My New Favorite Book

Do you know about Ann Voskamp?  The agoraphobic, farm-dwelling mother of six who exstases like the love child of St. Theresa and L.M. Montgomery (or Anne Sexton and Augustine...or perhaps just some long-lost, blue-eyed homeschooling cousin of Rumi) on her blog, A Holy Experience? I've followed her for a while, and I've fallen slowly in love with her.  The more flaws she confesses to,  the more richness she uncovers in the daily dailiness, the more I like her... and I can always count on her insights to focus me on my priorities when I'm wandering.
 
When I read that Ann was publishing One Thousand Gifts, about how the practice of gratitude transformed her life, my first reaction was: "An Ann Voskamp book?  Oh yeah.  Pre-order!"  Then I thought, "Wait a minute.  Another book about counting your blessings?  Haven't Sarah Ban Breathnach and Oprah mined this territory?"


I remembered a season two years ago when I was reading Simple Abundance and decided to write down five things I was grateful for in a book each night.  It was the season when everything was falling apart, and I hung onto the finding of those five good things each day as everything I knew crumbled around me and as God made a new way for me.  Lost a house, lost a job, lost a way of life...found a house, found a job, found a new life...and all through it, counting those blessings.

When we moved into the new house, I put away the little book.  Maybe I was just trying to put one foot in front of the other and go on, or maybe, as usual, once I'd gotten what I wanted, I didn't bother to say thank you.

(in)Courage picked One Thousand Gifts for its first book club selection, and I saw on Ann's blog that this unlikeliest of offerings had made its way to #3 on Amazon, and I remembered how once I had understood that this gratitude thing works.  I ordered the book.  A few days later, two copies arrived -- the one I had ordered, and one my husband had sweetly pre-ordered for me before Christmas. 

It's fantastic and life-changing and redemptive and bursting with poetry.  I think it's going to be huge and cross over to a totally secular audience and I think we will definitely see Ann on Oprah.  But the best thing about it -- and I like to think Ann would agree -- is that it made me drag out the little blank books that were gathering dust on a shelf and lay them around my kitchen and office to hold the blessings I will be scratching out thanks for.