Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 302

Links for 2012-05-21 [del.icio.us]

What happens when Gloria Gaither takes the Dare to Fully Live...

... @HomeComing Magazine... Gloria Gaither takes up the dare with 1000 Gifts...
Culture Making Amid Cancer: The Choices That Suffering Makes Possible | This Is Our City | Christianity Today

@ Christianity Today... "A few minutes later he added, "Cancer's a gift that God only gives to special people."
I thought, I'm not so sure." ... a very powerful article...
11 Inspiring Writing Centers

@ · Playful Learning... inspiring!

3 Ways to Be a Happier Family …… {because we all are a bit broken}

to print photo 1 and photo 2

::

The kids laugh loud and the floors shake a bit with the stars and the laundry sprawls across the mudroom floor.

I pick up pencils and socks and all these pieces that keep breaking off us and a broken world.

And I remember how to smile, how the shoulders feel in the chuckle and the shake and the parts all falling into place.

I put things back.

God never stops whispering: Give thanks anyways — do this in re-membrance of Me. I can feel how He puts me back together.

Why in the world give thanks? Why in the name of heaven?

God say to give thanks, to do this in remembrance of Him — because in the remembering to give thanks, it’s our broken places that are re-membered — and we are the ones made whole.

In recollecting all the goodnesses of God — all the brokenness in us re-collects. We are put back together. We are re-membered. We heal.

In giving thanks to Him in the assembly  — it’s our very souls that re-assemble.

A joyful heart is good medicine and our broken bones can be re-memembered when we remember to thank a good God.  

At the kitchen sink, crumbs across a counter stacked with pots that need scrubbing, I scratch down another gift —

“In this mess… I am blessed.”

And they laugh and I live and the ink runs across the page —-  all theses fracture lines in my heart healing in this fusion to God.

 

3 Reasons Why to Teach Kids to Be Grateful

The research can only support Scriptural Truth:

1. Better Attitudes:

Children who practice grateful thinking have more positive attitudes toward school and their families (Froh, Sefick, Emmons, 2008).

2. Better Grades:

Gratitude in children: 6-7th graders who kept a gratitude journal for only three weeks, had an increased grade point average over the course of a year.

3. Better Caring:

Children who kept gratitude journals were more sensitive to situations where they themselves can be helpful, altruistic, generous, compassionate, and were less destructive and displayed less negative social behaviors…

And if We Don’t Practice Gratitude?

On the other hand, research shows that youth who are ungrateful are “less satisfied with their lives and are more apt to be aggressive and engage in risk-taking behaviors, such as early or frequent promiscuous activities, substance use, poor eating habits, physical inactivity, and poor academic performance.”

Why does gratitude do all of this — how can it, really? 

Because we were made to live in gratitude to God, giving glory to God.

All research from: Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier 

 

3 Ways for Family Members to be Re-membered, Happy & Together

1. Print out the the Daily Joy Dare:

 Print out each month’s calendar of daily Joy Dares  and put it on the fridge. In the morning, share that day’s dare of 3 gifts to look for throughout the day and dare the kids to go on a God Hunt that day and keep their eyes open to find those three gifts.

2. Print out a copy of the free booklet 7 Gifts: Good and Perfect:

Have family members tuck the booklet into a pocket or a bag or lunchbox when they head out the door. Encourage each member of the family, them when they see a blessing, find gifts for that day’s joy dare, are struck by the goodness and glory of God, to jot it down in their 7 gifts booklet. Establish a daily ritual of remembering the goodnesses of God!

 3. Assemble together as a family to give thanks and be Re-Assembled…

After your evening meal, or family devotions, or as you tuck children into bed, sing the chorus of “Count Your Blessings, name them one-by-one.”

Sing the chorus together — and after the chorus, call out the name of a family member, who then gives thanks for a blessing or two or three or all 7 gifts they found that day…  Then sing the chorus again and call out another person’s name for them to share their thanksgiving to God. Continue until each family member has remembered their blessings — and you as a family are re-membered and made whole in thanksgiving to the Giver of gifts and goodness and grace upon grace upon grace….

Print out your own 7 Gifts: Good & Perfect booklet — This is a fallen world — As a family, give thanks and be Re-membered!

Related: 15 Ways to Raise Grateful Kids

 

giving thanks here and being re-membered… the endless One Thousand Gifts:

brothers & sisters & memories made here

Count your blessings with the Gaithers …

singing praises early

my dad in church with us this Sunday

grace upon grace

Gloria Gaither’s article here picking One Thousand Gifts as her Book Club pick in Homecoming magazine

tears and prayers and laughter under a spruce tree with a word-sister

boy-made peach cobbler

{#7 on the New York Times  : that God keeps doing this thing only of and for Himself, to urge His people to give thanks and find wholeness in remembering His endless goodnesses}

communion in a country church on Sunday morning, remembering a Savior’s sacrificing love, giving thanks and being re-membered in Him alone

…. thanks be to God

Click here to print May’s Joy Dare:  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 MAY’S GIVEAWAY:

Each day of May, 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!

button code here

 

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!}

How to Pray and The Best Way to Work {Friday on the Farm}

A life could really be full of all the best things:

Worried-full for nothing, thank-full for everything, prayer-full in all things.

When all 8 of us work up the kitchen garden together, Caleb says we should start a business of all things dandelions because that’s what we’ve got one first rate crop of.

“Dandelion salad.” He’s sitting in the dirt, enumerating possibilities, tossing weeds over his shoulder. “Dandelion tea. Fried Dandelion Blossoms. Dandelion wine.” The boy thinks in entrepreneurial start-ups.

“But Caleb.” Shalom’s looks up from her own squirmish with a stubborn one.

“We don’t even drink wine.”

The Farmer, kneeled over a spinach row, chuckles.

Hope’s waved a white flag over the stinging nettles. She sits quiet on the other side of the irises, daydreaming. Shalom parades about with this monster tap root she’s wrenched from the earth. Her smile is bigger. Malakai’s laying down watching the clouds.

Joshua swings a hoe over his shoulder and announces with this ridiculous grin, “I’m a garden gnome.”

“You just need an orange hat.” Caleb teases. “Or maybe Smurf blue?”

Joshua statuesque shoulders crumble in laughter.

“Okay, folks.” The Farmer calls over his shoulder, trying to rally the troops. “Everyone up off their seats. You can’t get much done that way…. You’ll work best if you are kneeling.”

And I close my eyes.

I’d work best if I’m kneeling… like an adoration.

“True, whole prayer is nothing but love,” offered St. Augustine. Is the only reason we don’t really pray is because we really don’t love? If one’s not praying regularly, it’s only because something else is regularly loved more than God.

Sometimes weeds go deep. I wrestle mine and there’s a taproot: Prayer becomes what we live when we want to get hold of God, not just get a hold of what we want. Yes. I want to parade happy too.

And real prayer isn’t about changing God’s mind but about finding God’s heart — and letting His heart change my mind.

Is this why God urges us to pray without ceasing? We need to pray without ceasing — because it’s the only way to live in communion. Without prayer, how can our life and His will have anything in common? Without prayer, we have nothing in common with God. Without prayer — we have no fellowship, no relationship, no worship. But when we enter into prayer, He enters into our thoughts and then we have much in common and the conversation never ends and we have our heart’s real desire — communion with Christ.

The sun breaks through, warms the back of Caleb’s neck as he plants his seeds, Caleb bent and best.

“I know of no better thermometer to your spiritual temperature than this: the measure of the intensity of your prayer,” Spurgeon said.

Levi, he stands up at the end of his row of spinach.

And it makes me smile —

how he doesn’t brush the dirt off his knees.

 

 

 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!}

When You Feel like Your Life’s a Mess …. The Real Truth About Your Dirt

When he walks through the kitchen with his hair showered clean but his face looking like that, I just have to laugh.

“What?” he says. “Really, I showered, Mom, I did.”

Levi stands indignant, hands on hip, and I nod half serious.

“You showered?”

“Yes, Mom! It’s only my clothes that are dirty.” He’s been picking stones all evening out in the back field.

He’s a boy and doesn’t know it but he’s wearing half the field right there into the kitchen.

“I showered at the barn already. I just have to change out of these clothes.”

“Levi, son.” I lay my hand on his shoulder —

“You need to go look in the mirror.”

“Oh.”

I can hear Levi laughing at the mirror at the back sink.

“Guess I didn’t get my face?”

 He sticks his head sheepish into the kitchen. I’m grinning.

“Guess I am still dirtier than I thought.”

I wink. And point to the shower. Levi chuckles, pulls his t-shirt off, heads to the bathroom.

I fold laundry. Still dirtier than I thought. I put another load in. Levi runs the shower.

Our hands are so stained with sin, that even our best works can leave traces of dirty prints. I shelve oil-blotted jeans.

Isn’t it true — Dirt is more than what the tabloids and town gossips can dish and it’s more than what we do — dirt is wound right into our DNA. It’s our make-up and there’s no make-up that can mask our mess and how our souls wrinkle in folds over the grime.

I might know that in my head. I don’t know what my heart knows. I can still think we’re pretty clean.

The water runs loud in the bath.

“The nature of Christ’s salvation is woefully misrepresented by the present-day evangelist,” is what A.W. Pink wrote.

“He announces a Saviour from Hell rather than a Saviour from sin.

And that is why so many are fatally deceived…

there are multitudes who wish to escape the Lake of fire who have no desire to be delivered from their carnality and worldliness.”

It’s more than our clothes and it’s right in our pores and are we all playing games here or do we want any of this for real?

3:30 am on a Wednesday and I am this mother sitting hunched in bed, knees pulled to the chin under white sheets, shoulders shuddering for a child. Sin can slither in silent under floorboards and the stench of it can make you wretch.

The bile in the back of my throat nauseates. I think I might be sick. I hold my stomach and weep and rock. The shattering of innocence can howl like a leaving. We’re all shards.

Sometimes you can keep the windows closed so tight, that when the tornado descends, the whole house explodes.

I wished we had opened a window.

We are all shards.

Like Job, the Farmer prays for our children. It’s more like this cry.

In the morning, I scrub too hard in the shower.

How can we get clean, how can we all just get somehow impossibly clean?

How in the world could we be audacious enough to think we were relatively clean?

The towels in the bathroom and all our righteousness look like filthy rags.

We pray more. The sadness of sin fills me at the stove and I brim. At the dinner table, the Farmer squeezes my hand and my chin trembles and I push back my chair from the dinner table but I don’t have the strength to stand up and I’m just bowed and bent. He doesn’t let go of my hand.

I want us to be delivered and cleaned and I want it for real. I need a Savior to save us from sin.

When the enemy slinks closer, the ragamuffins cling tighter to the Cross, and it’s the prowling lions that can drive us to the Lord. He can use even this.

This is the dialect of the dirty-bathed-clean and it’s what keeps me breathing and it’s all I can breathe: All is grace. I keep putting in another load of laundry.

It’s more than our clothes, our fronts, our masks.

Strange, what Spurgeon says,

“I do not know when I am more perfectly happy than when I am weeping for sin at the foot of the cross.”

I don’t know that I’m happy here — only that I know I am in the right posture here. God, be merciful on us, the sinners. A child weeps with me and I cup a face and we are not lost. He won’t let us go.

We are all shards in a mosaic of Grace.

I meet a woman who sells cars for a living. She tells me that white is the best color for a vehicle and I tell her we live in the country on a gravel road and white would never work where we live.

She tells me white is always the perfect vehicle no matter where you live.

And it’s on a Sunday morning after that Wednesday, standing in the door of our country church, when I notice how different the white vehicles in the parking lot look beside the grey pickups, the black cars.

It’s after communion, and I can still taste pure grace on the roof of my mouth. It’s after our filth before His purity has tore me open again and the tears had made their soundless way down and I had just held it, whitest bread.

A child had reached for my hand and there was pure grace and I had swallowed it down.

I stand at the church door, remembering what has been done in remembrance of Him who saved the worst of us, and I remember what the woman who sold cars said. She said, “White hides the dirt the best. It makes no sense, but white hides the dirt best.”

And there’s a Lamb Who is white and there’s a Way to be white as snow and when we are our worst, His white hides our dirt best.

In Him, you are not your sin. In Him, you are not your dirt. In Him, you are hidden and your iniquity is made clean by your identity and your identity is in His purity — and when we are our worst, His white hides our dirt best.

So all the days of the week, I leave it out and open on the table here.

His Word, this grace —

an invitation on purest white pages.

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 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 2012-05-15 [del.icio.us]

Top 10 Most Read Books in the World

... @ Galley Cat ...thought-provoking.
Hard work on the right things

@ Seth Godin.... "The secret, I think, is in understanding what matters." And it comes back to priorities unseen.... priorities unseen like love and relationship and souls... yes.
Just Guide Gently

@ Mom Heart Online... and I'm posting over here today with Sally Clarkson and community --- and how to really manage the day.
If Life is an Adventure…

@ "So if life is an adventure... Why aren’t we out there loving bigger and bleeding grace? Why aren’t we seeking out the hurt and the grief-stricken?"

The Purpose of Pain: When Life Hurts

She stood under all that blue sky and watched the windmill spin round and was it the all the world turning that she could feel?

How it spun and hurt and unfurled.

Dandelions unfolded at her feet — suns, risings everywhere.

The rooster turned.

Laundry slapped on the line.

Something in her, the hurting places, stirred awake right there.

That’s what she could feel:

The surrendered accept that pain is always but growing pains.

And growth is always a gift —  even when trials are the tutor.

One of the ducks duck settled down by the barbed wire fence.

Out in the far field, a horse stood in the midst of an afternoon turning out all these golden globes.

And in the long grass, she opened her hand and reached up for the line –

this trusted stretching right into wind.

::

::

:: 

“The greatest Christians in history seem to say

that their sufferings ended up bringing them the closest to God -

so this is the best thing that could happen,

not the worst.” ~ Peter Kreeft

In this world you will have tribulation,

but be of good cheer,

for I have overcome the world. ~ Jesus Christ

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!}

The Happy Mom Manifesto

The Happy Mom Manifesto

1. The only thing that has to be written in stone is when to pray.

Because it’s not schedules, busyness, or deadlines that keep one from prayer. The only thing stopping one from praying is self. {Excuse-making can be a cheap cover for idolatry.}

If one’s not praying regularly, it’s only because something else is regularly loved more than God.

2. Even if everything goes wrong, love is always right. There is ridiculous hope in this.

3. Whenever you want to throw your hands up, throw them around someone instead. Holding someone always helps holds things together.

4. God didn’t put people in your path mostly for your convenience; He put you there for theirs. This is a wonder and a grace.

5. Why be afraid of anything —  when our God is using everything?

6. Pick flowers. Pick grace. Choose joy.

7. This is always a choice: You can erupt — or pluck.  You can be an Erupter — or a Plucker. You can choose.

8. Be radical about grace and relentless about truth and resolute about the real hills worth dying on.

9. Say yes to one game every day and laugh loud. No empty-nest mama looks around and wishes she did one more load of laundry.

10. Happiness isn’t when the house is perfect. Happiness is when His Word and your walk are in harmony.

11. And every happy homemaker knows that the secret to real homemaking is not about making perfection. Home-making is about making a home.

A perfect home may not at all be a neat as a pin home. The point is not a house as neat as a pin or Pinterest pinnable.

The point is a house pinned together with sacrifice and Christ and love that can withstand any winds.

12. Unplug often to get refreshed. You’ll see your true self when you look for your reflection in the eyes of souls not the glare of screens.

13. Make yourself a roof.

Love bears all things and it reads stego in the Greek — literally a thatch roof. Love means you bend your life into a roof and take the rain and the wind and absorb all that might come a beating.

14. The only life worth living is a scandalous one: scandalous love, offensive mercy, foolish faith. Let joy live loud in your soul.

15. Only Speak Words that make Souls Stronger.

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Related: The 10 Point Manifest for Joyful Parenting (free printable) 

grateful for the moments…  the endless One Thousand Gifts:  …. thanks be to God

cards that thank you for a good “edgucation” and grinning, winking husbands

bare toes and dandelions

belly laughing over cereal

Levi’s handcarved rose

gerberas in sunlight

boys that let you know that they had tears in their eyes when they wrote your card

less than a month to an evening of Broken — will we meet you in Nashville?

mama’s curls framing her face

the way she loves, my Velveteen mama, worn to the realest real

her laugh turning heads — like music

Monday morning grace to begin again

# 6 this week on the New York Times, that we could all share the joy of choosing Joy in Him

More than 1000 Moms choosing to be the gift (We did it — you did it! We all did it together — you and your amazing Moms! The 1000 Moms Project? Well, nearly 2,000 of you publicly thanked Mom and you and your Moms became the gift to Mamas in Haiti!)

the daily opportunity to quietly and gratefully be bread broken and given

… and the beauty of all these Mamas, whose legacy continues in 1000 Moms Project , all the way to the Moms in Haiti!

The 1000 Moms Project:

Thank Your Mom — & Bless Another

Did you see these beautiful mothers? You thanked each of these exquisite Moms publicly in the 1000 Moms Project  And you and your Mom made a Mother’s Day Difference in Haiti this year. Have you read all your incredible stories of of Moms on this this page?  A thousand thank yous!  

I hope you & your Mom will join us when we travel to Haiti in July to see what a difference your thanks has made! When thanksgiving becomes thanksliving! 

{Just click to begin this inspiring slideshow — here you all are so wondrously!}

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Click here to print May’s Joy Dare:  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!

And a surprise for May: A JOY BASKET GIVEAWAY:

(We’ll announce the winner of April’s Joy Basket tomorrow — so everyone still has a chance today!)

HOW TO ENTER MAY’S GIVEAWAY:

Each day of May, 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!

button code here

 

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 2012-05-13 [del.icio.us]

Out of the Mouth of Babes

by Rebekah Lyons.... An esteemed and dear friend, Rebekah's raw and honest and exquisite post speaks of the hardest and the hope on Mother's Day.... Beautiful.

A Perfect DIY Mother’s Day …………… {or “How to make Your Own R&R Day”}

Because there are days

when every mother

– every woman –

just needs to have her own perfect little DIY project:

1.  Go for walk

just anywhere quiet, just for a moment — somewhere this weekend, go for a walk?

 

2.Turn on the music:

Fill the house and your heart and mind and bones with Praise to God music (Play it loud and let the whole house dance in praise! Really — just for  a moment: dance in praise!)

 

3. Make a tasty little treat

– just because. Nibble on this sweet  with with a cup of your favorite tea. Use your best china! {It’s like a mini-holiday, right at home!}

 

4. Pick up a Pen

– just for a minute.

Write down 3 reasons why you are grateful for your Mother.

From the Harvard Medical School: “When participants wrote and personally delivered a letter of gratitude to someone who had never been properly thanked for his or her kindness, participants immediately exhibited a huge increase in happiness scores. This impact was greater than that from any other intervention –  with benefits lasting for a month.”

{Quick upshot of happiness? Quick, give her thanks here right now! And do her heart and yours so much good! 

I thanked my mama here: What all the Mothers Need to Know

Share your letter of thanks to her right here. Become part of The 1000 Moms Project}

5. Open a window wide open

Pull up a chair!

 

6. Breathe in the fresh grace of  today 

Laughter optional…

7. Pray

… if nothing else today for your soul —  just bow and  pray. 

 

8. Give Yourself the gift of Joy:

Write down 5 things you are grateful for this week.

Dr. Emmons:

“People who were in the gratitude condition [keeping a gratitude journal for 10 weeks] felt fully 25% happier - they were more optimistic about the future, they felt better about their lives and they even did almost 1.5 hours more exercise a week than those in the hassles or events condition.”

{Wouldn’t that be the best gift to give yourself — 25% more happiness! Who doesn’t want that? Just give thanks everyday to The Giver of all and everything — share your thanks to Him with us every evening in our little gratitude community!}

Why not give yourself the Free Joy-in-A-Box?  Or wrap up some joy for a woman you love who needs some real deep joy?

Tuck in May’s Joy Dare! 

 

9. For Beautiful You:

Just spend five minutes snapping a shot like this — promise?  a real little gift this weekend would be just a bit of your beautiful smile in the frame!

Really — to remember you just as you are beautiful as you are right now… please? Say yes!

 

10. Have an at home pedicure 

… just a little DIY kindness to  your feet

 

11. Light a a scented candle

 

12. Take a  bubble bath

 Have you tried the very best kind of DIY bubble bath?

 

13. Have a Nap:

Oh, yes – the very real benefits of having a little nap

 

14. Play with the kids

After the nap, play with the kids, because oh, the kids (no matter their size) and you just need to laugh and run with the world’s best bubble recipe — blow them like crazy and have a hoot…. or just blow them slow and quiet and watch them float…

But just take a bit of time to make a few good, happy memories on this good day?

 

15. Soul Reflect

Before turning out the last light — just sit in the quiet and reflect on the truth and beauty of this…

 

 Bonus: Just print this out and hand to the kids or the very kind husband?

Related: The Habits of Mothers Who Change the World

The Truth about the REAL “Mother’s Day Card Mothers“

Blessings on your weekend, friend,

All’s grace because of Christ alone,



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This post is part of The 1000 Moms Project:

Oh,  jump in with thanks to your Mom before Mother’s Day so she can be part of The 1000 Moms Project!  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 2012-05-11 [del.icio.us]

In Defense Of Jesus

@Shaun Groves... If you could be involved in a revival that brought 500 souls *a day* to the saving knowledge and lordship of Jesus -- would you do it? This is why this matters to me...