Last week I shared what a mess I’d found myself in. And bless your hearts all who read along! As the week unfolded I realized how very gently the Lord was holding me close even in my mess. Much closer it felt than usual. Our son and his family got me the latest Ann Voskamp book for my birthday. I’ve never read her. But, almost everyone else I know has! Her bestselling book “One Thousand Gifts” spent something like 67+ weeks on the NY Times Bestsellers list. In the last 7 days I’ve read the entire book. And with every word and every page I consumed and felt every word. I’m going to share with you some of my favorite quotes from the book:
“We may think we know what we want, but what we really want is to be known.”
“Why do we think that our life will be the one that finds a way to easier roads? Why in the world did I? It’s when we expect life to be easy that it becomes hard.”
“...suffering is the universal experience of all humanity. Suffering doesn’t mean you’re cursed; suffering means you’re human. The question isn’t “Why is there suffering in my life?” but “Why wouldn’t there be suffering?” Because such is life in a broken world. The question is “What way will you bear your suffering?” I didn’t know it then, and I am still learning this now: Life is really hard because that is the reality of being alive. Life is hard in a thousand ways, and what comes the easiest to us is getting lost.”
“Life is never made unbearable by the road itself but by the way we bear the road. It’s not the hard roads that slay us; what actually slays us is the expectation that this road isn’t what we hoped it to be.”
“But here’s what no one tells you: When you hide who you are, what you ultimately are hiding from is yourself.”
And that’s just chapter one...
“...Keep burying how you feel and you'll end up digging your relationships a pretty big grave. If you don’t speak your fears and questions aloud, they only grow louder in your soul.”
“But there’s Moses standing still, attentive to God, arms stretched out cruciform—and God, in a tempest of love, with a blast of His nostrils, splits the sea in two to make a way out of bondage and into bonding, and the people of God reject the notion of drowning in fear, the paralysis of questioning, the bitterness of feeling abandoned, and they walk one fierce faithing step after the other, deep faith calling for deep waters, and you only find a way through waves when your faith, your trust, your relying, isn’t as fickle as waves but is in the Way Himself.”
I’m so very thankful for how the Lord so gently met me in my mess. And how sweetly He loved me regardless of it. I’m thankful for time away this weekend to re-unite with our Living Hope family in DFW, to gain & give encouragement and for a long Sunday afternoon nap (a rare thing for me). And I’m excited that we will meet together in person this week!!
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