One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

by Ann Voskamp

This is His endless experience because this is who He is, beauty overflowing. My moon wonder is but a glimpse, foretaste, of what God always sees, experiences. He is not tyrant or despot. I smile under the moon. For God is happiest of all. Joy is God’s life.

The art of deep seeing makes gratitude possible. And it is the art of gratitude that makes joy possible. Isn’t joy the art of God?

Don’t I give God most glory when I am fully alive? And I am most fully alive beholding God!

Our endless desires are fulfilled in endless God.

It’s my own face that obscures the face of God. How can I help this son of mine see when I can’t see? The parent must always self-parent first, self-preach before child-teach, because who can bring peace unless they’ve held their own peace?

Do I really smother my own joy because I believe that anger achieves more than love? That Satan’s way is more powerful, more practical, more fulfilling in my daily life than Jesus’ way? Why else get angry? Isn’t it because I think complaining, exasperation, resentment will pound me up into the full life I really want? When I choose—and it is a choice—to crush joy with bitterness, am I not purposefully choosing to take the way of the Prince of Darkness? Choosing the angry way of Lucifer because I think it is more effective—more expedient—than giving thanks?

If there are wolves in the woods—expect to see wolves; and if there is God in this place—expect to see God.

Contemplative simplicity isn’t a matter of circumstances; it’s a matter of focus.

Seeing is of course very much a matter of verbalization. Unless I call my attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply won’t see it.

“If you want to be really alert to seeing Jesus’ divine beauty, his glory … then make sure you tune your senses to see his grace,” urges theologian John Piper (emphasis added). “That’s what his glory is full of.”

To see the glory, name the graces.

“Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water” (Genesis 21:19 NIV).

What insanity compels me to shrivel up when there joy’s water to be had here? In this wilderness, I keep circling back to this: I’m blind to joy’s well every time I really don’t want it. The well is always there. And I choose not to see it.

If I am rejecting the joy that is hidden somewhere deep in this moment—am I not ultimately rejecting God? Whenever I am blind to joy’s well, isn’t it because I don’t believe in God’s care? That God cares enough about me to always offer me joy’s water, wherever I am, regardless of circumstance. But if I don’t believe God cares, if I don’t want or seek the joy He definitely offers somewhere in this moment—I don’t want God.

G. K. Chesterton observes, how “our perennial spiritual and psychological task is to look at things familiar until they become unfamiliar again.”

My human experience is the sum of what the soul sees and I see precisely what I attend to and what the eyes focus on is what the life is. See the well, son, the well.

“The only way to fight a feeling is with a feeling.”

“Feel thanks and it’s absolutely impossible to feel angry. We can only experience one emotion at a time.

‘What is the exact significance of God’s touching Jacob upon the sinew of his thigh?’” “And the doctor told him, ‘The sinew of the thigh is the strongest in the human body. A horse couldn’t even tear it apart.’”

The Lord has to break us down at the strongest part of our self-life before He can have His own way of blessing with us.”

Fear keeps a life small. The music dies and the joy drains. I’ve lived the strangle.

I know an untroubled heart relaxes, trusts, leans assured into His ever-dependable arms. Trust, it’s the antithesis of stress. “Oh, the joys of those who trust the LORD” (Psalm 40:4).

I can’t fill with joy until I learn how to trust: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow” (Romans 15:13 NIV, emphasis added).

That’s my daily work, the work God asks of me? To trust. The work I shirk. To trust in the Son, to trust in the wisdom of this moment, to trust in now.

Trust in the wholeness of the gospel—including this moment, good news too—and be saved. Choose stress, worry, anxiety, reject what God has given now, which is good news too—refuse to trust—and be condemned.

If fear keeps our lives small, does a life that receives all of God in this moment grow large too?

Thanks is what builds trust.

Trust is the bridge from yesterday to tomorrow, built with planks of thanks. Remembering frames up gratitude. Gratitude lays out the planks of trust. I can walk the planks—from known to unknown—and know: He holds. I could walk unafraid.

Trauma’s storm can mask the Christ and feelings can lie. I draw all the hurting voices close and I touch their scars with a whisper: sometimes we don’t fully see that in Christ, because of Christ, through Christ, He does give us all things good—until we have the perspective of years.

Trust tucks in. He has blessed today. Will He not bless again tomorrow?

We take the moments as bread and give thanks and the thanks itself becomes bread. The thanks itself nourishes. Thanks feeds our trust.

Stress can be an addiction and worry can be our lunge for control and we forget the answer to this moment is always yes because of Christ.

If the heights of our joy are measured by the depths of our gratitude, and gratitude is but a way of seeing, a spiritual perspective of smallness might offer a vital way of seeing especially conducive to gratitude.

“How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it!”

Eucharisteo makes the knees the vantage point of a life.

Expectations kill relationships—especially with God. And that’s what a child doesn’t have: this whole edifice of expectation. Without expectations, what can topple the surprising wonder of the moment?

Yes, the small even have a biblical nomenclature. Doesn’t God call them the humble? The humble live surprised. The humble live by joy.

I used to think that God’s gifts were on shelves one above the other, and that the taller we grew in Christian character the easier we should reach them. I find now that God’s gifts are on shelves one beneath the other, and that it is not a question of growing taller but of stooping lower, and that we have to go down, always down, to get His best gifts.

The quiet song of gratitude, eucharisteo, lures humility out of the shadows because to receive a gift the knees must bend humble and the hand must lie vulnerably open and the will must bow to accept whatever the Giver chooses to give.

Lament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who has His ear to our hearts, a God who transfigures the ugly into beauty. Complaint is the bitter howl of unbelief in any benevolent God in this moment, a distrust in the love-beat of the Father’s heart.

lament, complaint that trusts His heart.

True lament is the bold faith that trusts Perfect Love enough to feel and cry authentic.

While I may not always feel joy, God asks me to give thanks in all things, because He knows that the feeling of joy begins in the action of thanksgiving.

joy transcends all other emotions.

Only self can kill joy. I’m the one doing this to me.

Joy is a flame that glimmers only in the palm of the open and humble hand. In an open and humble palm, released and surrendered to receive, light dances, flickers happy. The moment the hand is clenched tight, fingers all pointing toward self and rights and demands, joy is snuffed out. Anger is the lid that suffocates joy until she lies limp and lifeless.

The demanding of my own will is the singular force that smothers out joy—nothing else.

But palms curled into protective fists fill with darkness.

My own wild desire to protect my joy at all costs is the exact force that kills my joy.

Humbly let go. Let go of trying to do, let go of trying to control … let go of my own way, let go of my own fears. Let God blow His wind, His trials, oxygen for joy’s fire. Leave the hand open and be. Be at peace. Bend the knee and be small and let God give what God chooses to give because He only gives love and whisper surprised thanks. This is the fuel for joy’s flame. Fullness of joy is discovered only in the emptying of will.