Sometimes you don’t know when you’re taking the first step through a door until you’re already inside. Ann Voskamp More Quotes by Ann Voskamp More Quotes From Ann Voskamp Writing is this act of faith - a bit like driving in the fog: you can hardly see just in front of you. But you trust God's leading you and you just write into the space you can see ahead of you. Ann Voskamp fog space writing [Bill Jensen] shared his extensive publishing background with me, and prayerfully offered to work out a proposal and to see if God opened any publishing doors? I never get over the unexpected ways of God. Ann Voskamp bills work-out doors Losses do that. One life-loss can infect the whole of a life. Like a rash that wears through our days, our sight becomes peppered with black voids. Now everywhere we look, we only see all that isn’t: holes, lack, deficiency. Ann Voskamp black sight loss I hunger for filling in a world that is starved. Ann Voskamp filling-in hunger world We don't see the material world for what it is meant to be: the means to communion with God.... There is a belief missing, that God is good and that he gives good gifts. Ann Voskamp missing giving mean The cynics, they can only speak of the dark, of the obvious, and this is not hard. For all it's supposed sophistication, it's cynicism that's simplistic. In a fallen world, how profound is Ann Voskamp cracks dark profound Of asking nothing of the reader - but offering a still, quiet oasis in the cybersphere to go vertical with God. An island of stillness to know that He is God. Ann Voskamp oasis offering islands I wonder if the greatest challenges was to keep pressing into [writing] when I had never been here before. I felt like Abraham - being called to something that he didn't know how to get to. Ann Voskamp challenges wonder writing The book [ One Thousand Gifts] took just over a year to write, on the fringe hours, early and late, around home educating 6 kids and farming and blogging. Ann Voskamp home writing book He does have surprising, secret purposes. I open a Bible, and His plans, startling, lie there barefaced. It’s hard to believe it, when I read it, and I have to come back to it many times, feel long across those words, make sure they are real. His love letter forever silences any doubts: “His secret purpose framed from the very beginning [is] to bring us to our full glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7 NEB). Ann Voskamp real believe lying The book [ One Thousand Gifts] took just over a year to write, on the fringe hours, early and late, around home educating 6 kids and farming and blogging. And I wonder if the greatest challenges was to keep pressing into it when I had never been here before. I felt like Abraham - being called to something that he didn't know how to get to. Ann Voskamp writing kids book A year after One Thousand Gifts had released, Kathie Lee Gifford of the Today Show, named it one of her favorite things - the gift that will radically change your life. She shared the title with PEOPLE magazine as one of favorite books - quite astonishing for an evangelical Christian book. Ann Voskamp christian book years The blog is meant to be a bit of a side chapel - a place to slip into and still and encounter the glory of God - and come away again with a fresh sense that your life, right where you are, is a holy experience - that God dwells with you and in you, and where you are is holy ground, worthy of reverence and celebration and wonder. Ann Voskamp holy-ground encounters sides I was simply writing out our family stories in my online journal, scratching out what I want to remember, what I was wrestling out with God. Unbeknownst to me, two readers of the posts, both published authors, contacted their agent, Bill Jensen, within 24 hours of each other, encouraging him to drop me a line. Which he did. Ann Voskamp writing wrestling two Christian hands never clasp and He doesn't give gifts for gain because a gift can never stop being a gift - it is always meant to be given. Ann Voskamp christian giving hands So my blog wasn't about "platform" but really, it was everything you are not "supposed" to do in blogging. Ann Voskamp blogging blogs platforms I didn't (and still don't) have comments [in my blog]. It's about simply writing for an audience of One. Ann Voskamp audience-of-one comment writing Isn't falling in love always the fullest life? Ann Voskamp love-always falling-in-love fall From all of our beginnings, we keep reliving the Garden story. Ann Voskamp garden stories Because nothing is greater and we have no greater need, God gives God. Ann Voskamp need-god giving needs
