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

by Ann Voskamp

I don’t really want more time; I just want enough time. Time to breathe deep and time to see real and time to laugh long, time to give You glory and rest deep and sing joy and just enough time in a day not to feel hounded, pressed, driven, or wild to get it all done—yesterday.

I just want time to do my one life well.

Time is a relentless river. It rages on, a respecter of no one. And this, this is the only way to slow time: When I fully enter time’s swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of me all here. I can slow the torrent by being all here. I only live the full life when I live fully in the moment.

Giving thanks for one thousand things is ultimately an invitation to slow time down with weight of full attention.

here—“Wherever you are, be all

I will not desecrate this moment with ignorant hurry or sordid ingratitude.

When I’m present, I meet I AM, the very presence of a present God. In His embrace, time loses all sense of speed and stress and space and stands so still and … holy.

Jesus embraces His not enough … He gives thanks … And there is more than enough. More than enough!

The real problem of life is never a lack of time. The real problem of life—in my life—is lack of thanksgiving.

I do what I always need to do. I preach it. I preach it to the person I need to preach to the most. I preach to me.

And I can always give thanks because an all-powerful God always has all these things—all things—always under control. I breathe deep and He preaches to me, soothing the time-frenzied soul with the grace river in whisper. Life is not an emergency. Life is eucharisteo.

“Wherever you are, be all there” is only possible in the posture of eucharisteo. I want to slow down and taste life, give thanks, and see God.

I want to savor long whatever time holds.

Eventually, I am guaranteed to lose every earthly thing I have ever possessed.

I will lose every single person I have ever loved. Either abruptly or eventually. All human relationships end in loss.

See that I am God. See that I am in everything. See that I do everything. See that I have never stopped ordering my works, nor ever shall, eternally. See

Here dies another day During which I have had eyes, ears, hands And the great world round me; And with tomorrow begins another. Why am I allowed two?

Should I accept good from you, and not trouble?”

‘People do not live by bread alone,but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

You may suffer loss but in Me is anything ever lost, really? Isn’t everything that belongs to Christ also yours? Loved ones lost still belong to Him—then aren’t they still yours?

God is always good and I am always loved.

The hard discipline to give thanks for all things at all times because He is all good.

All is grace only because all can transfigure.

All beauty is only reflection.

“Faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving

Joy that fills me under full moon is the joy that always fills God.

The parent must always self-parent first, self-preach before child-teach, because who can bring peace unless they’ve held their own peace?

Nothing happens to you except by the will of God, and yet [God’s] beloved children curse it because they do not know it for what it

“Feel thanks and it’s absolutely impossible to feel angry. We can only experience one emotion at a time. And we get to choose—which emotion do we want to feel?”

All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen. Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me”

If authentic, saving belief is the act of trusting, then to choose stress is an act of disbelief … atheism.

Anything less than gratitude and trust is practical atheism.

Thanks is what builds trust.

Because remembering with thanks is what causes us to trust—to really believe.

“He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”

God reveals Himself in rearview mirrors.

Eucharisteo always precedes the miracle, child.

All fear is but the notion that God’s love ends. Did you think I end, that My bread warehouses are limited, that I will not be enough? But I am infinite, child. What can end in Me? Can life end in Me? Can happiness? Or peace? Or anything you need? Doesn’t your Father always give you what you need? I am the Bread of Life and My bread for you will never end. Fear thinks God is finite and fear believes that there is not going to be enough and hasn’t counting one thousand gifts, endlessly counting gifts, exposed the lie at the heart of all fear? In Me, blessings never end because My love for you never ends. If My goodnesses toward you end, I will cease to exist, child. As long as there is a God in heaven, there is grace on earth and I am the spilling God of the uncontainable, forever-overflowing-love-grace.

“Perfect love casts out all fear.”

God created the world out of nothing, and as long as we are nothing, He can make something out of us. Martin Luther

eyes—“How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in

all wonder and worship can only grow out of smallness.

“Expectations kill relationships.”

Is it only when our lives are emptied that we’re surprised by how truly full our lives were?

Receiving God’s gifts is a gentle, simple movement of stooping lower.

humility isn’t burden or humiliation or oppressive weight but humility is the only posture that can receive the wondrous grace gifts of God

The river of joy flows down to the lowest places.

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.

“Pride slays thanksgiving … A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he