One Thousand Gifts

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

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


After hearing great things about this book from a few people, I bought it and was excited to dive in. Overall I loved the book, but it took me a looong time to read it, hence the 4 stars (plus, I didn't like the last chapter). Reading this book slowly had advantages though...it helped keep it on my mind. The author writes in a beautiful, almost poem like, way about her quest to embrace and live a life full of gratitude to God. It definitely changed my perspective on life's day to day and helped me have a better outlook. I like to think that when I keep it on my mind I am able to remain more patient as well. I marked sooo many quotes as I read. Here are the ones I want to be able to reference quickly...

"Gifts He bestows. This writing it down- it is sort of like...unwrapping love."

"Joy is the realest reality, the fullest life, and joy is always given, never grasped. God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy."

"I wake to the discontent of life in my skin. I wake to self-hatred. To the wrestle to get it all done, the relentless anxiety that I am failing. Always, the failing. I yell at children, fester with bitterness, forget doctor appointments, live selfishly, skip prayer, complain, go to bed too late, neglect cleaning the toilets. I live tired. Afraid. Anxious. Weary. Would I ever be enough, find enough, do enough? But this morning, I wake wildly wanting to live."

"When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows."

"So I push hard and I bark hard and I fall hard and when their wide eyes brim sadness and their chins tremble weak, I am weary and I am the thin clear skin, reflecting their fatigue, about to burst, my eyes glistening their same sheer pain. The hurry makes us hurt."

"The hard discipline to lean into the ugly and whisper thanks to transfigure it into beauty."

"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?"

"If the heights of our joy are measured by the depths of our gratitude, and gratitude is but a way of seeing, a spiritual perspective of smallness might offer a vital way of seeing especially conducive to gratitude."

"The demanding of my own will is the singular force that smothers out joy - nothing else."

"Here I can become the blessing, the little life that multiplies joy, making the larger world a better place."


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