One Thousand Gifts

One Thousands Gift
Written by
Published at Zondervan

About the book

Just like you, Ann Voskamp hungers to live her one life well. Forget the bucket lists that have us escaping our everyday lives for exotic experiences. “How,” Ann wondered, “do we find joy in the midst of deadlines, debt, drama, and daily duties? What does the Christ-life really look like when your days are gritty, long—and sometimes even dark? How is God even here?”
In One Thousand Gifts, Ann invites you to embrace everyday blessings and embark on the transformative spiritual discipline of chronicling God's gifts. It’s only in this expressing of gratitude for the life we already have, we discover the life we've always wanted … a life we can take, give thanks for, and break for others. We come to feel and know the impossible right down in our bones: we are wildly loved — by God.
Let Ann's beautiful, heart-aching stories of the everyday give you a way of seeing that opens your eyes to ordinary amazing grace, a way of being present to God that makes you deeply happy, and a way of living that is finally fully alive.
Come live the best dare of all!

Who is Ann Voskamp?

Ann Voskamp is a writer with DaySpring (a division of Hallmark), a contributing editor to Laity Lodge’s The High Calling, and a global advocate for the poor traveling for Compassion International. With an educational background in psychology and education from York University and the University of Waterloo, Ann and her husband are farmers in the Mennonite countryside of southwestern Ontario, raising a half dozen kids, crops of corn, and the roof in praise. She writes every day about the everyday wonder every day at www.aholyexperience.com .
Author Website:
http://www.aholyexperience.com
http://www.annvoskamp.com

My Thoughts

I’ve heard so much about this book before I requested it.   Many kept saying how life changing it would be to read it.   I was picked by curiosity and decided to review it.    From the first chapter, I sense that the author was unto something.   After all she has many followers on her blog and many are walking into her footsteps of gratitude on their own blog as well.    I was hooked.    I also follow in her footsteps since I started reading her book.   Weekly, I post my gifts from the previous weeks.  Sometimes I even include some pictures.    Ann has touched my heart and helped me to switch my thinking.    It’s a 180 degree turn – let me tell you.   In the midst of our daily life, when you think that maybe life would be different without certain things, you see what you have in a different way.

I am homeschooling my four kids.   There are days when it’s not easy while other days are just plain fun.   I have doubts sometimes.  But when I take Ann’s perspective and see the little things that blesses me on a daily basis, I am not feeling as discourage or stressed.  It is a good therapy and way cheaper than going to see someone I find. 

Anne pours out her heart in this book and somehow I feel closer to her as I get to know her thoughts, her emotions, her dreams, her struggles and so on.    She based her book on a simple word – Eucharisteo – which means to be grateful, feel thankful, give thanks.   But how can you be grateful in the midst of business struggles, problems, a busy family, homeschool to be done,…  You get the picture I think.   Well it’s simply to sit down and see what is a blessing in the midst of all this.   Simple things like a son old enough to babysit his own siblings who are napping so I can go get some brown sugar because he wants to make chocolate chip cookies (it just happened today!).  

I have come into realizing that being blessed can be done in a multitude of ways – neighbors bringing blueberries from Lac St-Jean, friends calling to let us know they have clothes for us, a couple giving us a foosball table for the kids to play with, four bookcases found at the curb since spring, the birds flying in the sky, the plants given to us so we can have a more beautiful entrance, a squirrel walking on the fence when we never seen one in the area before, frogs, loons on the lake, our RV, my husband, my kids, homeschooling them – yes even if there are days that are more difficult…

There are also blessings in disguise which are blessings you wouldn’t expect when someone give you something.   We had one experienced like this recently.   Needless to say, my eyes are more opened now and I can see them more easily.   So I thank Anne for writing the book One Thousand Gifts and I plan to continue the challenge to list my one thousand gifts from above.  

I would like to challenge every one of my readers (and my family and friends) to read Anne’s book.   Your perspective will change – guaranteed!

One Thousand Gifts is available at your favourite bookstore, even amazon.ca.

Disclaimer: Thanks to Zondervan for sending me the book for review purpose. I was not monetarily compensated for this review. Please note that the review was not influenced by the Sponsor in any way. All opinions expressed here are only my own.