One Thousand Gifts

Subtitled "A Dare to Live Fully Where You Are" , this new book by Ann Voskamp brought me to my face in adoration, grief, worship, gratefulness, pain. The author and her husband are farmers in the Mennonite countryside of southwestern Ontario. She home schools her six children and writes a daily blog as well as traveling for Compassion International as an advocate for the poor. But this no ordinary wife and mother. This is a poet extraordinaire. Her voice calls "from deep unto deep". Her story is so painful to read at times that I put the book down, weep, and plunge in again. I can't NOT read. Reaching for "something or Someone", grappling with unimaginable grief and loss, Ann chooses thanksgiving to enter into God's joy. She allows, even invites us, total strangers, to journey with her in her quest. Let me quote a little bit so that you can hear the cadence, taste the honey, touch the splintered roughness of her words, her life. Fear is l