Dear Savana,

{a student and I are reading through One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp together this winter. Sometimes it's just easier to post it here for you (Mom) than to spend at least 20 minutes fumbling to say these things again in conversation. Not that I'm opposed to that-- just figured I'd spare you this once ;) Possible others of you reading along, I hope you're as spurred on by Ann's words as I am. And I wish I could meet you for coffee, too.}

2 December 2012

For the record, it is 11:13 p.m. on Sunday night as I begin typing this. 

(I say this because I am notorious for wordiness, be it verbal or written, and the email will likely bear a Monday morning time stamp. Meaning I am *technically* missing our “due date.” But I started on time…sort of!)

I’ve got Christmas music going, so that’s a plus. But even though my sister just bought us new creamer (our fridge has been broken, meaning we haven’t had dairy—or a cup of coffee—for a couple of weeks) I’m too lazy to make myself a mug of coffee to really bring the ambience to this “meeting.”

Truth be told, I wish for endless time to share with one another in the corner of the coffee shop, speaking honestly from the corners of our hearts for hours. But that’s not real life {the thought will have to do}.

Coming to terms with “real life” is a big part of my story.

I know we’re way past “introductions” but as this email covers the introduction to One Thousand Gifts, it only seems appropriate to at least try to convey some of the deeper things about who I am, what I want, where I’m coming from.

So, you should know I’m a major idealist. I often see life for how it could be as opposed to how it is.

On a great day that makes me a fun, optimistic person to be around that draws people near. This makes me seem very extroverted, outgoing. I’m not. But I am a people person, so I ask God constantly for opportunities to meet with people and hear their hearts. As an idealist, life just doesn’t have much meaning beyond people and the hope of meaningful relationship with them modeled after the meaningful relationship God established and pursues with me.

On a bad day, though, I become intimately acquainted with the world and how not ideal it really is. They call it the “real” world for very good reason. And it can be an isolating thing to realize that the world as we know it will never be the ideal I see when I look at it. People don’t just get along, active faith in God and his ability to redeem just isn’t the norm, tragedies happen, “enemies” (or even people who just rub us the wrong way) pursue, sin eats away. The good-day “people person” becomes, on a bad day, the perpetual people-pleaser, endlessly concerned with coming across correctly and adequately, desperately trying to suppress imperfection and ugliness and honesty. It becomes oddly self-serving, this would-be awesome ability to serve others.  The “joy” that comes so easily by my personality is, then, just as easily stolen away by the winds of brokenness that first assailed in the garden—when Eve ungratefully ate the fruit, believing God and what He had to say didn’t apply to her. (So, you see, it’s not real Joy. It’s just an idealistic dream, a fleeting feeling).

I’m an idealist, sure. But it doesn’t take long for brokenness to reveal itself in my own sinful heart. And “idealism”, “optimism” become exposed for what they truly are—fleeting without an anchor of hope. Without Truth.

That’s Who God is to me. An anchor.

And the amazing thing is that He allows glimpses of himself through all the brokenness around. I have to look at what is not ideal in order to see and believe Him for the work of redemption and restoration—what is ultimately and Truly ideal.

He doesn’t call me stupid for or discourage me from seeking ideal. In fact, He commands me to see the world in terms of His Kingdom, so different from this reality in which we live.

But.

He does require that I quit looking for security or sustenance of my ideals in anything other than Him-- in the Kingdom He promises to establish eternally and also in the hearts of believers who will truly, daily seek Him.

My relationship with my parents will not sustain me.

A relationship with a boy will not sustain me.

Fellowship with believers with not sustain me.

Fellowship with non-believers will not sustain me.

Pride, self-righteousness will not sustain.

Abstinence from drugs, sex, alcohol will not sustain me.

God. And only He. Will sustain me.

Daily walking with Him means daily taking assessment of my life and the things or people I look to for security. Taking up my cross and dying to self means putting all of these things on the threshing floor (I’ll chat about this with more detail later) in willingness for God to sift away what is not useful for obeying and enjoying His perfect will in my life.

It isn’t easy, it isn’t ideal. Like I said, it usually means being vulnerable to the hurt and sadness I’d rather not see in the world and my life. But it also means becoming better acquainted with He Who is able to heal and restore. And I want that, I want Him, more than I want to feel good.

It’s dangerous to ask that He open our eyes. But I’ve told you before and I will continue to tell you that I am so encouraged by your desire for Him to do just that. I’m right there with you. No better at navigating life, no more insightful, just desperate not to miss out on His very best for myself, for the people who care most about me and for those I most care about.

That circle (of people I care for) constantly expands.

The more I care about what God has to say, the more He reveals His capacity to love to me and the more I value others.  After all, we love because He first loved us. Meaning I'm only capable of loving to the extent to which I accept His love. I'm only able to be graceful to the extent that I’ll accept His grace. And sometimes that means keeping my hands-- to borrow Ann’s analogy-- cupped open to receive the baffling, sometimes hurtful things and being willing to call even those things grace, blessing. How?

That’s why we’re reading this book and doing it together. It’s a lifelong question.

It is never too early to start asking it.

I know it’s hard to care deeply and much when it seems you’re mostly surrounded by a world of people just looking to get through their day and get something out of it for themselves alone.

And I know that sounds pessimistic.

Like I said, my life is marked by coming to know the real world—having to learn what of my “idealist” tendencies have to go in order to acknowledge the broken state of life and only then to know the true power of Christ’s sacrifice.

In a twisted way (the sort of twisting Christ did with the Sermon on the Mount), I have to get more pessimistic in order to radically embrace the hope we’re given.

Christianity isn’t about pepping ourselves up or mustering the gumption to make it through one more day. It’s so much more. But first we have to gut our lives, ourselves of valuing most what will never fully fill or sustain.

Hence the call to the emptier, fuller life.
Thus, the message of One Thousand Gifts. 

Ann asks, “What does it mean to live full of grace?” I read the book 2 years ago, so it feels a bit like cheating, but I’ll give mine, bearing in mind this is the theme of the book and both of our answers will be more complete, or at least be delivered with greater confidence by the end. To live full of grace is to live fully aware of brokenness, the need for grace, and in thanksgiving to God for granting it wildly beyond what I deserve. To live full of grace is to live humbly, thankful.

Is there an event you can think of similar to Ann’s “snapping shut to grace” {p. 10}? I’ll be honest and say I don’t have one—not a personally traumatizing experience. My best friends dad died my junior year and that prompted a bit of doubt (and ultimately a better understanding) of God. It sounds cliché, but I was 12 when 9-11-2001 happened, and that opened my eyes to a world full of hurt. But nothing that made me clench my fists and reject the notion of grace.

I like the way Ann connects busyness to a deeper woundedness that many people go their lives unwilling to slow down and address {p. 10}

{p. 13} “Like all beliefs, you simply live them.”

{p. 14} “I live as though He stole what I consider rightly mine: happiest children, marriage of unending bliss, long, content, death-defying days… why does He withhold that which I believe will fully nourish me?”

{p. 15} “We eat. And, in an instant, we see. Everywhere we look, we see a world of lack, a universe of loss, a cosmos of scarcity and injustice.”

{p. 16} “If I’m ruthlessly honest, I may have said yes to God, yes to Christianity, but really I have lived the no.”

On page 20, Ann talks about looking into the harldy-tamed grief of her brother-in-law and feeling “wild.” This struck me because do you sometimes feel “wild” for thinking/feeling/believing something real and passionately in the face of tame-feeling church? Church feels routine and you desperately want to break out of routine but the last thing you want is to break away from Christ and so you put your energy into accepting routine-feeling “real life” until you can’t anymore and you feel wildly like you want more from Christ, more from Christianity, more from church but have no idea how to voice that without sounding proud, haughty and self-righteous? Praying that’s not just me.

{p. 22} The idea of getting nourishment from what we don’t understand, like the Israelites eating manna is one of the lessons that changed my life two years ago. You don’t have to have a situation figured out to decide that you’ll accept that the mystery of God and the way He moves is enough to sustain.

“.. the losses that puncture our world, our own emptiness, might actually become places to see. To see through to God… To the God whom we endlessly crave… How do I give up resentment for gratitude, gnawing anger for spilling joy? Self focus for God-communion?”

What this means to little idealist me is that I have got to address and see the holes of life in and around me—not because I’m going to be able to fix them and not to feel ashamed or guilty or hopeless. Quite the opposite. I have to stay awake to the holes of life, past and present, because Christ will fix them (He already has that victory) and in the meantime we can see through them to the ever-gracious, beyond able God.

To turn away from the reality of brokenness and its consequences is to turn away from grace.

We can’t afford that.

And ultimately the idealist in me knows-- as Mother Teresa says in this quote-- the reality of faith is way more appealing than the abstract idea.