Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 296
July 6, 2012
Links for 2012-07-05 [del.icio.us]
@ The New Yorker ... One of the things we read around the kitchen table this morning -- and talked about long. We definitely didn't agree with the article in its entirety nor some of its presumptions --- but if you are parenting with kids, this is a very thought-provoking article worth reading together and deeply considering.
FREE book right now: Indescribable
@ Amazon ... with Louie Giglio& Matt Redman " Encountering the Glory of God in the Beauty of the Universe"... a perfect, *free right now* summer read if you are wanting to awake your soul to sing to Him.
July 5, 2012
If You Want to Soar this Summer …… {with free printable & video}
Home late yesterday from our time away in the woods, us all full & light with memories. Waking up on the farm here this morning with a soul very much awake. Now, as our oldest & I make our lists to prepare for Haiti with Compassion Canada on Saturday morning early (you are coming with us right here, yes?)— the Farmer & I are ridiculously thankful for Shaun Groves‘ Compassion Bloggers. Our lives were forever beautifully wrecked in Guatemala & Ecuador — and we are praying that this coming week in Haiti with Compassion will startle us further awake to joy & grace & giving & the Gospel of Jesus Christ — please come with us?
So we pack & pray — and Shaun Groves kindles with this on how to awake the soul this summer & soar:
‘On back!” he shouted.
I fumbled with the plastic packaging of the kite, tugging on a corner, then gripping it with my teeth, then reaching for something sharper. “On back!”
“There’s nothing on the back,” I said, and now that the kite was free of its wrapper I unfurled it before him. “See? Nothing on the back.”
I slid the stick in place. “On back!”
Poked the white string through the hole and tied a square knot. “On back!”
“Look,” I said, “there’s nothing on the back. Just white.”
He followed me down the stairs, out the front door in bare feet, across the too-long fescue, clover, bald spots and crabgrass. I held the kite up and waited. The string ran through his tight fist, his face scrunched up in confusion, impatiently tugging. “On back!”
“Me try,” he insisted, yanking the string and freeing the thing at its end from my hand.
“OK,” I instructed, “hold it up. High. Very high.”
He stared at me slightly amused by my ignorance – smug, deciding whether to ignore me – the way a cat stares when you say “come.”
A swollen pause.
Still staring.
Then he unfroze – over his head it went and then slid into place flat on his back, his little brown fingers gripping the edges of it, holding it there.
“See?” he asked. He ran, toothy white shining surrounded my bronze, brows stretched upward, eyes like headlights. “On back!”
Oh, I see.
A few minutes of this and he slowed to a jog. A few minutes more and the jog became a walk.
“Can I show you?” I asked. “Come.”
I took the string in one hand and his wings in the other, lifting them high at the top of the cul-de-sac’s slope. They teetered there on my finger tips. “Wait,” I said, his furrowed brow announcing impatience.
“On back!”
“Wait.”
“On back!”
The smallest breeze came across the field of weeds, past a broken down barn, across the two-lane street and into the subdivision, over the neighbor’s yard, up the cul-de-sac and lifted the kite from my hand – lifting his eyes and slacking his jaw.
“In the sky,” he whispered.
Up past the bottom branches of the hackberry trees. Up past the top of the light pole.
“In the sky,” he said. “In the sky!” he shouted, running in circles, neck bent backward behind his head, mouth open, fingers fanned out from hands raised heavenward, giggling.
Then, as suddenly as it had arrived, the wind left our circle to visit the rest of the neighborhood – to girls on bikes making figure eights, dogs leashed to couples walking, sprinklers sputtering.
As the sun put on orange and headed off to bed, he held his kite close to his ribs – still smiling. I rested my hand on his head – still smiling. We walked together toward the back porch and the smell of supper.
“In the sky,” he said.
“Yes.”
~ from Shaun Groves’ book “In the Sky: and other lessons from little people“, a book for every parent from a writer who writes realest real…
Free Printable for Summer Soaring:
A series of free printables to hang on the fridge or the back door this summer — from his song Awake My Soul on his Third World Symphony album – on iTunes here or the CD here.
A Song to Awake the Soul this Summer:
Believers in Christ slowing down to give God alone all glory (one of them feeling awkward & ridiculous & laughing crazy nervous, but praying God can still use this bit of nervous mess anyways? To awake souls to the beauty and daily saving grace of Christ and to turn weary hearts to Him alone…)
From Shaun Groves’ album Third World Symphony ….
Awake My Soul from Shaun Groves on Vimeo.
To view video click here. Consider closing the blog music player right under the header/top navigation bar? {Just click on black arrow.} Thank you for grace.
Awake our souls to Sing to Him!
Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
Links for 2012-07-04 [del.icio.us]
@ - Desiring God... "Because rules don’t change you. But a Story — God’s Story — can." Beautiful truth from Sally Lloyd Jones
July 4, 2012
The Hourglass of Joy
After such a week as last week, I’m feeling very small & hushed & I’ve slipped away to the woods with the Farmer & kids. Thank you for prayers last week, for grace as our family tucks away quiet for just a few days…and we’re delighted to invite you up to the front porch to share with some of the best writers on the Web — today, with a forever Word-sister and heart friend — Holley Gerth, author the best-selling You’re Already Amazing: Embracing Who You Are, Becoming All God Created You to Be..
The sun dips low to kiss the ocean and the waves light up with fire.
I’m standing on the shore of South Padre, a beach I’ve come to with my family since childhood.
I close my eyes and remember the first feel of sand between my toes, of playing with waves like friends, long summer days and sticky car rides.
My grandparents live about an hour away from the shore. Nana slipped home to Jesus in her sleep years ago (has it really been that long?). Poppi is 91 and teaching me what it means to live with resilience.
On this evening he stands next to me. I beckon him closer. He puts an arm around my shoulders. I feel the brush of the watch he’s worn for years.
Time.
None of us know how much we have of it. That’s what makes it so precious. And Poppi has taught me many things about using it well.
Time is for people.
He’s still a greeter at his church because he says, “Three hugs a day makes you live longer” (he should know). He’s active in the Gideons. He has lunch with his friends every day. He takes me out for breakfast dates.
Time belongs to God.
I wake in the early morning to find Poppi at the kitchen table, Bible open in his hand. He’s always started his day this way. For as long as I can remember. The Word is alive to him, a guide and friend.
Time can be savored.
Poppi teases my husband, “Don’t come unless you bring some pie with you.”
So we stop on our way into town and pick up two pieces. Melt-in-your-mouth cheesecake and good-as-grandma apple. Poppi digs into one within five minutes of us walking through the door. He knows how to make the most of a moment, especially with a spoon.
This moment now feels like that too—like something to be seized and savored. I close my eyes, feel the wind on my face. I breathe deep of summer. This one and so many before. I can taste salty memories on my tongue. I think of how our experiences become a part of us. They seep in through our eyes, ears, our very skin. We’re made of where we’ve been, of who we’ve loved.
I’m standing in an hourglass. We all are.
I grasp each grain of sand for a second, feel it between my toes, tuck some of it into my heart.
Then I let it go with a smile and sigh.
Because that’s what it takes to be ready for the next bit of joy.
Open hands.
Open eyes.
Open hearts.
We all watch the sunset.
And we wait for Home.
Holley Gerth is the best-selling author of You’re Already Amazing. She’d love to hang out with you at www.holleygerth.com.
{Walk With Me Wednesday Posts will return next week… We look forward to your posts regarding The Practice of Joy.}
Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
July 3, 2012
how the size of your house has nothing to do with the size of your life
After such a week as last week, I’m feeling very small & hushed & I’ve slipped away to the woods with the Farmer & kids. Thank you for prayers last week, for grace as our family tucks away quiet for just a few days…and we’re delighted to invite you up to the front porch to share with some of the best writers on the Web — today, with a forever Word-sister — Lisa-Jo Baker of the Gypsy Mama.
There are dandelions in our back yard. A ripe, fluffy crop.
We didn’t intend to farm them. But we didn’t intend to do anything about removing them either. We figured come summer they’d be some other family’s problem.
It’s been nearly five years, one hamster, a new baby girl, and the puppy called Wolfie since we moved into this rental house with the faux bricks that keep falling off the kitchen walls.
Pete had come out for that new job and had only four weeks to find his family somewhere to live. He chose a white, rental house in Northern Virginia because it had a back yard and was a close commute into the city. A house that felt small already when there were still only two kids. On the first night between the stacks of boxes we’d told each other it would only be for one year.
We’ve kept telling ourselves that every June. Just one more year and then we’ll be able to move.
I really still believed it two years ago.
Last year I laughed and then I cried.
This year I watched my new daughter waddle from dandelion to dandelion and waited for the panic to come with the impending “why we still won’t be moving to a bigger space” conversation.
She walks and is starting to run now. Micah says, “Zoe walks fast, she doesn’t run.” I watch her waddle her way through a constellation of yellow. She bends down nose-to-nose with this harvest we didn’t plan and grins.
The puppy is right beside her.
We didn’t plan to put down roots here. We didn’t plan to paint or garden or change the sixties light fixtures. We didn’t plan to unpack those three boxes still stacked against the utility room wall. We planned to move on to something bigger and better.
And when that didn’t happen I spent years letting this small house stunt my hospitality and eat away at my contentment. I believed that large expanses of hardwood floor and flowerbeds would yield a sense of home, of having arrived, of being ready to call ourselves grown ups and embrace our community.
Instead, each June the dandelions bloom and we don’t move.
But this year I discover to my surprise that the house has started growing.
Where there were only three bedrooms I noticed this morning that there are eight long, strong arms and legs of brothers who climb that bunk bed as much as they sleep in it. Two boys who grew through ages three, four, five, six and one of them teetering on seven still share bold declarations of love for their mother, their mattresses, their light sabers.
At nine o’clock every night our world exhales as the bathtub rings dirt and my sons whisper prayers in voices that bear no resemblance to a whisper.
This house is growing.
I know because the room that I hated for its awkward brown paneling and windowless air cradles the daughter we didn’t expect. A bosom of a room it has grown into a beauty. I would write this in between, non-room love letters if I could. I write them anyway with my bare feet at 2am – nightly – as I dance my girl back to sleep. The rock and roll of mothers the world over has tattooed my love for this room into the carpet.
At the sink the kitchen comforts. It offers glimpses into who the boy I fought so hard to learn to like will become – as he pleads to wash dishes, to chop, to stir, to mix. Even the falling bricks feel more like the sign of growing pains now than anything more offensive. He and I laugh as they come unstuck. And we super glue them back together.
While the dining room table comes apart from pieces Jackson has unscrewed and forgotten to reattach, our family grows tighter. And we eat off those red plates with the big promise,
“I have come that they might have life, and have it to the full.” John 10:10.
I am starting to believe it despite the house.
I am starting to believe it because of the house.
So much life spills out of this small house the very walls have stretched to accommodate it. And with them my small heart.
I get down on my knees on a gravel path in an upside down backyard till my lens brushes the delicate bloom that serenades me with summer. I want to see what she sees. Our unexpected life. In all its glorious disarray.
Zoe – Greek for life.
Zoe Grace. Daughter. Teacher. Gift giver.
Life and Grace.
This house. These people. One small dog and a smelly hamster.
I bury them in my heart and walk inside to unpack the last three boxes.
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~ text and photos by the wondrous Lisa-Jo Baker of the Gypsy Mama.
Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
Links for 2012-07-02 [del.icio.us]
... a revolution of gratitude for all His crazy grace, all for His glory alone! Joy in Him!
When You're in the Middle of a Struggle
@ Holley Gerth... ""That's not who you are, friend, it's *where* you are right now." Been thinking about this all weekend....
July 2, 2012
when you’re somehow missing your true homeland
After such a week as last week, I’m feeling very small and quiet and I’ve slipped away to the woods with the Farmer and kids. We are resting in Him, letting Him revive us deep, laughing together and tasting and knowing it again — the goodness of God. So while the cat’s away, the mice will play and while we’re away, some remarkable friends will play! Play & laugh with relevant posts, nourishing words, beautiful and useful lines that could become lifelines. Thank you for prayers last week, for grace as our family tucks away quiet for just a few days…We’re delighted to invite you up to the front porch and share amazing words from some of the best writers on the Web — today, with a very esteemed friend and one startling beautiful writer, Amber Haines, of The RunaMuck.
Going for my second cup of coffee, I scuttle to the kitchen to the sound of a butcher knife in rhythm on a wood cutting board.
Our dear friend was there slicing squash early for the dehydrator, his morning straight to the quiet work with so many of our weekend words still hovering, still feeding us, still bringing up more questions.
He’s come back to the States after having lived with his family for years in far-away Mozambique.
We went to college together, and he was in our wedding, but since then, he became a man, a husband, and a father in a completely different context and culture.
How different he is than the rest of us.
His children didn’t know what lemonade was, and they came to find me after drinking it and said, “Thank you for making lemonade, and thank you for walking outside to bring it to us.” One wrapped the full length of his lanky unabashed arms around my waist and told me he wouldn’t have more; that one cup was plenty.
At the supper table last night they thanked the God who is all around us, and I have a sense that they recognize God in a raw way that I never will.
The mouths on seven laughing children roll the morning into a scurry. I nurse the baby and come back to a plate of heaping white corn-meal mash on the table cooling while the kids had peanut butter on toast. There’s a give and take when two families take up a house, how the care gets spread out.
I worry of disconnect and want to make it home for them here, but we know that the land – and what depends on it – has come to make all their metaphors, and the land they love is so far away.
Our weekend together has been all joy, glowing with that sweet twinge of pain. Maybe we all miss home a little.
A few days ago, I heard our three oldest boys talking in the back seat about Heaven, about how they lived there with Jesus before they had bodies. I don’t remember ever reading that in the Bible, and I know I didn’t teach it to them, but I listened to them agree that they belonged to God before they were born, and I marveled at the depth of their conversation. I didn’t ask questions or give any input.
These little ones I’m raising are teaching me a childlike sense of eternity with God, deepening my own understanding with their assumptions about how God is outside of time, how we are souls, and how these bodies are not our homes.
We gather around the mash at the table, which has cooled into something we can pinch off and roll up with our fingers. This cornmeal came from a special woman, their Mozambican Grandmother back home. She had told them to take it, eat it, and remember her.
Our friend quietens the children and asks us, “Where are you?” And mine replied, “Arkansas!” and then “in my body!”
He goes on to ask, “Are you only here in your body?” and his own son says, “of course not. Part of me is in Mozambique.”
“How do you leave part of yourself somewhere else? Will you leave part of yourself here in Fayetteville?”
The questions leave my boys silent, and his oldest says, “Of course. By how we love; by the memories we’ve made; by crawfish in the pond; by sharing together.”
His other son laughs, says, “It’s a trade. You give parts to us, and we give parts to you.”
We examine the corn meal now, how Grandmother had worked so hard to make it, how her heart went into sending it all the way here.
I jut my hip to the side with my baby bounced, and I hold my breath not to cry. Here I am stuck in this skin at a nasty fellowship table with kids who have smeared peanut butter from here to kingdom come, and I realize it like a child that when we love how He loves and give how He gives, he joins us at the table.
On my good days, Scripture is my bread and leads me to life — but only when those words begin to breathe in us moment by moment, when we look around and see the unseen, do we get to see Jesus, thereby knowing scripture.
They brought this meal to share their Mozambique hearts with us, and unseen Jesus has given himself to us, Friend Emmanuel in the breaking of bread, in the embraces after lemonade. I recognize Him well, my Shepherd.
Sun shines in the window at the quiet plate.
Our fingers dip in and roll it up.
Think of how she’s missing her children so far away now.
Think of how we all long for real family and home. Think of Jesus setting the table. Think of the land bearing fruit.
Take what He gives. Eat it with thanks. And remember Him.
He’s given Himself for you and to you.
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~text & photos by Amber Haines, an always read
Take July’s Joy Dare? Make it a month of Freedom from grumbling!
Thanks is a word that takes us before God and into the joy of our true homeland…
Print it for the fridge and dare everyone in the family to find these 3 gifts from His hand each day:
Click here to print July’s Joy Dare! Put it on the fridge! Dare the Kids! And begin this week — this month-- right!
Count three gifts a day, 1000 gifts in 2012 (and be entered to win the NikonD90 camera?)
Thank-you is a word that can change you, your world — the whole world!
HOW TO ENTER JULY’S GIVEAWAY:
Each day of July, either share your gifts on on Twitter {label with #1000gifts #JoyDare so we can find you!}, or with us in the gratitude community at Facebook , or on Pinterest (#1000gifts).
Each day, 3 people will who share their gifts via Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest will be randomly selected & entered into a drawing for JOY BASKET: a gift card @ Amazon {100$} & {signed copies of One Thousand Gifts, the photographic gift book
, the DayBrightner, and the family gratitude journal} Give thanks to Him in the assembly!
Join us? And happily change everything by keeping your own crazy list of One Thousand Gifts?
Please, jump in, make your life about giving thanks to God! — Just add the direct URL to your specific 1000 gift list post… and if you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other in our refrain of thanks by sharing the community’s graphic within your post.
Give thanks to the Lord! His Love Endures Forever!
Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
July 1, 2012
Links for 2012-06-30 [del.icio.us]
@ Christian Book... just the gift for a friend?
Inspirational Quotes for Women
@ (in)courage... just for you -- such inspiration!
June 30, 2012
Links for 2012-06-29 [del.icio.us]
@WORLDmag.com ... it was a humble grace to speak with WORLD Magazine's editor Marvin Olasky about mothering and creativity and what it means to wait on the Lord....
June 29, 2012
what’s been afoot this week on the Farm {Friday on the Farm}
And come Friday, after such a week, I’m very ready to curl up very quiet…
Shalom, she’s has been staying close all week, her and Kai dangling their heads and goofy smiles into frames, Levi and her bouncing grinning cameramen hard on trampolines.
When I’d finally just find a pillow in the evenings, she’d pat my cheek and lean into whisper, “You doing good, Mama. You doing so good.”
And come November, when the snow flakes are just beginning to fly here, the farm about ready to tuck in with me for a long, long winter nap, One Thousand Gifts: A DVD Study: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
will remind us of summer and oh, how we’ve been praying, all together as a family, all week, that God would use those 5 DVD study sessions to remind His children that oh, how He loves them.
For the last year, Zondervan had asked if we might consider a DVD small group study curriculum with participants guide, for folks to gather together around what it means to find Joy — right where you are. For the last year, we said no many times.
Yet…. Whenever we say no to the God of the universe — we say yes to the enemy of our souls.
We pray God can now use our weak but trusting yes?
And when I looked into that camera lens, I thought of when Trish told me of the morning her son Caleb went Home to the Lord, and I thought of the Herrle’s bent beside Lydia’s bed offering up their thanks — and I thought of you.
All of you that I have met in hallways and after microphones, my neck broken out in these nervous blotches, and your life broken and given so beautifully for Him in the midst of limping hopes and unwavering Faith. Thought of you whose notes I read in my inbox, of your God stories and your hearts fractured just a bit over the prodigals and the shattered vows and the wrenching turns in the road. Of you who slip words shyly into the corners of Facebook of your brave dare to fully live, to take all wild joy in Him.
It was your face I wanted to cup and just whisper it again:
“Only the Word is the answer to rightly reading the world, because The Word has nail-scarred hands that cup our face close, wipe away the tears running down, has eyes to look deep into our brimming ache, and whisper, “I know. I know.”
The passion on the page is a Person, and the lens I wear of the Word is not abstract idea but the eyes of the God-Man who came and knows the pain.” (One Thousand Gifts)
I wanted to squeeze your hand tight and open His Word wide and walk together with you — right into His presence where there is always fullness of Joy.
So, after WORLD Magazine coming to the farm, and then the camera/DVD curriculum crew landing in from Zondervan (the windows washed once for all & the tramp-bouncing kids smitten with everyone!) — it’s good to just sit quiet with the cheeping and the feathers and the crinkled-nose freckled girl and prayers for you.
It’s good to be just one of the turkeys — just sitting still.
Still and knowing — He’s good — yes, He is so good.
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Related:
The DVD Curriculum to accompany One Thousand Gifts
A glimpse of WORLD Magazine coming to the Farm:
(RSS Readers: click here to view video in post?… Consider just clicking off the music slider at the very top of the blog, right under the header? Thank you for grace…)
Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
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