by Ann Voskamp, 2016
This is Danette’s book, given to her by her Mom; a sweet inscription from Dee to Danette in 2017. The author also wrote the book, One Thousand Gifts, which was excellent. I read this while in Alaska Sept 2026 and finished it on 9/22/2026. It was a little difficult at first as her style is deep but kind of stream of consciousness. Once I got used to her style and depth, I loved it. It was full of God’s love shown through brokenness. Many of Jesus’s blessings came after “Jesus broke it and gave it to them, saying…” So what we may think of as broken, tragic, lost is actually allowing the love of God to shine through. He shines through our brokenness. We must share our brokenness with others. To be truly intimate with someone, we must share our brokenness.
She is a beautiful woman, married to a farmer, and they have 7 children. When she was 4 years old, she saw her 2 year old sister’s skull crushed under the wheel of a delivery truck. This caused much heartache and suffering in her life. Her mother was in and out of mental institutions. Ann cut herself in her teen years. She knows of what she speaks – about God’s love in Christ being all that we need and to embrace the suffering because that is the only way to live a satisfying and meaningful life.
I made a lot of notes. Here are some:
Pg. 125 “The best way to de-stress is to bless…you either leave your worries with God…or your worries will make you leave God.”
Pg. 127 “You diffuse your own stress by diffusing someone else’s.”
Pg. 128 “Give it forward today (GIFT) – give numerous small gifts forward today and you get the miraculous gift of less stress…Three gifts a day keeps stress away.”
Pg. 129 “Upside-down kingdom: dare to be broken and given three times a day, and it breaks a bit of your own brokenness. Bad brokenness is broken by good brokenness…Maybe it is better to give than to receive because it is only when we give that we receive what we truly need.”
Pg. 135 “Life can’t be about being good enough, but instead believing there is God enough.”
Pg. 136 “Maybe wholeness is embracing brokenness as part of your life.”
Pg. 137 “Love, before it is anything, to be love at all, it is first patient. … Patience and the word passion, they both come from the exact same root word, patios, to suffer…Love isn’t about feeling good about others; love is ultimately being willing to suffer for others.”
Pg. 138 “And if you can’t bear ingratitude from the world – you can’t bear love out into the world…It is never the cross you carry, but your resistance to the cross, that makes it a burden.”
Pg. 139 “…no one gets to forgiveness unless something dies. There always has to be some kind of death for there to be any kind of forgiveness.”
Pg 145 “The very name Satan literally means “prosecutor.” And his work isn’t ultimately to tempt you, but to try you.”
Pg 146 “…The prosecutor of your soul can’t ever nail you. Time can’t wreck your life. You can’t wreck your life. Nothing in all this world can separate you from the love of Christ, and His love is your life. Your life is unbreakable. Because Christ’s love is unstoppable.”
Pg 149 “LET YOURSELF LOVE. LET PARTS OF YOU DIE. OR YOU AREN’T REALLY LOVING.”
Pg 152 “Blessed is the one who perseveres and does hard things. Tough times never last, but those who hang on tight to God always do. And the reality is – He’s already hanging on tight to you.”
Pg 157-158 “Martin Luther’s First Thesis of the 95 was “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ by saying: Repent, intended that the whole life of believers should be repentance”…Reduce repentance to a single act at the beginning of your Christian life and you reduce your whole Christian life to an act. An act of pretending, a sham act of posturing, a feigning act of pretense.”
Pg 158 “Repent. It’s the very first word of Jesus’ teaching – not love, not grace; the very first word of the gospel is repent…If repentance isn’t a daily part of your life, how is grace a daily part of your life?”
Pg 159 “THE CROSS ALONE IS WHAT MAKES IMPOSSIBLE THINGS POSSABLE.”
Pg 169 “TO BE THE RE-MEMBERING PEOPLE – THIS IS THE WORK OF LIFE IN A BROKEN-HEARTED WORLD.”
Pg 171 “The word suffer comes from the Latin “to bear under.” Suffering is an act of surrender, to bear under that which is not under our control…. Suffering asks us to bear under that which is ultimately not under our control.”
Pg 174 “A willingness to be inconvenienced is the ultimate proof of love.”
Pg 175 “Loving broken people when it is inconvenient is the way to have fuller inclusion in the life of Christ.”
Pg 176 “The most crushing lie a life can hold onto is that life is supposed to avoid suffering, avoid loss, avoid anything that breaks.”
Pg 177 “That is what love is too: Love is the willingness to be interrupted.”
Pg 187 “NEVER BE AFRAID OF BROKEN THINGS – BECAUSE CHRIST IS REDEEMING EVERYTHING.”
Pg 188 “Feelings are meant to be felt and then taken to God, who felt first about you.”
Pg 191 “Grace that says your faith doesn’t have to try to measure up to anyone else because Jesus came down – and He measures you as good enough, as worthy enough, as loved more than enough.”
(She writes a cross in ink on her wrist everyday — where she used to cut – self-harm.)
Pg 192 “GRACE is what holds you when everything’s breaking and falling apart, and whispers that everything is really falling together.”
Pg 193 “The world and us, we are all being re-formed. Union with Christ – this is how to be fully human…Believers in Christ are seen by God exactly as Christ is seen by God. I am who He is..Full stop. Full Story – I am who He is. I am not the mistakes I have made; I am the righteousness He has made…
Pg 198 “There are so many of us sucking down lattes and dying of thirst, dying for something more, for something abundant. There are so many in need, and so many Esthers who thirst for more than vanilla services, sweetened programs, and watered down lives,…”
Pg 199 “We can be concerned for the poor – but be no less concerned for us rich who claim not to be rich so we can excuse ourselves from giving….What if caring for the poor was more than just caring about easing our consciences? What if caring for the poor may mean sacrifice, and what if this is the way to be satisfied and know abundant living?”
Pg 200 “The thread of your life becomes a tapestry only if it ties itself to other lives…The only way to care for the disadvantaged is to disadvantage yourself, which is guaranteed to turn out to your advantage.”
Pg 202 “You miss Jesus when you aren’t looking for His two disguises: the smallest and the servant…To go to the poor is to go to the Lord.” Henri Nouwen…The reason we are here is to risk everything for those oppressed people over there outside the gate…God forbid, you don’t get a roof over your head and food on your table because you deserve more, but so you can serve more.”
Pg 204 “The world changes when we don’t categorize, polarize, and demonize people with broad brush strokes – but when we apologize, empathize, evangelize, and prioritize people with these quiet brushes of grace.”
Pg 205 “All there is to see is Jesus. All there is to see is the face of Jesus in others – and for them to see the face of Jesus in you.”
Pg 208 “The way to slowly die is to believe you live in a space of scarcity and not abundance of generosity…Any fear of giving to God’s kingdom is flawed.”
Pg 213 “There isn’t a wall you can build that protects you from pain. Addiction, escapism, materialism, anger, indifference – none of these can stop pain – and each one creates a pain all of their own. There is no way to avoid pain. There is no way to avoid brokenness. There is absolutely no way but a broken way.”
Pg 215 “Never become a container for anger. Anger is the only toxin that destroys what it’s carried in.”
Pg 217 “OUR MOST MEANINGFUL PURPOSE CAN BE FOUND EXACTLY IN OUR MOST PAINFUL BROKENNESS.”
Pg 219 “The only way to love God…is to give to people. Love for Him has to turn into giving, or it was never love. … The only way to woo God…is to let Him care for your wounds and give Him your brokenhearted need.”
Pg 221 “Stay weak and dependent. This is how you stay strong in God.”
Pg 223 “By compassion we make others’ misery our own, and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also.” Thomas Browne
Pg 225 “The rod of God only moves to comfort and the ways of God are only compassion.”
Pg 225 in Israel with a shepherd – “A shepherd would never, ever break a sheep’s bones…” And he explains that a shepherd may put a “brake” on a sheep’s leg – “a weight to temporarily stop a stiff-necked sheep from running astray. And once the sheep is close, once the sheep learns its own name, once the sheep learns the voice of the shepherd and the way he calls her – that sheep learns not to be afraid, to never be afraid.”
Pg 228 “There is a shepherd who let Himself be broken so the sheep don’t ever have to be broken….Jesus comes to give you freely through His passion what every other God forces you to try to get through performance. …compassion isn’t saccharine sentimentality; it’s key to humanity’s survival. Compassion heals what condemnation never could.”
Pg 230 Cruciform (everywhere in this book) Cruciform means shaped, arranged, or patterned like a cross (from Google)
Pg 234 “EVIL CAN BE THE CAUSE OF ALL KINDS OF SUFFERING, BUT ALL SUFFERING DOES NOT HAVE TO BE EVIL.”
Pg 236 “Relent, Lord! How long will it be ? Have compassion on your servants.” “Have compassion on us who are but dust, who are weary and desperate to pry open the door in the universe and find You taking all our wrong and making it right.”
Pg 238 “The focus of God’s people is not to create explanations for suffering, but to create communities around suffering, co-suffering communities to absorb suffering and see it transform into cruciform grace. This will cost us. This will remake us into the image of Christ…They say our universe is made of atoms, but it is made of suffering. Because it is made of love. … To love is to suffer.”
Pg 239 “Evil is always a function of distractions, a turning away from God. … Hopelessness is what flings one into the presence of evil….The answer to the problem of evil is everything that lets us keep loving God – even in the face of evil.”
Pg 241 “There is nothing to fear in the wilderness of suffering – it is the land where God woos. The crush of crisis is but a passage into communion with Christ.”
Pg 242 “[the cross] A signed and sealed sign that there isn’t anything I can possibly do to make Him love me more. And in everything I am loved more than I can possibly imagine.”
Pg 255 “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it as clearly as right now – being broken and given – means trusting enough to be vulnerable – and give your own brokenness.” (until Ann called Mei and told her about her son having Type 1 diabetes – needing Mei’s help at that time, Mei didn’t feel that they were truly friends.)
Pg 250-251 “Didn’t want to be a burden…Mei replies…that is why I didn’t think we were real friends. I’ve got to grab the green vinyl chair…sit down. If I don’t fully share my own brokenness…there’s never full communion? Maybe communion can only happen when not only our strong parts are broken and given, but when our broken parts are also given.”
Pg 261 “All that strangling anxiety, the agoraphobia that choked me into my twenties, I was driven by fear into believing I had to be perfect. Perfectionism had killed my sense of safety, my sanctuary, my soul…This falling prey to performance and perfectionism and negativism was really a fear of falling into brokenness. I think maybe – at the root of all control-wrestling and stress lies a fear of brokenness.”
Pg 261 cont’d: “Everything in life that has ever been broken…has been because of fear of brokenness…It’s been my very fear of brokenness that has caused unspoken brokenness.”
Pg 263 “Never be afraid of broken things – because Christ can redeem anything. When I’m no longer afraid of brokenness, I don’t have to control or possess anything – dreams or plans or people or their perceptions. I can live surrendered. Cruciform. Given. This feels like freedom.”
Pg 264 “Do not be afraid – I am with you. Koinonia is always, always the miracle.“
Pg 268 “Comfort and affluence can make you blind. Blind to the hungry Christ, the thirsty, suffering, broken Christ. Isn’t this why it’s hard for the comfortable to experience authentic abundance – because they’re blinded to Christ?…A Christ-shaped life is not a comfortably shaped life, but a cross-shaped life.”
Pg 269 “…feel how fear is executed with one line: There is enough. There is always more because God is always enough, and He makes all brokenness into abundance and never be afraid of broken things because Christ is redeeming everything….You can abandon all your cares. Christ will never, ever abandon you….the soul is broken free when we’re freed of self and abandoned to the will of God.”
Pg 270 “What’s the answer to suffering in this world? Destroy it with co-suffering, with compassion, with givenness. Bad brokenness is always broken by good brokenness. Your life turns around when you refuse to turn away from brokenness.”