Top 255 Quotes & Sayings by Ann Voskamp - Page 3

The answer to deep anxiety is the deep adoration of God.

If I had the perspective of the whole, perhaps I'd see it? That which seems evil, is it a cloud to bring rain, to bring a greater good to the whole of the world? Who would ever know the greater graces of comfort and perseverance, mercy and forgiveness, patience and courage, if no shadows fell over a life?

Gratitude is the most fruitful way of deepening your consciousness that you are a divine choice.

Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I've ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing.... Through all that haste I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away.

The only way to care for the disadvantaged - is to disadvantage yourself -which is guaranteed to turn out for your advantage.

God is patiently transfiguring all the notes of my life into the song of His Son.

In a world addicted to speed, I blur the moments into one unholy smear.

At the last, this is what will determine a fulfilling, meaningful life, a life that, behind all the facades, every one of us longs to live: gratitude for the blessings that expresses itself by becoming the blessing.

Simplicity is ultimately a matter of focus.

Darkness transfigures into light, bad transfigures into good, grief transfigures into grace, empty transfigures into full. God wastes nothing – ‘makes everything work out according to his plan.’ (Ephesians 1:11).

Because One died for me that I might breathe this breath...It's all a gift.

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.

The wrinkled man in the wheelchair with the legs wrapped, the girl with her face punctured deep with the teeth marks of a dog, the mess of the world, and I see - this, all this, is what the French call d'un beau affreux, what the Germans call hubsch-hasslich - the ugly-beautiful. That which is perceived as ugly transfigures into beautiful. What the postimpressionist painter Paul Gauguin expressed as 'Le laid peut etre beau' - The ugly can be beautiful. The dark can give birth to life; suffering can deliver grace.

And when I give thanks for the seemingly microscopic, I make a place for God to grow within me.

Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren’t satisfied in God and what He gives. We hunger for something more, something other.

There is a way to live the big of giving thanks in all things. It is this: to give thanks in this one small thing. The moments will add up.

Only speak words that make souls stronger -\-\ for once words are spoken, they may be forgiven, but may be not forgotten.

Real Womanhood isn’t a function of becoming a great mother, but of being loved by your Great Father.

God gives the world enough of what it needs. All He asks is that we distribute what He gives.

Real Love truthfully sees the flaws - and still really loves fully.

We want clarity -- and God gives a call. We want a road map --- and God gives a relationship. We want answers -- and God gives His hand.

Homemaking is about making a home, not about making perfection.

In our rushing, bulls in china shops, we break our own lives.

I fly to Paris and discover how to make love to God.

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

I want a life that makes music - not just practices the piano.

In counting gifts, to one thousand, more, I discover that slapping a sloppy brush of thanksgiving over everything in my life leaves me deeply thankful for very few things in my life.

Worry is the facade of taking action when prayer really is.

I am a hunter of beauty and I move slow and I keep the eyes wide, every fiber of every muscle sensing all wonder and this is the thrill of the hunt and I could be an expert on the life full, the beauty meat that lurks in every moment. I hunger to taste life. God.

Praying with eyes wide open is the only way to pray without ceasing.

Every breath is a battle between grudgery and gratitude. Give thanks...and you win joy.

The bravest love is wildly faithful and it falls hard again every morning... It knows what we seek may be found in what we already have... it's grace and fresh gratitude that can make us strong enough to marvel in the seeming monotony of anything... And the happily married have eyes that look long enough to make the familiar new.

We're called to do more than believe in God, we're called to live in God.

When you're most wounded by words run to the only Word that always brings healing.

Without God’s Word as a lens, the world warps

Life is so urgent and necessitates living slow. It's only the amateurs-and that I've been, and it's been ugly-who thinks slow and urgent are contradictory.

If trust must be earned, hasn't God unequivocally earned our trust with the bark on the raw wounds, the thorns pressed into the brow, your name on the cracked lips.

But, someone, please give me—who is born again but still so much in need of being born anew—give me the details of how to live in the waiting cocoon before the forever begins?

That which tears open our souls, those holes that splatter our sight, may actually become the thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the heart-aching beauty beyond. To Him. To the God whom we endlessly crave.

I want to see beauty. In the ugly, in the sink, in the suffering, in the daily, in all the days before I die, the moments before I sleep.

Living radical isn't about where you live - it's about how you love.

God doesn't want your leftovers. God wants your love overtures, your first-overs, because He is your first love.

It’s impossible to give thanks and simultaneously feel fear

How my eyes see, perspective, is my key to enter into His gates. I can only do so with thanksgiving. If my inner eye has God seeping up through all things, then can't I give thanks for anything? And if I can give thanks for the good things, the hard things, the absolute everything, I can enter the gates to glory. Living in His presence is fullness of joy- and seeing shows the way in.

Hurry always empties a soul.

The fear is suffocating, terrorizing, and I want the remedy, and it is trust. Trust is everything.

I think God calls us to small things, to faithfulness right where we are, to just do the next thing. 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.

Poor communication doesn’t disconnect souls. It’s the disconnected souls who poorly communicate.

I hunger for filling in a world that is starved.

Maybe the man who said that his doctor had pulled him off Prozac because One Thousand Gifts and taking the dare to write 1,000 gifts was healing deep places in him and leading him to *experience* joy.

Sometimes, too often, I don't want to muster the energy. Stress and anxiety seem easier.

There are two kinds of doubt: one that fully lives into the questions, and one that uses the questions as weapons against fully living.

Love comes softly, it cannot be forced...cannot bear the weight of our expectations. Love always comes in the surrender - in the falling.

God gives us time. And who has time for God?

Stress isn't only a joy stealer. The way we respond to it can be sin.

They say time is money, but that's not true. Time is life. And if I want the fullest life, I need to find fullest time... the busyness of your life leaving little room for the source of your life... God gives us time. And who has time for God? Which makes no sense.

Comparison is a thug that robs your joy. But its even more than that - Comparison makes you a thug who beats down somebody - or your soul.

I began [blogging] because I have this handicap - I can't figure out my life or see God clearly unless I untangle my life again with words.

Practice is the hardest part of learning, and training is the essence of transformation.

Sometimes you don’t know when you’re taking the first step through a door until you’re already inside.