Ann Voskamp
Get this, kids - how a man proposes isn't what makes him romantic. It's how a man purposes to lay down his life that makes him romantic.Collection: Romantic
The real romantics are the boring ones - they let another heart bore a hole deep into theirs.Collection: Romantic
Adults are tempted to produce and perform Christmas for their kids and their families, and they arrive at Christmas Day weary and disillusioned.Collection: Christmas
The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world.Collection: Thankful
My husband is Dutch, and his family, when you sat down to eat food at the table, you never left the table until you ate living bread and drank living water. They never left the table until they'd read Scripture together. So morning, lunch, suppertime, Scripture was always read at the table, and then there was prayer to close.Collection: Morning
I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on summer humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.Collection: Nature
The real romantics imagine greying and sagging and wrinkling as the deepening of something sacred.Collection: Romantic
A simplified Christmas isn't about circumstances as much as it is about focus.Collection: Christmas
Comparison is a thug that robs your joy. But it's even more than that - Comparison makes you a thug who beats down somebody - or your soul.
By default, most of us have taken the dare to simply survive. Exist. Get through. For the most part, we live numb to life - we've grown weary and apathetic and jaded... and wounded.
When grief is deepest, words are fewest.
Pick up a yardstick to measure your life against anyone else's, and you've just picked up a stick and beaten up your own soul.
I think the fall in Eden was ultimately a failure to give thanks.
Scales always lie. They don't make a scale that ever told the truth about value, about worth, about significance.
When we can't bottle our tears up anymore, God catches every one in His bottle. God's catching every falling tear because He won't let us fall apart.
I came into this world the way every person on the planet does - with clenched fists.
Giving thanks is that: making the canyon of pain into a megaphone to proclaim the ultimate goodness of God when Satan and all the world would sneer at us to recant.
Counting one thousand gifts, I discovered I could count on God.
Sometimes God answers our questions with questions.
In a storm of struggles, I have tried to control the elements, clasp the fist tight so as to protect self and happiness. But 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.
Whatever I'm writing comes organically out of my life.
Romance isn't measured by how viral your proposal goes. The Internet age may try to sell you something different, but don't ever forget that viral is closely associated with sickness - so don't ever make being viral your goal.
Measuring sticks try to rank some people as big and some people as small - but we aren't sizes. We are souls. There are no better people or worse people - there are only God-made souls.
Gratitude's not a natural posture. The prince of darkness is ultimately a spoiled ingrate, and I've spent most of my life as kin to the fist-shaker.
I'm not a fast writer at all. I come empty and wait upon the Lord. So it really is all a waiting process, a patient process.
I write a chapter, then edit it and edit it and edit it and edit it. I don't think we mine creativity from within. It's bestowed from on high, from God.
If I don't have words, it's a sign I'm not reading enough.
Really good writing, from my perspective, runs a lot like a visual on the screen. You need to create that kind of detail and have credibility with the reader, so the reader knows that you were really there, that you really experienced it, that you know the details. That comes out of seeing.
Gratitude is not only a response to God in good times - it's ultimately the very will of God in hard times. Gratitude isn't only a celebration when good things happen. It's a declaration that God is good no matter what happens.Collection: Gratitude
Being joyful isn't what makes you grateful. Being grateful is what makes you joyful.Collection: Grateful
Busy is a choice. Stress is a choice. Joy is a choice. Choose well.Collection: Stress
There is unwavering peace today when an uncertain tomorrow is trusted to an unchanging God.Collection: Today
It is in the dark that God is passing by. The bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors. Dark is the holiest ground, the glory passing by. In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will. Though it is black and we can't see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us.Collection: Fall
Like the wind, Grace finds us wherever we are and won't leave us however we were found.Collection: Christian
Real joy is not found in having the best of everything but in trusting that God is making the best of everything.Collection: Real
Instead of giving someone a piece of your mind, it turns out far better if you give them a piece of your heart.Collection: Heart
We give thanks to God not because of how we feel, but because of Who He is.Collection: Giving
It's habits that can imprison you and it's habits that can free you. But when thanks to God becomes a habit - so joy in God becomes your life.Collection: Joy
We live in a broken world - and for the life of me I can't get it all right. But Jesus takes all our broken messes and He makes them, by His grace, into a mosaic of grace.Collection: Jesus
Joy is always a function of gratitude - and gratitude is always a function of perspective.Collection: Gratitude
We can worship Christ in our sanctuaries and we can pray to God on our knees, but how we treat - or neglect - the person next door, the poor, every human being, this is how we truly speak to Christ and this is how we really treat Jesus.Collection: Jesus
I don't want a Christmas you can buy. I don't want a Christmas you can make. What I want is a Christmas you can hold. A Christmas that holds me, remakes me, revives me. I want a Christmas that whispers, Jesus.Collection: Jesus
Faith thanks God in the middle of the story.Collection: Thank God
God’s purposes are not for me to understand His plans: His plan is for me to understand Who He is.Collection: Purpose
The practice of giving thanks...eucharisteo...this is the way we practice the presence of God, stay present to His presence, and it is always a practice of the eyes. We don't have to change what we see. Only the way we see.Collection: Eye
When the heart and mind focus on things unseen - that's when there's a visible change in us.Collection: Heart
We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks. Because how else do we accept His free gift of salvation if not with thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives. Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our Yes! to His grace.Collection: Acceptance
Every mountain that every Christian ever faces, the Lord levels with sufficient grace.Collection: Christian
Worry is belief gone wrong. Because you don't believe that God will get it right. But peace - peace is belief that exhales. Because you believe that God's provision is everywhere - like air.Collection: Believe
Joy and pain, they are but two arteries of the one heart that pumps through all those who don't numb themselves to really living.Collection: Pain