In her best-selling book, "One Thousand Gifts," she describes her unhappy, frustrating life:
"I wake to the discontent of life under my skin. I wake to self-hatred. To the wrestle to get it all done, the relentless anxiety that I am failing. Always the failing. I yell at children, fester with bitterness, forget doctor appointments, lose library books, live selfishly, skip prayer, complain, go to bed too late, neglect cleaning the toilets. I live tired. Afraid. Anxious. Weary. Years. I feel it in the veins, the pulsing of ruptured hopes. Would I ever be enough, find enough, do enough?"
What had brought this bright, beautiful young woman to such a state of anxiety, over-perfectionism, and self-hate?
The beautiful baby, Aimee, was four year old Ann's toddler sister. The image that scorches Ann's and her parents' memory is the sight of Aimee toddling into the farm lane, wandering after a cat, being struck by a delivery truck, and lying dead wrapped in a blood-soaked blanket cuddled by her parents, nearly insane with grief. The adult Ann closes her eyes and still sees the blood seeping out of the blanket. The day they bury Aimee is the day the family's inner life dies. "And with the laying of her gravestone, the closing up of her deathbed, so closed our lives. Closed to any notion of grace." The entire family chooses to say No to God. No to meaning. No to grace.
Ann's father sounds up the family's inner deadness in this way: "If there really is anybody up there, they sure were asleep at the wheel that day."
Yet, there comes this one morning when Ann wakes from a particularly frightening nightmare, and in an instant, her perspective shifts and she is ready for change. Ready to live. Ready to have her emptiness filled anew.
She has dreamed that she has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. She wakes, falls back asleep, dreams infinite variations on the same nightmare. The final time she wakes, she has an epiphany:
"But this morning, I wake wildly wanting to live. Physically feeling it in the veins trembling, the hard pant of the lungs, the seeing it in the steady stars, how much I really want to really live. How I don't want to die. Is that the message of nightmares and dreams? To live either fully alive...or in empty nothingness? It's the in-between that drives us mad."
Ann asks herself: "How do we live fully so we are fully ready to die?" Because she knows the end will come to all of us. She's the home-schooling mother of six children. She's never going to get to see all those gorgeous distant places in the world that might be on other people's Bucket Lists. But when she allows herself to truly open her eyes, to truly see her own life going on around her, it's as if she had been blind and now life itself, her daily life, is a vision of loveliness. Even while standing at the stove stirring oatmeal, looking at her lively children and out the kitchen window at a winter landscape.
"I will embrace the skin of a boy child that my body grew from a seed....The low heavens outside the paned windows fill with more snowflakes than stars, no two-stacked crystals the same....God in the world will birth ice from His womb, frost of heaven, bind the chains of the Pleiades, loose the cords of Orion, and number again the strands on my head (Job 38:31; Matthew 10:30)"
Waking to God's gift of daily wonder in our lives, Ann remembers Jesus at his Last Supper: "And he took bread, gave thanks, and broke it, and gave it to them...." The truth astonishes her: Jesus GAVE THANKS. Even knowing that he would die in twelve hours, he gave thanks to his heavenly Father for his friends, for the gift of his life, for simple bread and wine. "He gave thanks" can be translated "Eucharisteo," a word that encompasses several words: Grace, Thanksgiving, and Joy. Ann experiences an epiphany, a way through despair and self-hate and bitterness to spiritual maturity and fullness of life:
"So then as long as thanks is possible....I think this through. As long as thanks is possible, then joy is always possible. Joy is always possible. Whenever, meaning - now. Wherever, meaning - here. The holy grail of joy is not in some exotic location or some emotional mountain-top experience. The joy wonder could be here! Here, in the messy, piercing ache of now, joy might be - unbelievably possible! The only place we need see before we die is this place of seeing God, here and now."
In her thankfulness for the daily miracles of her life, Ann has re-discovered trust in a loving God. "There's a reason I am not writing the story and God is. He knows how it all works out, where it all leads, what it all means. I don't."
Here is spiritual maturity, the way out of our darkness and poisoned vision to new life and new joy: Seeing God - here and now. Choosing to turn our angry, anguished "no's" to God to "yeses" to the heart-wrenching beauty in the lives He gives us, to trust in His providence and mercy. Choosing to fill the holes in our vision with visions of the love, beauty, commitment, friendships, and works of nature that surround us, prodding us to smile, bow our hearts, and give thanks.
Today, Ann has written several best-sellers, saying that she has learned to see herself through God's loving eyes and to walk through suffering trusting in God. She is a global advocate for the poor, traveling for Compassion International. She says, "Caring for the poor is absolutely not optional for the Christian — caring for the poor is absolutely elemental for the Christian." God has healed her of her inner pain, self-hatred, and emptiness. In the process, she has discovered an inner well-spring of grace, of God's own compassion which she can pour over others who are poor, empty, and broken.
In full adulthood, Ann Voskamp has learned how to live fully, with and in God's grace.
But we never know how long we have to live fully here until God calls us to our fullest life in Heaven. On March 5, 2018, Pope Francis signed a decree recognizing the heroic virtues of a young Italian woman, Sandra Sabattini, who was hit by a car and died in 1984. The decree means that Sandra's "cause for the declaration of sainthood" is beginning; she is now a "servant of God." What is amazing is that Sandra was only twenty-two when she died! Twenty-two. When we look at the photos of her below, we see Sandra's luminous smile. We see her joy. We wonder at how quickly the adolescent found God, grace, and the courage to change into a spiritually mature adult.
"The Pope John XXIII Community Association is an international association of the faithful of pontifical right.
"Ever since its foundation in 1968 by Father Oreste Benzi, it has embraced a practical and constant commitment to combatting marginalisation and poverty. We in the Community bond our own life with that of the poor and the oppressed, living with them 24 hours a day, helping our relationship with Christ to grow because only by being on our knees can we stand alongside the poor."
Sandra's life was short by our human terms, but in it she had found tremendous joy and fulfillment. In people and in places which others might find depressing, empty, broken, she had found the immense beauty, love, joy, and power of the Presence of God. And for this amazing vision, this insight, she gave thanks with the gift of her life.