Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 304
May 5, 2012
weekends are for growth
For seeing how the grass
always grows greener
right where you point the water hose
and that can be right under your feet
and if you frame things up a certain way
the unwanted
weeds
can be these ridiculously wondrous
blooms!
Blessings on your joy-focused growth weekend, friends!
All’s grace because of Christ alone,
:
:
Joy on the Weekend: Gather the kids — you have laughed with this one, yes? Maybe the kids have some ideas to recreate some funny too?
Creative Inspiration for the Weekend : Grab your camera — (if you have a DSLR, you’ve got this so helpful tutorial under your belt) —- and have some crazy FUN with these photography tips! {You’re making happy time everyday to be creative, yes?}
Kitchen Love for the Weekend : Tuck these tried and tested recipes away for being a neighbor who cares: Take Them a Meal Recipes … and let the kids make your favorite cookie recipe and print these out and let the kids have fun! Perfect for loving on Mothers around the corner this week.
Free Printable for the Weekend : Just this week, this one for the fridge — or frame!
Green on the Weekend : Oh, to have some of this loveliness in the yard for years and years! Talk about inspiration: Free, very easy, doable butterfly garden plans… and these are the best things you might do in the backyard this year!
Make a Memory on the Weekend : What if you made your parenting a bit like this? What’s one thing you could do this weekend? And what if the kids got to play for hours with this oh, so easy balloon blower-upper —- easy, simple, fun: They’ll remember this fun!
Clean on the Weekend : This inspiration got printed out here this week! And oh — this one tip amazing tip!
Heart for the Weekend: Want your kids to grow spiritually? Want someone you love to go deeper with God? Want to put out some new beautiful growth yourself? Because this is what we all really want. Five Things God uses to Grow our Faith. “God will leverage the Very Worst for the Very Best!”
Prayers for the Weekend : What if we tried this?
Gift for the Weekend:
Perfect for a woman in your life this week: Making one of these lovelies for someone you love — so they can be inspired to fly!
Aren’t they beautiful?
And, yes, ma’am, then print out these bevy of free printables to go along with it, to make give a bit of happy joy-in-a-box?
{And they tell me that for Mother’s Day, there’s a happy sale happening over at Family Christian offering a sweet little sale of 50% off of One Thousand Gifts. Lifeway‘s tells me that it too is offering One Thousand Gifts at half price as a Mother’s Day gift feature, if that helps anyone? Thank you for grace.}
{And if you are looking for a gift for your own beautiful Mama? To make some heart space for real Joy…}
Worship for the weekend : This song part of the nightly soundtrack as I waited on the Lord and scratched out One Thousand Gifts… Let’s sing it together this weekend, over and over again…
{And…. coming to this quiet corner next week?
Ooooh — some amazing wonderfulness that you get to be a part of! Stay tuned!}
May grace and truth surprise you all over again this weekend, friends…
:: :: ::
{And the winner of April’s Joy-in-a-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!)
Random.org selected: Lyn Carradine who shared her thanks to God on FB: The moon reflecting the sun’s light in the dark of night and my son’s face reflecting happiness and inspiration when he saw the conjunction of the moon and Jupiter in beautiful conjunction tonight; my daughter’s shiny little cupcake pan reflecting her face as she carefully places dough in each cup…
Enter the May’s drawing for Joy-in-a-Basket? 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).}
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!}
May 4, 2012
Best Books Review {Farm on Friday}
TThat’s what I tell Hope when she says she fell asleep reading a good book.
“Falling asleep with a good book in your hands is about as close as you can get to someone rocking you to sleep.”
And I wink and she laughs, “Is that why you have all those stacks by your bed?” And I nod and laugh with her.
And the hens peck and cluck happy on a Friday at the farm and who doesn’t want to settle right down into some good words?
The day’s calling may be collecting the eggs or hanging out a string of worn jeans or serving up a plate of greens — but
“good reading should be the vocation of a lifetime.” ~ John Piper on Teaching, Schooling and Reading
So … here’s what is stacking up on the farm these days…
Your Church Is Too Safe: Why Following Christ Turns the World Upside-Down
May I just quietly offer that Mark Buchanan is one of very favorite authors?
A Canadian pastor, no one quite wields words like Mark — a pastor’s heart, a poet’s pen, a storyteller’s wit, Mark’s words leap off the page, shake you awake, and startle you by Grace and Truth and Beauty and Christ.
I continually return to all of Mark Buchanan’s books
and Your Church Is Too Safe had me hooked by the first page. Highly recommended.
A very kind reader sent me this book because she thought I might fall for these pages too — and she was right!
I didn’t get two pages in to realize Canadian author, Carolyn Weber, is one very brilliant, warm, and ruthlessly honest woman.
A deserving ECPA finalist this year, Weber’s story of finding Jesus at Oxford had me riveted, smiling, nodding — grateful. A surprising, deeply thoughtful read.
Passages: How Reading the Bible in a Year Will Change Everything for You
Brian Hardin of Daily Audio Bible (you have tuned into this fabulous free online soul food, yes?) takes us on this unforgettable journey of reading the Bible in a year.
And when this book lay here in the grass and the morning light and a butterfly landed on it ? (oh did you see that in the photo above?) — I so smiled at the happy providential moment!
Because yes, reading the Bible in a Year Will Change Everything for You
Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewish Words of Jesus Can Change Your Life
This is the perfect read as we memorize Sermon on the Mount!
Scholarly yet in layman’s terms, what Tverberg uncovers brings Scripture to light in contextual, astonishing ways.
She makes me hunger to dig deeper in the meaning of the Word…
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
Simply, Martyn Lloyd-Jones book is a classic.
I have underlined so much of this book — and am praying to live it.
If you are memorizing, or want to understand and live, Sermon on the Mount, I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
She Did What She Could Do: Five Words of Jesus That Will Change Your Life
I carried this book with me on the Compassion Ecuador trip last fall…
Because if you ever wanted to be inspired to change the world, your world? This very little book and easy read — just those letters: SDWSC — speak to a woman’s heart about doing what you can, where you are: She Did What She Could.
Last year, I listened to Elisa Morgan, the founder and long time president of MOPS International and author of SDWSC, powerfully share this message and as a woman who knows the hearts of women, Elisa right kindled me. I love this woman and friend and her heart after her Savior’s heart and how she rallies her sisters to do what we can — a pouring out of love for our Lord.
The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited
What really is the Gospel?
Isn’t that the one question we really have to know the answer to?
And isn’t the answer to that question the one we really have to live?
Theologian and professor, Scot McKnight cuts to the quick and shakes you up and uprights you and this is one very thought-provoking, needful read.
Karen Zacharias is one unflinchingly honest writer, a probing investigative journalist and a passionate Christ follower.
April was National Child Abuse Prevention month. And if you love children? And have a heart to be part of a community that protects children from abuse?
I am grateful Karen unforgettably tells the hard stories and asks us not to turn away. This true, heart-shattering story of Karly Sheehan and how her father desperately worked to protect her — is a powerful read that may drive us to our knees. And to be change in our own communities.
Just a Minute: In the Heart of a Child, One Moment … Can Last Forever
Do you have a minute?
That one moment — it could forever change the life of a child.
This book, written by Wess Stafford, the president of Compassion International, made me more attentive and mindful of how each moment with a child is an opportunity to speak hope and grace and Jesus into an eternal soul. A great read as we’re all getting ready to watch the Compassion Bloggers head out for Tanzania this week!
Always There: Reflections for Moms on God’s Presence
Looking for Mom-encouragement?
It was a joy to contribute to this book with my friend Renee Swope of Proverbs 31 Ministries and so many other wonderful mothers.
Just newly released, this MOPS compilation of real encouragement for moms in the glorious trenches, offers what every mom needs to know:
His presence is always there…
So…. will you come on over and tell us what you are reading these days?
And next week’s Friday on the farm? Oh… well, let’s just say yes ma’am!
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 2012-05-03 [del.icio.us]
@ Zondervan... this may be the real secret?
This post is worth 2 or 3 reads...
Emily Freeman @Ed Stetzer's... "As we lean hard into Jesus, I’m caring less what people think and more for people, period." A profound read on so many levels....
May 3, 2012
When You Feel like Everyone is Bigger, Better, Smarter… { or ‘How to be a Star’}
When the fog meandered in lost on a spring evening in May, she hung her apron up in the back mudroom.
She wandered down the back lane too.
Down in the woods, she could hear them, the frogs singing, an invisible symphony.
She knotted the one side of her skirt up to step over a pothole. She tried to make her way.
In a world of reaching, how do you rest? In a culture of numbers how do you kneel? In a world of ladders how do you go lower?
Somewhere a dog barked loud.
She looked across fields.
There’s always something barking loud in you that you need a bigger field.
A better kid, a bigger house, a greater life, a grander point.
There’s always part of you that wonders if anything you do matters enough.
And there’s always someone who makes sure you know how much smarter and wiser, bigger and better, known and greater they are.
There’s always someone who snatches the horn to sing too loud of their own tens of thousands.
She had to remember to tell herself that: The ones keeping tally in life just want to know they count.
Everyone wielding their own horn just wants to be held.
And Jesus, He stretched His arms out to the whole world — and He nailed His offer right there.
Who wants the love of a Messiah more than the lauding of men?
She stood at the top of the hill behind the barn.
She could do this: When the world strives — the wise still. It’s the only way to feel God’s embrace.
The whole world could compete to be heard and esteemed and known and get ahead. She didn’t have to. She could breathe deep and feel all of her filling with this calm sea of peace.
You can give up the need to compete in the world — when you accept being complete in Christ.
Sometimes the way to win is to never enter the race.
She stood there listening to the frogs croaking, song filling all the spring sky.
She just stood there….
There’s no need to keep up with the Jonses’ when you are keeping company with Jesus.
When she rambled back up to the house, up to the porch, she nearly didn’t hear them, the barely cry, the hardly-ness of new hatchlings.
She stood on the step and stretched.
Up in the leaves, up in a branch by the top stair, that’s where she found them. Found them hidden, found them cupped. She could see that this was the mattering part — that in hiddenness, we are held.
She stood there, rooted there, watching and witnessing it — the hatchlings, how they opened so wide, how without a sound, they opened so wide.
She could feel it in her — her heart imitating that one movement, doing just that — soundlessly doing just that.
This is all that would ever matter —- that she opened wide so He could fill her.
She needn’t be heard…. because she was known.
The hatchlings, they held themselves in this silent, fearless assurance.
The fog settled down in the hollow, a veil hiding the woods away. Behind it somewhere the frogs sang on…
She felt found.
She would be small. She would make her life small.
There on the stairs, there by the nest of hatchlings in the deepening twilight, she looked up.
She could see it all above her —
How the stars are always small…
:
:
: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 2012-05-02 [del.icio.us]
@TED --- what is a professional actually? A very fascinating listen about a way of educating... (HT: Tonia)
root
@ Study in Brown ... the wisdom of this.
A Night of Amazing Women
@ TBN... These women? The kindest, Jesus-loving friends: "featuring Sheila Walsh, Sandi Patty, Brenda Warner, Pat Smith, and Patsy Clairmont from the Women of Faith tour share uplifting stories about how God reveals Himself through our brokenness." I don't think I can catch this here in Canada... but maybe where you are? That Patsy --- she's pure grace...
Work as Worship
@The High Calling... 1 Corinthians 10: 31 "So if you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." This video may encourage you in the midst of your work today -- your offering to Him!
May 2, 2012
How Everyone Can Be An Optimist
My Grandma Barbara Ruth, she ever only saw a cup one way.
Didn’t matter if the tea’d been poured out or if the sky’d tipped over or the tap was still running loud.
Every cup she ever held or tipped back or drank from, they were all right empty as far as she was concerned.
She’d been dying of old age since she was 42. Every picnic was bound to get rained out. My grandfather’d be whistling Winn-Dixie and she just knew he was brewing to pick some fiery fight. I loved her like there was no tomorrow. And for Grandma? There likely wasn’t going to be another tomorrow.
The thing is apples don’t fall far from trees and cups can seem empty for generations.
Seeing the cup as half empty is completely unhelpful.
Really — what’s the benefit of being anything other than an optimist?
I never asked Grandma that.
Sometimes I ask that woman in the mirror who looks her, who looks back at me.
That woman who may or may lay awake nights wondering if a son’s algebra grades flex enough muscle to pry him into university and if that business idea of his will leave him bankrupt and heart-rent, and if the sky will turn kinder so we can get this year’s crop in the ground.
Wondering how can we spend our lives to end poverty and stop oppression and if any of them will go out into this world loving Jesus more than their own comfort and double car garages and culture’s applause and their very lives and if their mother has wholly failed them or only just mildly ruined them. Kids eat garbage from dumps. I have yelled. They still bicker.
I see all who they are not. I haven’t hugged and prayed and asked for forgiveness enough. The economy could implode next month. I should bake more peanut butter cookies. They should be kinder. Years are ridiculously short and minutes can be relentlessly long and failures can seem eternal.
I have known it, the mornings that I have struggled to get out of bed, the days when I’ve fumed about all that is wrong in them and me and the world:
When we fixate on the worst in something, we render ourselves incapable of fixing anything.
But attend to the good in something — and we act towards the best in everything.
For our science studies, I sit in the middle of the couch, in the middle of a bunch of kids and I read about weather
and seasons and the pressure of air.
“What do you know about this ocean of air you live in?” I read it from the newsprint, yellowed page.
“It’s hard to picture something you can’t see. It’s hard to believe something is real if you can’t look at it and touch it.” I’m reading words about air and thinking about God. “Are there ways to showing that air is real?”
The science book tells us to get a glass and a bowl of water and Malakai, he runs to the kitchen. We follow the instructions.
“Now turn the glass upside down and push it straight into the bowl of water.” I look up at Malakai, Shalom, Levi, all hunched over the bowl.
Kai plunges the glass into the bowl’s water. It doesn’t fill.
“Why doesn’t the glass fill with water?” Malakai grins, shrugs his shoulders.
“You thought the glass was right empty? In actual fact — it’s right full.” Malakai tilts his head at that angle.
I read the text
. “The glass doesn’t fill with water — because the glass is right full of air.”
And I tilt my head and re-read my life.
That rhetorical question asking if your glass half empty or half full? The truth is that the glass is never half empty — or half full.
The truth is the glass is always right full.
You may not be able to picture what you can’t see but only real things fill up space. And the real reality is that your glass is really right full.
And at this angle, the one with the glass so full that it pushes back an ocean of doubt, the world reads differently and the cynics don’t wear wisdom but the shoddy armor of the worried and wounded.
The cynics donning armor because they’re the aching, the afraid not wanting to be disappointed. It’s the cynics who have a limited, bruised vocabulary of no. It can seem easier to reject the world before the world hurts you again.
It’s the brave who say a prayerful yes, the brave and wise who believe that the faith-filled yes is what heals things.
It’s the brave and free who are the optimists.
And to be an optimist — for a moment, you first have to be a pessimist.
Because sometimes you can only be an optimist when you have a plan for the pessimist in you. So, you play out the law of Worst Case Scenario: What is the worst thing that could possibly happen?
And there aren’t wolves, trouble, kids, hatred, debts, messes, betrayal, teenagers, disease, lack, hard times, untruths, diagnoses, or disappointment that can possibly separate you from the love of God. Nothing can separate you from Him.
So the Worst Case Senario? Is only the scenario of not wanting Christ the most.
So the Worst Case Scenario — is only a possible scenario if you want something more than Christ.
If you want Christ the most — there is no worst case scenario.
Live and He’s using everything to shape you more into Christ and abundant life in Him.
Die and you have eternal life in Him.
Abundant life versus eternal life — it’s impossible to lose!
You can’t lose.
When you have a plan in place for the worst — you never go to the the place of worry. And the plan for when all hell breaks lose is that Christ’s already broken the power of hell and to live is Christ and to die is gain, so the plan is always joy.
I say yes to a boy who wants to try a crazy experiment of his own.
I begin to make loveliness by picking up one lego. Write one letter and a string of hopeful words to a child in a dump. Focus on the good in a struggler and a straggler. Believe just this moment that everything is being transfigured for His glory. Every step towards something beautiful already accomplishes something beautiful. Beauty and joy are found in every overcoming along the way.
I reach over and brush a hand with belief.
Only those who believe in the beautiful — can collaborate in the miraculous.
The new world is not a mirage. The Kingdom’s already coming. If you still long enough in prayer — you can hear its breathing.
You can hear the air filling the lungs of the resurrected and risen ones, filling all the earth.
On the sill, I leave this glass out.
This glass already and always right full…
::
::
::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!}
May 1, 2012
When You Need to Quietly Reflect
A better future always simply begins —
in a series of prayerful nows.
::
::
“If you cannot find time to pray, ask for forgiveness. Ask to be cleansed of the sin of having no time to pray …
It could be that Satan is pushing you into too much work so that you cannot take time to pray.”
– Corrie Ten Boom
“The work of praying is prerequisite to all other work in the Kingdom of God.
It is by prayer that we couple the powers of heaven to our helplessness … and make the impossible possible.”
– O. Hallesby
“Continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving.”
– Colossians 4:2
::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 2012-04-30 [del.icio.us]
... if you've adopted or considered adopting or have a heart for adoption -- have you listened to Kim de Blecourt's moving story?
5 Things I’ve Learned as a Boy Mom
@ 4tunate.... a wise mama of quadruplet boys shares her wisdom...
April 30, 2012
If You’ve Been Looking for a Sign
When I find out what a teenager’s done, I’d like to ring one slender neck.
Dirt rings the mudroom sink like nasty vandalism.
To-do lists keep scrawling ugly, longer and longer.
I can’t find my watch. The bathroom mirror is splattered and smudged.
The weather forecast makes it impossible to know if we should plant our next field or wait till the next rain or what to do.
We watch the sky for a sign.
We pray, we pray these begging prayers.
I go a whole week not knowing what time it is.
I can’t make sense of anything and this lump in my throat burns.
A high school friend, one who knew the thick glasses and the crush on the Dutch farmboy and the blessed scent of the library stacks, she and I are an impossible twenty years older and we go for a walk.
Everything feels dark and I don’t know how to talk. I listen to her. She has all these questions of her own. I can only nod.
We’re walking down a side street in town when I stop.
I stop and reach for my camera.
Rachel keeps talking about mortgage rates, about the Gospels and Jesus and speech pathology and the meaning of life and her mind was always been this mushrooming wonder holding me rapt.
I aim the camera at the sidewalk. Fiddle for the shutter. The lens works to focus.
And Rachel stops mid-sentence.
She reads the words chalked on asphalt out loud, words I’m focusing on.
She reads them slow, like a decoding of everything:
“Hey beautiful! You are Loved!”
“Oh.” She says it like an awakening. “Oh — and here I just thought it was graffiti.”
I nod in the middle of an epiphany.
The graffiti can be grace.
What seems a defacement may be a glimpse of His face.
All the writing on the wall could be love notes.
I turn to Rachel, the camera, the capturing, still in hand, and the wind gusts, and I cheer it into the wind, into her —
“Hey Beautiful! You are loved!”
And she laughs loud and we’re carried and hey, who needs Ryan Gosling and his “Hey Girl” meme when you’ve got God with His “Hey Beautiful” promise ?
Everything could make sense and the real mystery of grace is that it always arrives in time.
Like the wind, grace finds us wherever we are and won’t leave us however we were found.
I take another picture. So I’ll remember.
“This deciphers everything, doesn’t it?”
Love always does.
And the dialect of God is the day just as it comes — and whenever I slow down and shift perspective, it’s possible to read the impossible: the divine language of love written on all the walls.
This smiling, startling alphabet of grace…
I can feel it standing right there standing on the sidewalk.
Grace isn’t a mere pollyanna feeling. It’s a force.
It’s a powerful force as startling as the power of electricity. Grace is the power of God pulsating with this passionate love of God, this jolting, blazing, dangerous love that pierces all of humanity’s pitch black.
Grace always shocks.
Grace always stuns.
Grace is always what we need.
It’s what everyone groping around lost in the dark has to know: turn towards Grace and you turn on all the lights.
The whole black asphalt at our feet torches with the revelation.
And there’s more than enough light to see it –
How the day’s fresh mercies make even here clean enough for all these chalkings of His love.
seeing all the graffiti as grace, reading between all the moments and seeing the ways He loves… the endless One Thousand Gifts:
#3456… a pocket of lemon in the middle of a cupcake
#3457… my one brother talking with my four boys on our one couch
#3458… pansies in April and this printable on the fridge to begin the week
#3459… almonds
#3460… the way he closes the door behind him
#3461… my mama and my sister sitting two seats down from me on Sunday morning
#3462… when he cuts up a pineapple for us all
#3463.. reaching for a Bible first thing
#3464… last basketball games
#3465… steaming iron!
#3466… the truth of this
#3467… the weather radar and him getting up to check it at 1:00 am on Monday morning
#3468… planting our fields with our boys
#3469… slobbery, full-face kisses from a one year old niece
#3470… a weekend of beautiful community
#3471… praying with women I’ve just met
#3472… passing down kleenexes
#3473… would it’d be amiss not to murmur wonder at His #13, week #37 at NYTimes, all Him, for Him alone, His people being drawn to Him
#3474… mama making up the Saturday night salad with boys
#3475… the sparrows singing early
#3476… all the graffiti in my life that can be read as grace
…. 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!
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
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!
%20and%20go%20on%20a%20hunt%20for%20the%203%20gifts%20listed.%20Give%20thanks%20for%20the%20gifts%20and%20find%20Joy!%20%0A%20%0AShare%20daily%20on%20Twitter%20(%23JoyDare%20%231000gifts)%2C%20or%20on%20FB%20(OneThousandGifts)%20or%20on%20Pinterest%20(%231000gifts)%20and%20be%20entered%20to%20receive%20JOY%20IN%20A%20BASKET!%20%20)
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!}
April 28, 2012
Links for 2012-04-27 [del.icio.us]
Today's the day! A year in the making... and today's the day that we connect all over the globe! Come be community with us?
Top College Values — Which Schools' Degrees Pay The Best
... what my frugal son emailed me tonight.
Ann Voskamp's Blog
- Ann Voskamp's profile
- 1368 followers
