One Thousand Gifts - Ann Voskamp

Synopsis from barnesandnoble.com: 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. 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.

This was a challenging book to read. But I had expected that. A friend (thanks, Shari!) told me about Ann Voskamp’s blog many months ago. So I knew that both her writing style and topics would be a challenge for me. Knowing that, I took a first pass at this book, One Thousand Gifts, and it was confirmed that it is one of those books that you need to read several times in order to get the full meaning and depth of it.

While I don’t necessarily agree with all of the deeper theology, I applaud the overall message. And feel compelled to undertake an attitude of gratitude more in my own life.

Ann began her journey with a challenge from a friend: record one thousand gifts, blessings, things to be thankful for. And in that she saw all the little things in her daily life – the sun glistening on soap bubbles, the flight of a bird – that really are gifts from God into our lives. But she also learned that to be truly thankful you need to be thankful in the bad as well as the good. What a lesson. Hard to hear…to understand…to do.

I am the first to admit I can be a bit of a complainer. It’s something I work on and struggle with due to my entire “realistic” (pessimistic?) outlook. In this book, Voskamp chronicles her own journey from complainer to thanks-giver. And is very real in it. It is not always easy. And at times she reverted to her old ways. And I think that’s how the journey will be for most of us. The key is to keep moving forward in the journey.