Ontario writer gives one thousand gifts
LISTOWEL, ON—A farmwife and home-schooling mother of six, Ann Voskamp is also an award-winning blogger whose poetic memoir, One Thousand Gifts, will be released January 17, 2011.
The book began, says Voskamp, with a friend's simple challenge: come up with a list of 1,000 gifts.
"I realized the things I loved were actually all the ways God loves me," says Voskamp, columnist for DaySpring's Incourage blog and co-author of an award-winning geography series. "I was recording a list of His gifts to me."
As she poured out thanks, a poet was released within. For example, she writes, "Morning shadows across the old floors; cackle of crows high in the limbs, iridescent on wings; new toothbrushes."
After composing a post describing what this spiritual exercise had done for her, Christian Women Online asked to run the piece as an article and began hosting the gratitude community. Soon, it overflowed into an online group of thousands, who join the blogger in celebrating Multitude Mondays on her site, A Holy Experience.
"An editor at a CBA house discovered Christian Women Online's e-zine and my columns, then contacted me about exploring the possibility of writing a book for women, exploring my journey of chronicling 1,000 blessings," explains Voskamp.
Meanwhile, a multi-published author sent her agent the address of Voskamp's blog. The agent offered to represent Voskamp and then pitched the outline of the book to various publishers.
Since signing with Zondervan, Voskamp's life has been a whirlwind. Her site receives 2,000 daily readers from more than 140 countries. Yet in spite of frequent speaking engagements as well as travelling as a Compassion advocate, Voskamp still views her writing as an act of worship.
"What my story in One Thousand Gifts highlights is my realization that joy is found in humility and without expectations of God, to live open-handed, desiring only His will be done," she says. "So I continue to write because I cannot help or stop bearing witness to His glory.
"But whether God intends those words for another book—that is His alone to decide. Which is very freeing!"
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