Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 185

Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [12.05.15]

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:

Cassi Werner 
Cassi Werner
Cassi Werner 

there’s quiet to be had if you want to step into it

 joy’s worth holding on to

Gardens by the Bay
Gardens by the Bay

 you know you want to step into the world’s largest indoor waterfall in the middle of a city

us holding onto each other —  knows no boundaries

because we all need each other

30 minute delivery coming soon?

when a rare bird draws crowds in NY

uh… nobody was expecting that?

Salvation Army

you know those Salvation Army red kettles you can slide a donation into?

well, there’s the record setting single kettle donation — 

they said they were  inspired by memories from years ago of relying on discarded food from a grocery store to make ends meet….   so they ended up doing this

know this secret to calming a crying newborn?

What parent, grandparent, babysitter, doesn’t have a eureka moment: it’s like a Christmas miracle!

so remember that Giveaway?

Where we invited you to share how you & your beautiful people are  Unwrapping The Greatest Gift and savoring The Greatest Gift? And we were giving away some wooden advent wreaths & the Audio CD  of me reading Unwrapping The Greatest Gift (so if you got too busy some nights, pop in the CD & I’ll pinch hit for you and do a reading or two with the kids!)

 and look at all you beautiful people! Look at you! 

You’re choosing to focus on Him, to not miss Him this year & bravely have The Greatest Christmas this year!

Thrilled to announce Giveaway winners: Harmony L., Julie W., Erica M., Desiree G., Kate S., Bethany B., Christine M., Shireen W., Alisa S., Jade H., Nicole W., Marshal M., Trina H., Sarah K., Krystal W., Meredith D., Jeanne T., Erica T., Amy H., Jessica F

Let’s do it a Giveaway  again?

Share a glimpse of you & yours Unwrapping The Greatest Gift  or marvelling or The Greatest Gift

on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter — include both #TheGreatestChristmas and the www.TheGreatestChristmas.com and we’ll give away 3 more Audio CDs of Unwrapping The Greatest Gift —

so you get a night off & I’ll do the reading! (We will announce winners next Saturday!)

lost — and then found!  [okay, so I choked up on this one]

Spotted on Instagram

just: really beautiful

glory!

Free gift tags and gift boxes!

Click over to The Greatest Christmas and 

Check out our whole library of free printable ornaments, Christmas cards,

gift tags, gifts boxes, scavenger hunt, Sticky Notes for Your Soul, Advent Calendars  and more —

our gift to you for The Greatest Christmas!

Post of the Week from these parts here:

…you can feel it sometimes, like a flickering on the edge of things, that somehow you don’t belong… and women, our daughters, can feel it: this strangling pressure to meet some standard — that feels impossible to meet.

Grab a lifeline:

Dear Daughters & Women (& Men): when you want women to just have the gift of belonging 

one single dad. loving pretty large & unforgettably!

Today/Gabby Kaper

this 20 year old bought 5 coats at the Goodwill — and went and did this. SERIOUSLY. 

a college dorm chef. And one amazing gift.

Noel Bosh

This: “What I’ve Learned as a White Mom — Raising Two Black Sons”

when the unexpected happens? they joined together

CNN

guess which Biblical King’s seal was just discovered in a dump site?

when you have hope? the possibilities are endless. you’ve gotta keep hoping

(this may be hard for some to watch? but I promise you — it ends well! And is so worth it)

Carmen Mendez Instagram

okay, game on: who’s doing this. for real

Unique traffic stops in Kansas City, Missouri.

Bringing drivers to some pretty amazing tears

Want to preach Gospel to yourself through what can be the hard & hectic month of December?

Yeah, you and me both — I’m such a mess with chronic soul amnesia, who has to constantly evangelize myself everyday, preach Gospel back to myself every day — so I scratched out these because I desperately needed them for me: free 25 No-Stress Manifestos for every day of December,

Like an Advent Calendar for Big People, so we unwrap *Jesus* & not *stress*, so we unwrap the joy of the Gospel and not more of the weight of this world … just for you:

Free Stress-Free Holiday Sticky Notes for Your Soul, right here: No Stress Holiday Manifesto

don’t ever forget for one minute: life is a gift

How he ‘accidentally adopted’ an elementary school —

When someone makes a big impression on you,” fifth-grader Andrew Romer said,

“it makes you want to do a lot of good in the world.” I’m telling you: Undone.

hands down: the very best medicine

maybe —  it’s time, in whatever way we can, to go home?

bringing Jesus to New York City – an amazing story

if you missed Christmas at the Farm?

grab a cup of hot chocolate, I’ll pop the popcorn and come join us this weekend!

… so whatever’s looming, in a 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 focuses 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.

[ print’s free for you here ]

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.

Dear Daughters & Women (& Men): when you want women to have the gift of acceptance & beauty & meaning

So, dear girl of ours, you are sixteen, going on 17 — 17 next week.

And I’ve been meaning to ask you: Do you ever feel it like a slow, dull ache, like a flash of fear and right in your veins — that you don’t belong?

Ever stand at the window and watch the rain turn into snow and know that there people who disapprove of you, who murmur about you, who don’t want much to do with you?

I’ve seen it in your eyes —

A sense of not belonging is the haunting of women.

I’ve seen how you look into the mirror sometimes — how you lean in a bit, and run your fingers through your hair again, how you wait — wondering and longing. 

It can make lining of a soul hurt, the wondering if you’re okay enough, the longing to be attractive enough, wanted enough, approved enough. 

Ask me how I know — how I’ve been the one leaning in, looking long in the light for the lines around the eyes, and there’s this moment you realize there’s a sadness in growing old —- because there’s a lie in this old world that there’s such a thing as too old. As if there could be too much of the wine of wisdom. As if there could be too much worn glory. 

As if.

The sense that beauty is in skin is the folly of men.

You told me about him. 

The week before you turn 17, you told me that that guy we’ve known from way back and forever, that guy who’s been waiting forever for the right woman to walk in the door, so he could throw up his phone, grab a selfie and claim her as his — that he finally did.

You showed me the picture of the two of them, that he’d found somebody after all these waiting and whiling away years. You didn’t have to ask me, but I could see it in your eyes:

Do you have to look like a certain way, act a certain way, be a certain way, come across a certain way, to belong? To be approved of?

And I sat you down, girl. 

Because that guy? He didn’t wait till he found a mate for his soul — he waited until he found a trophy for his mantle. 

Because some men — see women as skin to assess and possess and not as souls to affirm and reaffirm. 

Because this world needs to be done seeing people as physical packages to evaluate instead of spiritual companions to always value.

That guy who waded through life for years till he found his live, air-brushed Barbie? That guy pushed past a thousand extraordinary women because he couldn’t get himself to look past veneer exteriors.

And honest? Hear me, here:

The people who only look at people’s looks — should be gripped by the Fear Of Missing Out — because they are the ones missing out.  

You miss out on genuinely interesting people when you’re only interested in genuinely shallow facades.

You miss out on smart, strong, skilled, savvy people when you’re fixated on symmetrical people.

You miss out on the creatives and the thinkers and the dreamers, the makers and the shakers and the fence breakers, you miss out on all the poets and the prophets and the pioneers, the sages and the aged and the courageous, the arresting and the wrestling when you don’t want to miss out on mere window dressing. 

You miss out — when you miss the image of God in everybody when you’re looking for the image of Hollywood in anybody.

Nobody gets to steal the authority that determines the dignity of anybody.

God alone has the authority to determine your dignity, your acceptability, and your identity — don’t go giving that authority to anybody else  —-

or you let them give you your identity. 

You know what’s rare and beautiful? 

What’s beautiful is not objectifying women or exploiting women or belittling women — but lifting women up.

What’s beautiful is women believing in women, women investing in women, what’s beautiful is sisters linking arms with sisters and believing in the inherent value and soul beauty of every single woman on the planet, because we all belong to each other.

What’s beautiful is dignifying the calling of each woman, what’s beautiful is not cheapening any woman’s work, any woman’s worth, any woman’s contribution. What’s beautiful is betting against Hollywood and conventional ideas of beauty and acceptance.

What’s beautiful is  is never being blinded by outward appearances, what’s beautiful is betting against fast fashion that uses and cheapens the 80% of garment workers worldwide who are women, what’s beautiful is not being blinded by the low prices of wearing anything beautiful but is made by the ugly exploitation of another woman, what’s beautiful is never being blinding by the staggeringly high sisterhood cost of appallingly cheap clothing.

What is beautiful is not mass-produced women, not mass-produced callings or or mass-produced clothing or mass-produced dreams. What is beautiful is handmade clothing and God made women, what is beautiful is women who know more than how to do their hair, but women know how to hard and holy things. What is beautiful is women who use their hands to help humanity up. 

You don’t have wear cheap, factory fast-fashion that cheapens you —- you can wear the art of fair-trade ethical handmade clothing that proclaims women are art.

You don’t have to consume poorly-made, disposable clothes — that send the message women are nothing more than poor, disposable labor.

You don’t have to look, think, act, talk or be like the mass-produced to belong to the sisterhood in massively significant ways.

You can chose a slow, handmade way — you can chose an indie way, you can chose a way of beauty that says fair treatment, fair trade, fair dignity for every woman matters.

You can invest in far less fast-thread cheap clothes and invest in only a few pieces of well-made, handmade, slow art   — and become more. 

You can be a Beauty Minimalist — who believes that a few beautiful handmade pieces of clothing is better than a closet full of clothes made by enslaved children’s hands.

A Beauty Minimalist who believes that being a minimalist with make-up is one way to be more — because it’s a subversive way to state that one’s soul is enough.

A Beauty Minimalist who believes that being a minimalist with clothes purchases and shopping wiser and with more intention is how you minimize the exploitation of women and maximize the empowerment of our sisters. 

A Beauty Minimalist who believes that you can take remnants of dreams and remnants of goals and remnants of scraps — and you can make more than enough hope and redemption and courage and beauty and maybe even a lovely, one-of-a-kind skirt.  

Because?

A Beauty Minimalist believes less of the stereotypical is how to maximize more beauty.

Sometimes I catch myself looking over at you and wanting to know how —-

How do you give the gift of emancipation to a girl who’s 16 going on 17 — how do you give the gift of freedom to be and belong to every 20 year-old finding her own brave way, to every 30 year-old figuring it out, to every 40 year-old who questions whether she’s accepted and enough and still wanted, to every 50 year-old who has to hear how beautiful she is, to every 60 year-old who needs to know that she’s become gold?

How do you give every woman the gift of having no fear of missing out? How do you give the gift of having no fear of missing out on being accepted or sufficient or enough or beautiful?

How do you give the perfect gift of meaning? 

And I wonder what if all us women can do for each other is to give each other the best stories? 

Women need to tell each other the best stories of who we were made to be and how the looks of your face and the works of your hands don’t make you worthy like the openness of your heart.

Women need to tell each other the best stories of how beauty isn’t a function of your cheek bones but fire in your bones.

Stories of how you are approved not because you’ve proved anything, but because Love Himself did everything, so you don’t have prove anything to nobody, how the only people who should have fear of missing out —- are those who leave other people out.

Women need to carry the best stories about each other, need to wear the stories of other women:

 the story of how a refugee from Pakistan embroidered the threads of our shirt,

the story of how a woman in India threaded the beads on this necklace,

the story of how at-risk women in Cambodia made this skirt out of repurposed remnant jersey.

… all threads by Raven + Lily

This is what the world wants to give all the whatever- teen year olds on the cusp of turning however old and us becoming all becoming women:

Live storied lives.  Live storied lives of meaning, that give meaning, that making meaning, that have meaning. Live in homes full of stories and wear clothes made with meaning and see the world through meaningful story and live a good news story. 

A sense of not belonging is the haunting of women — and a sense of Story gathers women into the assurance of  belonging.

The story that you come from a long line of redeemed women, of weak-made-strong women, of God-made-holy-and-soul-beautiful women, that you are part of a bigger story and it’s the story that He’s writing into your days that’s making you brave and beautiful and your life meaningful.

Hear it louder than the lies in your head, louder than the insecurities spawned by Instagram, louder than the headlines on the news cycles: Stay in the Story. 

No matter what’s happening in the world — Stay in His Story. Let His narrative be the narrative of your life.

The person who  gets her principles from the Word — doesn’t crave approving words from the world. 

The woman who is steadfastly held by her worth in God — isn’t standing around starved for beholders.  

You only depend on the opinions of anybody, or wait for the applause of somebody, when you’re aren’t listening to the Word of SomeOne.

When you’re happy in timeless things, you stop being a beggar for admiration in earthly things.

That’s all, girl — you belong here.

When I came up through the woods, up through the orchard, up through the greying twilight the other night, and saw you by the flickering lights of the tree there in the window, I could feel it —

how you belong, rooted like a tree that will make the pages of a good story, rooted like a tree that will make the wide planks of a table long enough for every woman to come.

 

Grateful to be partnering with the entirely handmade, wholly fair-trade collective of global sisters at Raven + Lily.
Raven + Lily was created to alleviate poverty among women. Raven + Lily currently helps employ over 1,500 marginalized women at fair trade wages to give them access to a safe job, sustainable income, health care, education, and a real chance to to break the cycle of poverty for themselves and their families.
Raven + Lily is committed to providing products that are made by hand, follow fair trade standards, and honor our eco-friendly commitment — & are offering our beautiful community 15% off from now till the end of the year with the code VOSKAMP.
I’m personally committed to Raven + Lily & being a Beauty Minimalist, having far less exploitive threads in my closet & being part of investing in the freedom of women, in investing in handmade & in being part of giving all women the gift of the Best Stories about themselves & the world…

When it all Seems a Bit Hard & How To Get Real, Unexpected Relief Right Now

Honest, it’s sort of been a season of crisis.

Sometimes, you feel like you just can’t catch your footing for all your worth — and it can be pretty darn hard to tell yourself that the whole crumbling shebang isn’t a reflection on your self worth.

I don’t want to count how many times there have been trips to the doctor’s for one or another of us, or what feels like the whole hurting lot of us.

I mean, my Mama? All these trips — and good doctors can have degrees and no good answers.

My sister gives up long days and advocates on knees and in waiting rooms and Mama and her, they sing hymns and drown out clocks and fears.

I rub Mama’s feet during the short nights and the late watches.

I massage the bare weary arch of her feet and I tell her that I love her. I tell her that hair looks lovely wound high and falling. I tell her that she is never alone and her hand feels like thin white silk in mine and some dog to the south barks in the night.

Mama touches my cheek.

She murmurs it. “Thank you. Thank you for coming.” I tell her she’s laid her life down a thousand times. She shakes her head, glasses slipping further down her nose, another tendril falling. Sacrifice stuns in all its costly loveliness, all it’s love.

The glow of the bedside lamp washes the wall behind her and our shadows stretch long on the white.

This is the gospel of grace. Grace laid it’s arm down a beam and grace never stops reaching out, reaching for you, reaching straight across walls and through fences and over barbed wire laws.

Grace in the going and the giving and this is the how you accept the Gospel.

The gospel isn’t only what we accept; the Gospel is also what we extend.

The grace we’ve received from the heart of God is the grace that extends our arms to the world.

And two of the cowlicked sons, they rant bombastic ugly at each other over an unmade bed and a mess of electrical doodad parts.

And it isn’t even 9 in the morning and they don’t get the hair or the temper off anyone strange.

The Farmer says it quiet to sons, that all this hollering,  “This is not living the gospel — “

and I’m the railing mother whose sin reeks, who needs Christ’s nailing and more than a tidy bit of grace and how do I keep falling hard everyday and tripping all these kids too?

How can a mother do so much everyday and know she does so much wrong? Sometimes holding a kid is this wild prayer for God to just hold it all together.

And when the Farmer softly asks sons, “Who can extend grace and live the Gospel here?” I turn to our boys and look in eyes and I see me and them and the ache of us and what had Spurgeon had said:

“…. it is certain that the Christian does grow in grace.

And though his conflict may be as severe in the last day of his life as in the first moment of conversion, yet he does advance in grace —

and all his imperfections and his conflicts within cannot prove that he has not made progress.”

~ Charles Spurgeon

Christianity isn’t about growing good — it’s about growing grace-filled.

The grace we’ve received from the heart of God — is the grace that extends our arms to the world.

Why in the world did I keep telling the boys to be more Christ-like as if He was a ladder to ascend, to progressively strive to be more sanctified —

when being Christ-like is about being grace-filled, not about ladders but about laying down and reaching wide?

Christianity isn’t about growing good, it’s about growing grace-filled — Christ-like.

Like Mama that night — The true beauty of advancing in years is the truth of advancing in grace.

And I sit on the edge of a knotted up bed with boys and a tangled life and the boys have to know what I’m just repenting of: “The Gospel isn’t basic — it’s what all believers breathe.”

Why did I ever think the Gospel was only elementary and not all encompassing?

This is the Gospel that I don’t just need, but need to live and preach to me. Like a rubbing of the hurting places, a drowning out of fears.

This preaching gospel to yourself daily isn’t cliche — it’s critical. Otherwise it’s your very life that’s in critical condition.

When you fail and you bleed fallen and you’re the mess just wild to somehow make it, it’s inhaling the Gospel that heals — Blessed assurance, Jesus assures: You don’t have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps — you only have to pull close to God.

It’s the gospel in shorthand and pure relief: My hope isn’t built on my performance but on Jesus’ righteousness.

The flesh is always performance driven and everyday I need to become Cross-centered again.

And no one needs the Gospel only once — because all the bad days need the Good News of His grace again and again.

I touch a boy’s hand, us red-handed sinners. The Gospel isn’t a one time message for the unbeliever but the constant miracle for the imperfect.

This changes absolutely everything: Evangelize yourself everyday.

So when the whole crew of them come banging in from the barn at the beginning of the week, I just tell them all outright because I’ve doubted too much —  but not this.

That the answering machine has the very best message ever, like the whole angelic realm has descended in full choral glory right here and the limbs of all the trees bear burn marks.

The boys dive for the machine. The Farmer grins, eyebrows raised. I laugh through the house, arms raised in a hailing of holies, like wonder can get in your bones like belief.

“You have ONE new message.” The machine grinds out this indifferent digital monotone.

Kai and Levi hunch over the black box, ears turned, eyes waiting round.

And I stand in the kitchen before a sink erupting encrusted pots and pans and prayers and I flagrantly challenge the machine’s automated apathy: “And it IS. the Best. Message. Ever.” There’s a message that cleans up every mess. Mine.

And there it is, all static but all amazed, a little girl’s voice recorded on the machine: “Helloooo?”

This little lisp voice echoes on the recording. Levi half chuckles.

Kai lights — “Oh, it’s little Lia… !”

“SSShhhh.” Levi elbows him quiet. Shalom pushes in between brothers and the Farmer stands with the fridge door open like a beckoning in —

“This is Lia?…” How can that dimpled little niece already be 5?

The whole house leans and waits and — the news finally comes like a cure.

“This is Lia — and I accepted Jesus as King of my life and Lord of my heart last night… Goodbye!”

And the angels crescendo and the trump full resounds and the Farmer laughs mercy with a pitcher of orange juice and joy straight descends and the Gospel isn’t just the hope of the unsaved — the Gospel is the very heart of the already saved.

The Gospel isn’t only what we believe in –– because the Gospel is ultimately what we. live. out.

And I stand in the kitchen and boys tussle and angels celebrate and Mama somewhere sings — and breathes in, breathes out —  and one little girl beats with God.

And this comes like relief:

Inhale Gospel — and exhale grace in this place….

And strange how it’s happening, even in December —

how everyone is starting to breath more than just a little easier…

 

 

 

 

Related: Want to preach Gospel to yourself through what can be the hard & hectic month of December? Yeah, you and me both — so I scratched out these because I desperately needed them for me —  free 25 No-Stress Manifestos for every day of December,  like an Advent Calendar for Big People, so we unwrap *Jesus* & not *stress*, so we unwrap the joy of the Gospel and not more of the weight of this world:

 Free Stress-Free Holiday Sticky Notes for Your Soul here: http://bit.ly/NoStressHolidayManifesto 

And calming my soul in profound ways this December? Morning quiet times, unwrapping the steadying, assuring Gospel in The Greatest Gift … and then giving my  kids the very greatest gift every evening of December, the Gospel in Unwrapping The Greatest Gift. 

Today at 2: We’ve made room for you: Christmas at the Farm

Coming soon, today at 2! Get your hot chocolate and popcorn ready and meet with us by clicking HERE at 2pm ET!

 

Liz Curtis Higgs & this farm girl bring a hot cup of tea right to you, wherever you are — and shortbread too, can we bring you shortbread too? And Gifts — We will bring gifts for GIVEAWAYS! 

Click HERE:  TODAY at 2pm EST? We’re bringing No-Stress Holidays to You!

All you have to do is exhale, put up your feet, and tune in to watch the free little webcast “Christmas at the Farm“ — (Mz Lizzie & I laugh loud, sing off tune & kick off the season from the farm in grand style [using that term ‘grand’ quite loosely ;) ]

and at the same time Lizzie & I will meet you over in Twitter using #TheGreatestChristmas to live chat through the hilarity with CRAZY WONDERFUL GIVEAWAYS!, recipes, cookies, tea, NO-STRESS HOLIDAYS, Q&A (ask us anything — okay, just about anything ;)) & we’ll have way too much fun.

Think of it as an early little holiday treat for you? After you laugh it up with us girls, you’ll be set for a NO-STRESS holiday, a Sane & Sacred Christmas, & the relief that you aren’t alone & there’s a whole bunch of who are just #KeepingItReal

See you & all your beautiful people at the “Christmas at the Farm Twitter Party” & the relief of a No-Stress Holiday right over here at The Greatest Christmas at 2 pm?

(and… for your #CyberMonday? One Thousand Gifts is only $1 and change?!  
See you HERE at 2!) 

 

Light the Candles. Advent Devotionals. The First Sunday: Hope. [VIDEO experience]

Disclaimer: This ain’t all together or professional slick or anything… Just a simple, homemade video, taped by our Hope-girl, because God pressed it hard on our hearts to make a space for folks who may not have a community to celebrate the wonder and beauty of Advent? If you’re looking for an updated, fresh story, professional version, it’s our humble joy to serve you here

Join us and not Miss Him this year?

Hush the hurry… and find the holy… consider journeying with us through December with  The Greatest Gift , named the Best Devotional of 2014  & NYT bestseller  (free download of 25 ornaments with the book) —  or the brand new family read aloud edition, Unwrapping The Greatest Gift  — a fresh, all new unwrapping of The Love Story — your love story … … God starting a Christmas revolution, us all turning toward Jesus.

And if you’d rather a professionally recorded, beautiful DVD Christmas experience here on the farm? There’s the professional, fresh, all-new material of  The Greatest Gift DVD Experience to truly hush the hurry and find the holy in December:  4 weeks of Advent: 4 holy sessions. Recorded on the farm. At the woods. In the barn. By the manger.  Come away from the whirl. Come into the candle light. Into the snow falling. Into the quiet of the barn & the depths of His Love.

Sit in the straw, in a circle of flickering candles, and feel the illuminating awe of God’s Word through the unfurling of the greatest love story ever told — Christmas’s full love story, right from the beginning of  His-Story, like you’ve never quite heard it told before.

Next Sunday? The Peace Candle …  

Related: The quiet joy of having  The Greatest Christmas : How to Have the Best Christmas 

Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [11.28.15]

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:

Eastlyn Bright 
Eastlyn Bright 
Eastlyn Bright

quiet walk 

uh… a cat that you may really not want to adopt? could. not. stop. laughing. 

uhhhh…. who knew a cucumber did this to cats?

go ahead — meet Mischief

Emily Gibson

only if you need a soul exhale

so turns out Grandpa wasn’t ready of the — surprise!

never, ever, ever  give up — because you just never know when the impossible will happen

up

Seb Janiak – The Kingdom, above, 2009 Chromogenic print Format large 178 x 300 cm (70,1 x 118 in)

or further up (for real)

one woman. buys entire toy store. and then does this 

got the tree up yet? so — how ’bout a tree like this — redefining living Christmas trees everywhere

Facebook Politie Eindhoven

you know — when the police stop by to wash the dishes for you  Because, yeah, totally normal (not)

seriously. did you know this can happen on public transit? 

so how about — free haircuts….  yeah, for life

Guinness Book of World Records

…so did you know? Russia’s Angela Vorobeva recently became the oldest female to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania at the age of 86 years. In her lifetime, Angela witnessed and survived of the notorious siege of Leningrad in 1944, during World War II. Though she lived a life of hardships and challenges, she never gave up on pursuing her childhood dreams of visiting the remotest parts of the world, insisting that age is not a barrier. On October 29, 2015 she conquered Africa’s highest mountain – the highest free-standing mountain in the world.

you go, sister! Never give up — we can do hard & holy things

double dog dare you not to laugh along!?

don’t think for a New York Second that we’ve run out heroes. MIND-BLOWN RIGHT HERE

dear world: more of this kind of kind, please

when Gabe Lyons convenes us around a historical moment, you can’t help but really listen and walk away deeply changed. I’m telling you, this here? Changes the current conversation around The Church and the Refugee

See?!?!   Never, ever, ever give up. That impossible thing? It’s possible

  Jesse Tree Ornament Sets:  30% off this weekend through Monday!

using the promo code 30FRIDAY15  at checkout and it will be good through Monday, Nov 30!

Christmas at the Farm

…yeah, so only one more quiet day now & it’s Advent. This is the year to not miss it — to not miss Him.

Come to the farm on Monday, the 30th? 2pm EST? We’re bringing No-Stress Holidays to You! Think of it as an early little holiday treat for you? After you laugh it up with us on the farm, you’ll be set for a NO-STRESS holiday, a Sane & Sacred Christmas, & the relief that you aren’t alone & there’s a whole bunch of who are just ‪#‎KeepingItReal‬ & keeping it simple & sacred & sane…

This year: The Christmas we always dreamed of — The Greatest Christmas this year!

Advent starts tomorrow: “How to Prepare for an Easy Advent:

When the First Snow Falls Quiet on the Trees — & Your Family Tree Feels Like A Mess”

…. you absolutely have to hear this 

so — I did this for you! I read the whole thing for you & your family : 

The NYTimes bestseller: Unwrapping the Greatest Gift: A Family Celebration of Christmas

Every night of December? You rest. Pop in the CD — & I’ll read that night’s devotion to the kids!

because this year?  We are giving the Perfect Christmas Gift of Meaning

— giving the family the Gift of the Gospel

It’s Tonight! Night Before Advent Party
This is the year to not Miss Him —
& give the whole family the utterly Perfect Gift:  The Gift of Meaning  
The Gift of the Gospel —   could there be a better gift? 
 The Whole FREE “Night Before Advent” Kit is right here for you!

sometimes? even the sea is making music… have you seen this Sea Organ?

beautifully priceless

you know those original, heirloom Advent wreaths, the ones with 24 holes, to count down each day till Christmas?

 enter the Giveaway of 10 of those Advent wreaths right here — because the perfect gift?

Is the gift of Meaning!

one five star, amazing teacher — shows her students this

okay, this may be one of the best of the Lewis Christmas clips ever.

Don’t leave the internet today without this one. Because you know what? You belong.

We all belong to each other — and you are seen and known and loved. It’s going to be a beautiful holiday — because we’re all holding on to each other.

… right now, before it all gets moving too fast?

How to Have the Best Christmas —

the kind of Christmas you’ve always hoped for …

A Christmas Hallelujah

….so, yeah, see what just happened here?

We just passed through the gateway that is Thanksgiving

& into the holidays & makes sense — that the gate into the holidays [holy-days]
would be Thanksgiving… Because the deal is? When the holidays get hard — just take a deep breath & remember how you always get into the holidays & JOY — through that gateway: Thanksgiving.

Hold on through the holidays: JOY IS ALWAYS POSSIBLE — because there is always, always something to be THANKFUL FOR!

“Enter into His presence through the gate of THANKSGIVING — & in His presence is fullness of JOY” Ps.100:4, Ps16:11

[ print’s free for you here ]

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.

How to Prepare for an Easy Advent: When the First Snow Falls Quiet on the Trees — & Your Family Tree 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 about two days now.

That’s what Advent means — coming.

Only two 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? 

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.

 

 

 

and hey, can Liz Curtis Higgs & this farm girl bring a hot cup of tea right to you, wherever you are — and shortbread too, can we bring you shortbread too?

Write it on your calendar? Next Monday, the 30th? 2pm EST? We’re bringing No-Stress Holidays to You!

All you have to do is exhale, put up your feet, and tune in to watch the free little webcast “Christmas at the Farm“ — ( Mz Lizzie & I laugh loud, sing off tune & kick off the season from the farm in grand style [using that term ‘grand’ quite loosely ;) ]

and at the same time Lizzie & I will meet you over in Twitter to live chat through the hilarity with crazy wonderful giveaways, recipes, cookies, tea, NO-STRESS HOLIDAYS, Q&A (ask us anything — okay, just about anything ;)) & we’ll have way too much fun.

Think of it as an early little holiday treat for you? After you laugh it up with us girls, you’ll be set for a NO-STRESS holiday, a Sane & Sacred Christmas, & the relief that you aren’t alone & there’s a whole bunch of who are just #KeepingItReal

See you & all your beautiful people at the “Christmas at the Farm Twitter Party” & the relief of a No-Stress Holiday?

and … because this little piece of glass showed up with the snow?

oh.  The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas  

was named by the Christian Retailer’s Association as  

Best Devotional of the Year for 2014

can we share the happy celebrating with you & do something to share the joy?

Let’s Have a Huge Greatest Christmas Giveaway!

To Celebrate Best Devotional of the Year, we’d love to give away

10 of the New Audio Editions of Unwrapping the Greatest Gift 

(Pop in the Audio CD every night, & I’ll read each day’s devotional to the family, and the kids can colour the ornaments, & parents get a rest & the whole family gets more of Jesus!)

and we’ll give away 10 of the Heirloom 24 Hole Advent Wreaths 

So! To celebrate & enter, let’s just Share the joy of The Greatest Christmas: 

1. Hold up a copy of  The Greatest Gift or the family edition: Unwrapping the Greatest Gift that you’ve found on your shelf or  your local bookstore’s shelf.

[These are books about How-to have a stress-free Christmas — in the sense that they are Who-To books — when we see that it’s all about Jesus — there. is. no. stress. 
These books are not another To-Do on your List — but they are books that whisper: It is finished. It’s already been done. 
Jesus comes as an almost weightless babe — so we can know it: Christmas is meant to be weightless. Grace is weightless.  Come have Christmas like you’ve always dreamed of — The Greatest Christmas]

2. Snap a photo of yourself holding a copy of The Greatest Gift or the family edition: Unwrapping the Greatest Gift

3. Share the picture to one or all of Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest, or post to our Facebook Page Wall (we’ll count every share!)

4. Include the hashtag #TheGreatestChristmas AND the URL: www.TheGreatestChristmas.com with every sharing.

And we’ll choose TWENTY beautiful people at random on December 1st from all the sharing to win The Audio Edition of one farm hick reading Unwrapping the Greatest Gift or the The Heirloom 24-Hole Advent Wreath. 

Let’s have the Christmas we always dreamed of — The Greatest Christmas this year!

how a hard, hard year can still be your most abundant year [or: how a hard year can give you a good thanksgiving]

We’re laughing like these crazy loons out in the middle of a field of corn.

The Farmer’s got hold of that combine seat like he’s on this one-time shot at the whole round moon.

It’s harvest and a time of thanksgiving and the holy cusp of Advent and you won’t pass by this way again and the corn just keeps on coming.

“How in the world?” I can’t take my eyes off the yield monitor.

Stunned wonder isn’t an understatement.

We had a drought this year. The sky had locked hard about the middle of June.

The Farmer had said: “I’ve never seen any crop look so desperate on this farm. If God doesn’t give rain by the weekend, there’s not going to be any corn this year.”

I’d felt it in his words, the the surrender of one worn farmer and the heat of the sun and a withering crop.

Life is a furnace and the faithful live by the Shadrach-prayer of only 4 words:  “Even if He doesn’t.” This world doesn’t have anything that can burn down the faith of a heart on fire for God.    

And come November, the digital screen of the combine, it’s calculating the number of bushels per acre this field of corn is yielding, and it’s flashing out these little black numbers that are huge, that make no sense, that are a bit stratospheric, and is grace the most amazing of all because it defies what makes sense? 

“Get OUT of here!” I’m slack-jawed over the high monitor spikes and the Farmer looks like he is right out of here and straight over the moon, and I slap at his chest like the flapping loon that I am and he grins giddy.

“I know, I know!” And all over again, he’s that laughing teenage boy that flushed me silly.

“Who would have ever have thought?” I can’t stop shaking my head.

“You know…” He leans over the combine steering wheel, glances past me, past me to the wagon filling with corn.

“I don’t know what to think — so maybe I just thank?”

And I look at this man just working hard and quiet and the harvest of a life well-lived: There’s no right thinking apart from really thanking.  

The corn’s running like flashes of glory into the wagon. What if we celebrated Thanksgiving the most because it’s the least commercialized? 

What if the grace of God was only rightly answered by the gratitude of men? 

What had Karl Barth said?

“Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth.

Grace evokes gratitude like the voice an echo.

Gratitude follows grace as thunder follows lightening.”  ~Barth

The corn’s streaming in and I can still see the lightening that had come right after Sunday preaching way back in July.

I remember the gusts of wind and the thickening black to the west. I remember the thunder that rumbled hope and how we stood on the front lawn and begged that rain to come.

And I remember how it went north. Twice. And how the Farmer had stood there, watching the rain come down only two miles away and I’d whispered wild to him, “What if we get nothing? What if we lose the harvest?”

And he’d said it steady and certain, the rain coming down right there 2 fields over and so far away: “When you know your Father’s loving — what can you fear losing?”

The rain had kept falling just to the north and he’d stood in this startling surrender.

And then, just before supper — the sky had darkened hope and and the black had opened up to give us our prayers, the way that the black so often does. We had all danced on the lawn in that rain.

I turn to him now in the combine: “It was that storm.”

Gratitude follows grace as thunder follows lightening.

“The storm gave us this yield. The storm was grace.”

There’s no harvest without a storm.

Gratitude follows grace — as thunder follows lightening. And the storm is grace because whatever drives us into God, is a grace from God.

It’s all grace. 

Hadn’t Barth said that:

“…the only proper thing, but the thing which is unconditionally and inescapably demanded, is that [we] should be thankful. How can anything more or different be asked of man?… 

[O]nly gratitude can correspond to grace, and this correspondence cannot fail.

Its failure, ingratitude, is sin, transgression.

Radically and basically all sin is simply ingratitude—man’s refusal of the one but necessary thing which is proper to and is required of him…

[G]ratitude is the complement which man must necessarily fulfill.”

~Karl Barth in The Doctrine of Reconciliation (Church Dogmatics, Vol. 4, Part 1 Pp. 41-42).

God gives grace and ours is to give thanks and in the midst of full days, this is God’s unconditional demand: That we live thankful.

And the Farmer grabs my hand, pulls me to the seat behind the steering wheel:

“Here — You feel the harvest.”

And I keep my eyes on the rows and hands loose on the steering wheel, letting go, and I laugh embarrassed and nervous and the Farmer winks.

“You’re doing great — it’s all great. He is.”

And I can feel it — there’s corn. And there’s us all here.

And there’s sky and food and family and this country and a God in heaven and a love we don’t deserve and there’s grace that comes as storms and the only answer to God’s unending grace — is man’s unending gratitude. When you live in a covenant of grace, you can’t help but live out a covenant of gratitude. 

And the Farmer leans into me and whispers it Thank you, Lord —

and I murmur it too.

The way Grace and Gratitude echo to each other through everything….

 

 

Happiness & Strong Relationships Nourished by One Unexpected Habit [Video]

Yeah, happiness & strong relationship nourished by one unexpected habit —

Q Ideas invited a farm girl to come explore with them: How Can this One Unexpected Habit Can Shape Culture?

…so how ’bout you work in the kitchen & a farm hick will hang out with you & we’ll just talk?

 

so yeah — crazy, eh? Ready to go deeper & really start living a life of gratitude & deep joy?

Take what God calls us to from being a singular holiday — and turn it into all of our days:

The books, from our farm to your heart:
One Thousand Gifts: How to Really live a life of Grateful Joy — right where you are 
— which changes everything … {and the DVD Curriculum & Study Guide}
and the 60 Devotionals for real joy & peace this whole holiday season of gifts —
with numbered journaling space for the legacy of your own thanksgiving of  1000 gifts…
One Thousand Gifts Devotional: Reflections on Finding Everyday Graces

Related:  Free Gratitude Journal for the Kids this week

A Thanksgiving Family Activity: The Free Printable Thanksgiving Tree

how the holidays can become holy: when we choose to become part of holy stories

… it’s a big week! Holidays and gratitude and Advent! and I don’t know anybody I’d rather begin the week with more than Kristen — because she knows: The Perfect Gift has MEANING. And that’s what the next several weeks around here will be: Simple. Focused. Quiet. Meaningful.  Kristen echoes that —  Kristen and I are sorta, kinda, soul sisters? She wrote her story  of one woman’s journey from comfortably living a safe, “good-girl” faith that didn’t cost much, to realizing that God was daring her to say yes to a bolder, more authentic, more dangerous way. This story of spiritual adventure throws the doors wide open for any woman who’s ever thought of herself as “just a mom.” And that’s me — a grateful mom to six. And Kristen has invited me, all us “just moms”, to say yes to God with her. As I serve on the board of the ministry Kristen founded, Mercy House Kenya, I get to see it first hand again and again — Kristen will inspire and empower you to say yes to God right where you are— and choose holidays of MEANING… choose holidays that don’t Miss Him. A grace to welcome my soul sister, Kristen Welch, to the farm’s front porch today…

by Kristen Welch

Her name is Kalkida.

She is 10 years old and lives in Ethiopia.

Her eyes are windows to her soul.

When her father passed away two years ago, her mother and siblings wondered how they would survive.

There was no work, which meant there was no food.

It’s a dangerous life for a mother and her daughters because the world preys on females and easily turns their bodies into a commodity.

So, her mom moved them to the city dump. To provide for them.

photo source

It is an illegal place to live, and can be violent, but it’s free.

And sometimes, there is food among the trash if your fast enough to find it before the other 100,000 people squatting there do.

Around the globe, being born a girl can be a death sentence.

Violence against women is a humanitarian crisis and this week, we are joining the world and demanding that it stop.

The United Nations has declared it a day to end violence against women worldwide because 70% of women will face abuse and we cannot ignore it.

Kalkida and her family struggled to survive in the dump and stay safe in their shanty made of whatever they could find. But they are some of the fortunate ones.

In the last year, Kalkida got sponsored and her mom joined Women of Korah, a small grassroots program that provides child sponsorship and school fees and a much-needed job for her mother. They also were able to afford rent.

When I traveled to Ethiopia with my teen daughter to see firsthand how Mercy House was helping these women through our Fair Trade Friday program, I saw what happens when we don’t look the other way.

I watched Kalkida’s mom work hard to provide for her kids-not in the city dump but at a table with dignity, and in community with other mothers.

And when I looked into this mother’s eyes, held her hands and she reached out and touched my daughter’s face and thanked us for being Kalkida’s sponsor, I didn’t see a stranger. 

I saw a sister.

I saw a mother who would do anything to provide for her kids.

The ladies were making bracelets for Fair Trade Friday’s Bracelet of the Month Club.

I wear a bracelet around my wrist everyday to remind me that when I wear another woman’s story, I become a part of it.

I wear it to remember that 7 out of 10 women in our world today will face violence and many have to make devastating choices to provide for their children.

I wear a bracelet because it matters.

Kalikida and her mother are one of thousands of families who are empowered with work in Jesus’ name through Fair Trade Friday, the monthly subscription club that is changing their world.

Fair Trade Friday works with more than 30 faith-based groups in dozens of countries who are providing jobs for thousands of oppressed and impoverished women, most of whom are at risk or have been rescued from the violent claws of trafficking.

It’s the best kind of Club.

You provide impoverished women with a job and they make you trendy fair trade products that are delivered to your door every month.

Fair Trade Friday offers several club options: The Main Club which is a variety of amazing items; Earring of the Month Club and today, we are launching our brand new Bracelet of the Month option.

Bracelet of the Month is $13.99 a month and with your membership, you get a darling bracelet in the mail to share as a gift or keep and wear and it comes in a handmade fair trade cloth bag. So, each membership provides two jobs for two women.

Women like Kalkida’s mom.

This is a beautiful way to the change the world (and look cute doing it!)

This is one of the women being supported by Fair Trade Friday.

This is her before and after picture:

Can a bracelet really change the world?

Ask her.

 

 The holidays can become holy — when we choose to  become part of holy stories.  As the holidays begin — come choose The Perfect Gift of Meaning with us? Come choose to be part of one woman’s, one family’s story? God’s inviting us to be part of holy stories during this holiday season — so we experience truly holy days. That’s all this farm family is choosing this Christmas — choosing to stay in His Story.  Come join us? Give the Bracelet of the Month as a gift with meaning… and be part of a holy story… the holidays.

Our Hope-girl here & Shalom have been all in  for the Bracelet of the Month Club

Click here & come join us  & be part of a pretty unbelievable story— a holy story —

and change someone’s world — & change the world — and change the holidays into holy-days….

No better way to celebrate than to have the joy of GIVING!