One Thousand Gifts

One Thousand Gifts
One Thousand Gifts
a dare to live fully right where you are
by: Ann Voskamp
2010
hardback, 237 page if you count the notes

In keeping with reading only books that have come to me recommended, i knew for a while that i wanted to read this one with the blue eggs in the nest on its cover.  I bought a copy (before i read it) for Melanie's 50th birthday thinking that 50 gifts would be cool, a thousand gifts would be way cool. Then our church (HFBC) had a ladies retreat and Kelly Matte, our pastor's wife did a session about it, but as i was not there, i do not know what she taught.  i checked it out of the church library but then got too busy with writing to read it.  I did read the first few pages and put it down quick as the raw description of birth and then the death of a child was too much for me.  Then i got sick, i thought instead of laying around, i will lay around with a book and because so many thought i would like this one, i picked it up again.  That is saying a lot before i say anything, i know. 
So, the book.  It is poetically written, yet touches on points like a good spiritual disciplines book should, so if it were mine it would have underlines in it.  It is a story, but one that is not in any hurry of getting anywhere and in the end, other than a trip to Paris (that may have been better off left as personal journal rather than included in the book) you really do not have a sense of arriving as far as story resolution goes.  But there is big resolution in the process that one homeschooling mom of six living on a pig farm in Canada goes through in her way to God, in her journey to fully trust Him.  She comes upon a word  eucharisteo meaning to give thanks and uses it page after page in her growth process in how this really unfolds. All boiled down one might say living a life of gratitude leads to living a full life of joy.  I would certainly agree.   The part that goes along with the title and with the journey is that she counts gifts... the little things that make up life, and she writes them down.  And she does so poetically.  On page 83 she reaches gift number 1000. Resurrection bloom, an amaryllis, a gift a year in the coming in reference to her mother-in-law's gift of a plant before she died of cancer.  There are lots of pages left for further discovery and the author uses her life as the class room of this growth into the goodness and blessings of God. At the end there are five pages of footnotes to give credit to authors and reference to books she has quoted in each chapter, so one has good resources if they would like to go deeper in an area. 
i liked the book and think it would be one that i would really have enjoyed reading in a book club where more could be expounded person to person after each chapter read.  At the end the reader is invited to join an on-line club to get even more information on how to live fully, complete with photos.  Many praise her book, and for good reason.