Tea with Ann Voskamp: Grace and Gratitude

My friend gave me the book One Thousand Gifts in the summer. I read the book and fell in love not only with it, but with its author...Ann Voskamp writes poetically, raw from the soul...and she loves Him. She loves Him so much...

I recently subscribed to her blog, A Holy Experience, and I have been so blessed by what I've read.

My daddy is sick and my mom is out and my sister is sleeping and it's cold outside, so when I woke up this morning, I decided to make myself a hot cup of peach tea and spend some time with my Jesus and with Ann. I was not disappointed.

Her most recent post is titled, "How Giving Thanks Can Unexpectedly Give You A New Life", appropriately, since Thanksgiving was yesterday. I'm just going to write down a few key points.

• Life is a furnace and the faithful live by the Shadrach-prayer of only 4 words: "Even if He doesn't." This world has nothing that can burn down the faith of a heart on fire for God.

• There is no right living apart from really thanking.

• What if we celebrated Thanksgiving the most because it was the least commercialized? And what if the grace of God was only rightly answered by the gratitude of men?

• "Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Grace evokes gratitude like a voice an echo. Gratitude follows grace as thunder follows lightening." -Barth

• When you know your Father is loving--what can you fear losing? "If you haven't lost Christ, child, nothing is ever lost." --Voskamp

• Gratitude follows grace--as thunder follows lightening. And the storm is grace because whatever drives us into God is a grace from God.  

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All is grace...❤ 

By grace, we have much to offer thanks for. There's sky and food and family and this country and a love we don't deserve and there's grace that comes as storms and the only answer to God's unending grace is man's unending gratitude. When you live a life in a covenant of grace, you can't help but live out a covenant of gratitude.

...and I had to stop reading for a moment and whisper, "Thank You, Lord..."

The way that grace and gratitude echo to each other through all things...

And my gracious God Who gives richly and labors and brings life and beauty from my human brokenness...

And all is grace and my heart is full and my God is always good and I am always loved.

All is grace...

Thank You, Lord...❤ 

You never let go

On December 4th, it will have been a year since the Lord took Alyssa Lynn Ettl home to be with Him.

Every day, I've thought of her. Some days it's a fleeting, sparkling, ah, Alyssa, as I walk past the little picture I have of her that is taped to my bedroom wall. Other days, I take the picture down, clutch it to my chest, curl up on my bed, and weep, mascara trailing down my face in messy paintbrush strokes as I whisper-sob, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, because my heart cannot form words enough to capture the depth of the ache and there is no other Name that brings reprieve.

Grief is a daily occurrence. Little things. A light blue sky. "Pinky promise?" A cup of hot chocolate from Caribou. "Our Father, Who art in Heaven..." Her name itself. Friends from school. Memories. You can't escape memories. And with memories comes grief, sometimes a gentle pinch, sometimes a wave that completely overwhelms me as I beg my God for some sort of reason why.

He never gives one.

At first, the silence scared me. It meant uncertainty. It meant that I'm not in control.

Then it made me angry. How dare He do whatever He wishes and work in whatever way He pleases without my consent? I didn't ask Him for this, this thing that daily follows me.

And then...and then I didn't feel anything at all.

My friend Julia wrote a song the day after the accident. About hope and glory and love and the promise of eternity. I remember sitting in front of my piano one day, mind completely blank for the sadness, and I began to play. I didn't know what. My heart didn't want long, deep notes and my fingers were not in the mood to dance. So I began slowly. A progression of three high, light, short, small chords. Over and over again.

And then something clicked. A ping! that traveled through the gray cloudiness in my head and made my heart jump, startled.

Julia's song. 

In a matter of a half hour, I had arranged a whole instrumental version of the song that my beautiful friend had written. It was perfect. Or so I thought. There was a chorus that had been nagging at me the entire time I had been playing. I had tried to shake it off, but it became stronger and stronger and louder and louder in my head that finally, I gave into it.

With tears dripping down my face, I began to quietly play the simple chorus. It was a David Crowder song I knew well.

You never let go, You never let go, You never let go
You never let go, You never let go, You never let go...

Joy and pain, sun and rain, You're the same, oh, You never let go,
Oh, my soul fills with hope, perfect love that never lets go...

Louder and louder, deeper and deeper the music swelled and my heart cried, oh, Father, forgive my pride...

Good and faithful One Who sees me and knows my soul and holds me secure and does all things for my benefit, shall I greedily snatch from Your hand what is good and yet refuse to accept from You the trouble also (Job 2:10)?...

Oh, Father, forgive...

You never let me go...You have been here and You will be my hiding place, my Comfort and my Shield, my Song and my Hope...

You never let go.

My fingers continued to play, though I no longer knew or heard or cared about that which I was playing. It was lost in the presence of my Savior.

Oh, Father, praise You for her life. Praise You for this gift You gave us with her life, and praise You for this gift, this glorious gift that You have given her in death. There is nothing sweeter than to be with You...thank You that she knows it in full.

You never let go...

I have learned to glean peace from His silence.

It's not my job or my place to know why. My God has done this thing for His own good, perfect purpose. I have seen good come from it. I have seen life spring up from the ashes. I have seen Him work. I know He makes beautiful things from dust. I know He makes masterpieces from broken shards.

Today is gray and stark and cold. The winter is here again but my God is teaching my heart to be warm and not to freeze at His reach, not to shrink away when His hand offers something that may cause me pain. (Not that He willingly inflicts pain (Lamentations 3:33).) Does my God not hold all things together? Is He not fully good and infinitely wise? Has He not given me this hope, this hope of her salvation and also my own as I know I will see her again, as an anchor for my soul (Hebrews 6:19)?

He loves me. He loves you. He loves us. Is that not enough?

He is fully good. Even when I don't understand it. He has brought me this far, and He will continue to lead me, and He never lets go. He has me.

And He has her. Forever.

He never lets go.