of God — and in His presence is fullness joy!
There are three small keys to open the door to joy: “Thank. You. God.”
Joy is always possible as long as thanks is possible — and there is always, always, always something to be thankful for! Deep breath–it’s going to be a pretty amazing day and weekend: You get to decide how joyFUL you’ll be because you get to decide how grateFUL you’ll be.
We will GIVE THANKS for new mercies, we will GIVE THANKS for amazing grace & we will GIVE THANKS to our God who is always GOOD & we are always loved & there is always, always, ALWAYS something to be THANKFUL FOR.
[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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