Review: The Broken Way

Ann Voskamp is a farmer’s wife, and her website (www.annvoskamp.com) is one of the Top 10 most widely read Christian websites.  She writes here of her life, her far from perfect life, and in this book she cites many examples of how she grew in faith, how she became a solid Christian, by first being broken.  She writes of how and why to embrace brokenness.

There is no growth without change.
Wounds are what break open the soil to plant the seeds of a deeper growth.
Your time is limited --- so don’t limit your life by wanting someone else’s.
It’s strange how that is: everybody wants to change the world, but nobody wants to do the small thing that makes just one person feel loved.
What if abundant living isn’t about what you can expect from life, but what life can expect from you?
Why grow the list of what I want to have instead of the list of what I can give?
You are where you are for such a time as this --- not to make an impression, but to make a difference.
The cells that only benefit themselves are known as cancer.  Cancer is what refuses to die to self.
What matters most is not if our love makes other people change, but that in loving, we change.
Love is not always agreement with someone, but it is always sacrifice for someone.
Do you actually only love someone, if when they break your heart, you don’t hate them?
You are where you are to help others where they are.

I have many other striking lines underlined in my copy of Ann’s book, but what makes them doubly striking is that Ann writes them after giving examples of her mistakes, her brokenness, her pains, and how --- with God’s grace --- she learned they had a purpose.  The image on the front of her book is of the seeds she keeps on the windowsill in front of her, a farmer’s visible reminders that something has to be broken before it can grow.  Pain and suffering have a reason, and Ann explains how to gain a more abundant life, along The Broken Way.

This is a most excellent book.  Thank you, Lord, for putting it in my hands.

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The early morning air is cool today; the sky dark and grey.  It seems fitting, nothing else does.

Fr. Dave said he was struck at how he says the words of Jesus at every mass “This is My Body,” which was given up for you, and then he recently read the words of an abortionist: “This is my body,” and she said she would give it up for no one, not even her little child.  How sad we think it right and proper to treat ourselves as God.

It’s impossible for us to love as Jesus did --- He IS Love --- but we can try to do as He did.  But it so hurts when it seems we fail.

The weather and I are both in a dark place today.  In recent days I was reminded again and again of the failures of my best efforts.  I saw children taking control of their parents, and the parents giving up.  I saw people whom God put into my life making decisions which in end in failure 95% of the time, but they don’t want to hear facts because “I want this.”  Friends don’t call anymore because they see no value in speaking with me, because of who I am.  It is easy to think my life is not worth living, to welcome or even pray for death when it seems nothing would change were I gone.  It’s hard to try to continue to sow seeds, when you see nothing take root.  We sow some seeds for others to benefit from the fruit, but we are the ones who starve when not seeing any results.  It makes for many sad days, and long nights.  But I know that this too shall pass.

Ann Voskamp found grace and love in her brokenness, in her failures.  I think perhaps I’ll begin to read her book again, to try to find some renewed hope, and I’ll stay the path, if I can see it.  But some days, it is hard.