Ann Voskamp On How To Let Your Brokenness Be Turned Into Abundance

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My Takeaways:

‘In healing, we find healing.’

‘Every small gift of grace creates a love quake that has no logical end.’

‘All is sacred in the givenness- the givenness of God through everything, the surrender of everything to him.’

‘Courage is reaching out and taking just a bit of that iron-nail grace.’

‘The way to break time’s hold on me is to be broken and given with my time.’

‘The way to find the light in the dark is to make your hand reach out- reach out in thanks, reach out in giving.’

‘Your time is limited- so don’t limit your life by wanting someone else’s.’

‘What all terminal patients really want is a number. ‘How long have I got, Doc?’

‘We all get one container of time- but no one gets to know what size that container is.’

‘Not one thing in your life is more important than figuring out how to live in the face of unspoken pain.’

‘You have only one decision every day: how will you use your time.? How many days do I really get?

‘Everything that matters in living comes down to giving.’

‘How will you live with your one broken heart?’

‘Suffering is healed by suffering, wounds are healed by wounds.’

‘There is no growth without change, no change without surrender, no surrender without wound, no abundance without breaking.‘

‘Wounds are what break open the soul to plant the seeds of a deeper growth.’

‘Suffering is where God gives the most healing intimacy.’

‘Are the most painful tears the kind no one can see, the kind where your soul weeps alone?’

‘Time is made for dying in a thousand ways, so why be afraid of dying when a kind of dying could come all the time? Live every day like you’re terminal. Because you are.’

‘If you want your life to yield, there has to be a yielding in the soul.’

‘Spending yourself is how you pay attention to joy; spending yourself is how you multiply joy.’

‘What if instead of waiting for good enough things to happen to us, we could be the good thing to happen to someone else who’s waiting?

‘Change your expectations to focus on what life expects from you- and your life changes.’

‘What if we are not afraid?

‘Not to make an impression, but to make a difference.’ We aren’t here to one-up one another, but to help one another up.’

‘Every soul wants more than a powerful experience. It wants to experience a powerful connection.’

‘Love is not always agreement with someone, but it is always sacrifice for someone.’

‘The only way to abundant life is the broken way of risk.’

‘We are made into what we make habits.’

‘Busy is a choice. Stress is a choice. Giving yourself to joy is a choice. Choose well.’

‘Love asks, ‘Who am I willing to suffer for?’

‘The moment you’re most repelled by someone’s heart is when you need to draw closer to that heart.’

‘You become real when you make every situation, every suffering, every single moment, into a way to lead you into closer communion with Christ. A broken way.’

‘Maybe wholeness is embracing brokenness as part of your life.’

‘Giving away the heart heals the heart.’

‘Rain always brings growth.’

‘Whatever you do or don’t do, there’s no way to never taste it.’

‘Suffering that does not break us away from more of this world and break us into more of God is wasted suffering.’

‘Believe there is powerfulness in your brokenness.’

‘The brokenness inside of us breaks us.’

‘Be patient with God’s patient work in you.’

‘You begin to break your brokenness when you break down with your brokenness- when you hand it over to the One broken for you.’

‘If repentance isn’t a daily part of your life, how is grace a daily part of your life?’

‘Repentance is what keeps turning you around, around, sanding you down, re-forming you, remaking you- making you into real.’

‘Brokenness is always the beginning. Repentance, good brokenness, is the only way to progress in the Christian life because growth only happens through the seed broken open.’

‘When you commit to loving someone, you commit to losing some of you- you commit to dying.’

‘Love is really love- when we are loving the unlovable. Faith is really faith- when we believe God for the unbelievable.’

‘You can’t know the wine you will be during the days you are breaking and being crushed like grapes.’

‘Are the most painful chapters of our lives always the most meaningful?’

‘Suffering is an act of surrender, to bear under that which is not under our control.’

‘We are all a body, we belong to one another, we are one. … Relationship is the only reality. Unless our every day reality reflects the practical reality of our oneness, we live in a horror story of distortion and dismemberment.’

‘If your living isn’t about giving, then you’re already dying.’

‘Every one of us can start changing headlines when we start reaching out our hands.’

‘The thread of your life becomes a tapestry of abundant colors only if it ties itself to other lives. The only way to strengthen the fabric of society is to let threads of your life break away to let Christ, who is in us, weave around other threads.’

‘The brokenness in the world is but the brokenness in our own busted hearts.’

‘Never be afraid of broken things- because Christ is redeeming everything.’

‘Grace is always a movement of downward mobility.’

‘The world changes when we don’t categorize, polarize, and demonize people with broad brushstrokes- but when we apologize, empathize, evangelize, and prioritize people with these brushes of grace.’

‘When we leave people on the other side of the gate- we lose parts of ourselves.’

‘We will be known for our actual fruits, not the intentions of our imaginations.’

‘Love only comes to those brave enough to risk being brokenhearted.’

‘Our most meaningful purpose can be found exactly in our most painful brokenness.’

‘We can be brokers of healing exactly where we have known the most brokenness.’

‘What makes us feel the most disqualified for the abundant life is actually what makes us the most qualified. It’s the broken and the limping, the wounded and scarred, the stragglers and the strugglers, who may know best where to run with wounds.’

‘Safety is found where the brokenness of two hearts meet.’

‘Compassion is about co-passion, about co-suffering. You only have compassion where you are willing to co-suffer.’

‘Compassion can feel like the right thing when it involves a donation. But when there’s been a violation of your rights? Compassion can feel like degradation.’

‘Everyone’s passionate about changing the world, but who’s changing themselves to find compassion in their own world?’

‘A passionate life is a sacrificial life. A life that wants to embrace Christ is a life that must embrace suffering. A life of giving is ultimately the most life-living.’

‘The miracle happens in the breaking.’

‘If you can sit in your burn and brokenness and let it break down all your walls- so you can live into the givenness of even your brokenness- the crisis can bond you to Christ and other broken hearts.’

‘With-ness breaks brokenness.’

‘To give someone your broken heart means breaking pride, breaking lies, breaking fear. There is no communion unless someone breaks their ego.’

‘Everyone needs someone to be with them in the burn. This can turn the flames into a holy blaze.’

‘Suffering is a call for presence; it’s a call for us to be present- not only to the brokenness in the world, but to the brokenness in our own soul, and to risk trusting others with our wounds.’

‘Judging is a blindfold. Judging others blinds us to our own grime- and to the grace that others are as needy of as we are.’

‘Living given means breaking down all the thickened walls and barriers around your heart with this hammer of humility and trusting the expansiveness of the broken-wide-open spaces of grace and communion.’

‘Everything never made, never dreamed, never risked, never tried was because of a fear of brokenness.’

‘Everything in life that has ever been broken … has been because of fear of brokenness.’

‘Willing to be broken into. Broken and given. This is all there is.’

‘Brokenness doesn’t need shame or guilt- brokenness needs to be shared and given.’

‘What do you do with your brokenness? Give your one broken heart away.’

‘What’s the answer to suffering in this world? Destroy it with co-suffering, with compassion, with givenness. Bad brokenness is always broken by good brokennes.’

‘Your life turns around when you refuse to turn away from brokenness.’

‘Once you dare to take the broken way, stay with the broken, daily give forward even your brokenness, your broken heart is enlightened- it becomes light.’

‘It’s the broken hearts that find the haunting loveliness of a new beat- it’s the broken hearts that live a song that echoes God’s.’

Source

Ann Voskamp (2017). Be the Gift: Let Your Brokenness Be Turned into Abundance

Toure Roberts On How To Get To Certainty In An Uncertain World

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My Takeaways:

‘Knowing is hard to explain in one senstence- because it’s not just one thing. It’s part awareness, part revelation. Part instinct, part clarity. It’s the peace that keeps you steady in a storm and the courage that leads you to speak when the room is silent.’

‘Knowing is both a foundation and a compass. It is the first sense, the divine imprint in your spirit that helps you perceive what your eyes can’t yet see. It’s just what you think, it’s what you perceive. It’s not just what you hear, it’s what you discern.’ ‘It’s how you recognize truth when deception is dressed up in beauty. It’s how you build a safe life that can’t be shaken by external storms. It’s how you move forward when the path hasn’t yet been paved. Knowing is how you make decisions that don’t make sense on paper but make sense in the context of purpose.’

‘Knowing is how you recover the truth. Knowing is how you heal. Knowing is how you rebuild from the inside out.’

‘Knowing is not a single mountaintop. It’s a layered experience, revealed level by level as we grow.’

‘The cocoon works only if you stay inside long enough to be changed.’

‘The cocoon may not be comfortable, but it is covered. You are held, even here.’

‘You are safe in the cocoon, not because the conditions are comfortable but because the one who placed you there is trustworthy.’

‘Your only job is to not abandon the journey before the transformation is complete.’

‘Knowing is your awareness of God, his nature, his nearness, and his unfailing promises. It is the soul’s recognition of God’s character, even when your circumstances seem to contradict it.’

‘Awareness precedes observation.’

‘Knowing lives in the stillness. If you can get still enough, you will know.’

‘Stillness comes when the disruptor, and its residue has been subdued.’

‘Unknowing isn’t about losing something. It ‘s about making room. Room for clarity. Room for truth. Room for a deeper kind of Knowing to rise again.’

‘Letting go doesn’t mean dishonoring the past. It means making peace with it. It means creating space for what’s next. It means releasing what no longer serves the truth that’s rising within you.’

‘Transformation doesn’t begin when you get something new. It begins when you release what never belonged.’

‘Artificial intelligence may help you move faster. Divine Intelligence helps you move in purpose. AI can give you an edge. Divine Intelligence gives you direction. AI can sort what’s already know. Divine Intelligence reveals what no one else sees.’

‘Divines Intelligence is the Spirit of God searching the deep things of God and the hidden places in us until the two come into alignment.’

‘Divine Intelligence is bigger than language. It’s the Spirit working within us, reshaping how we think, how we lead, how we love, how we move. It transforms our decisions. It enhances our creativity. It solves problems that logic can’t untangle. It brings clarity to situations that feel impossibly complex.’

‘Your knower won’t grow because you always get it right. It grows because you lean in, pay attention, and learn from the results.’

‘Strength is what you’ve been given. Power is what you develop.’

‘Power comes through discipline. Through use. Through resistance. Through consistent alignment with the Spirit of Knowing.’

‘Preparedness builds trust. Practice builds confidence. And confidence activates your knowing.’

‘Loving the truth means tuning your knower to it again and again, even when it’s inconvenient. Even when it challenges your comfort zone. Even when it requires change.’

‘Knowing becomes navigation when you no longer doubt the stillness, because you’ve seen how many times that stillness saved you.’

‘… Ignorance, when acknowledged with humility, creates hunger. And hunger leads to discovery.’

‘Science doesn’t advance because it has all the answers. It advances because it keeps asking better questions. And those questions are not born not from knowledge but from ignorance.’

‘Ignorance doesn’t disqualify from knowing, it invites us into it.’

‘Ignorance isn’t the enemy of Knowing, it’s the entry point. … When embraced with humility, ignorance creates curiosity. It creates space. It opens a conversation with God that wouldn’t happen if we thought we already knew everything.’

‘It’s the questions, not the certainty, that pull us forward toward a truer kind of certainty. Ignorance in the right hands is productive. It’s the open field where new ideas are planted. It’s the spark that ignites curiosity. It’s the doorway to deeper truth.’

‘Ignorance isn’t the absence of Knowing. It’s the invitation to deeper Knowing. It’s not the end of the journey. It’s the spark that start it.’

‘If ignorance is the catalyst, humility is the soil.’

Humility isn’t about thinking less of yourself. It’s about thinking accurately, recognizing that no matter how much you know, there’s always more to learn.’

‘If humility is the soil, hunger is the spark. It’s what turns curiosity into movement. It’s what transforms openness into pursuit. And it’s what draws us into deeper levels of Knowing.’

‘Hunger is not a flaw. It’s not a sign of lack. It’s a sign of readiness.’

‘In the world of science, discovery doesn’t begin with answers. It begins with a question that refuses to go away.’

‘Researchers don’t push forward because they know it all. They push because they know there’s more to uncover.’

‘Questions are not the enemy of Knowing. They are the bridge to it. … Questions are not gaps in faith. They are evidence of hunger.’

‘Science doesn’t progress because of what it knows, it progresses because of what it wants to know. It advances from a willingness to ask questions, challenge assumptions, and pursue answers that don’t yet exist.’

‘Familiar doesn’t fight you. It affirms you. It keeps feeding you just enough to feel productive, while slowly disconnecting you from the pull of where you’re really supposed to be.’

‘Growth requires movement. And movement requires courage.’

‘Misknowing isn’t weakness. It’s evidence that something happened that your heart is trying to protect you from.’

‘Trauma doesn’t hurt. It teaches. It teaches you who to trust. What to expect. What to fear. What to hide. What to perform. What never to forget.’

‘Knowing is built on trust. Misknowing is built on tention. … Misknowing is born when the message of trauma goes unchallenged.’

‘Healing isn’t just about what you let go of. It’s what you pick up in its place.’

‘Faith is knowing in motion. It is what happens when revelation takes root in your spirit and becomes more real to you than what you can see, touch, or explain.’

‘Faith is the bridge between the invisible and the inevitable.’

‘God doesn’t rush greatness.’

‘Practicing certainty means aligning your life with what God has revealed- daily. … It means that when chaos swirls, you choose peace. When the world gets louder, you get quieter, returning to what you know in your spirit and letting that steer the wheel of your decisions.’

‘Certainty doesn’t make life easier. It makes you stronger. It doesn’t eliminate conflict, chaos, or confusion, but it keeps those things from running your life.’

‘When you practice certainty, you don’t crumble when your plans change. You don’t unravel when the unexpected hits. You don’t shrink back when the path gets cloudy.’

‘Certainty doesn’t mean perfection. It means alignment.’

‘Mistakes don’t cancel out your Knowing. They reveal where your Knowing still needs to mature.’

‘Disappointments don’t disqualify you. They train your eyes to look deeper, to see beyond what broke and recognize what’s still standing.’

Practicing certainty doesn’t protect you from every storm. But it gives you something solid to stand on when the wind shows up.’

‘Certainty isn’t about remembering everything all at once. It’s about returning – again and again- to the truth that steadies you.’

‘Certainty isn’t just a feeling. It’s a compass for your actions. When you Know something deep in your spirit, your decisions should match that Knowing. That doesn’t mean you’ll always feel ready. It means you’ll choose from alignment, anxiety.’

‘Integrity-based decisions are ones that move you forward with consistency, not convenience.’

‘Knowing isn’t meant to live in your journal. It’s not just for quiet time or Sunday mornings. It’s meant to move through you and shape how you show up everywhere.’

‘Certainty in your relationships means you no longer settle for proximity with purpose. You don’t cling to connections out of fear or habit. You pursue partnership that aligns with where you’re going, not just where you’ve been.’

‘Certainty in your career or calling means you’re not chasing everything. You’re not reacting to what looks good or what everyone else is doing. You’re building intentionally, in the direction of your assignment. You stop appying for roles that don’t fit. You stop saying yes to what drains you. You start honoring your pace, protecting your energy, and stewarding the grace you’ve been given.’

‘Certainty in your health means listening to your body without guilt, shame, or fear. … You move with intention, because your purpose matters.’

Certainty in your finances means you sow with wisdom, spend with peace, and give without pressure. You don’t chase money. You manage it. … And you trust that provision is part of the promise, not a prize for perfection.’

‘Certainty in your parenting means you lead your children from Knowing, not from fear. You stop parenting from wounds you haven’t healed.’

‘Certainty in your creativity means you no loneger create to be seen. You create because there’s something you know that’s too full stay inside.’

‘Certainty in your leadership means you’re not leading to prove anything. You’re not micromanaging out of insecurity. You’re not performing for validation. You’re moving with wisdom, delegating with trust, and leading people from a place of inner stability that inspires the same in others.’

‘You don’t arrives at certainty. You practice it.’

‘Knowing was never meant to be moment, it was meant to be a moment within you. It’s not just something you encounter. It’s something you embody.’

‘You are not lost. You are not late. You are not alone. You are walking in what God always knew about you. And every step you take from here is a step back to good. Stay grounded. Stay faithful. And above all, keep practicing what you know.’

Source

Toure Roberts (2026). Knowing: The Journey to Certainty in an Uncertain World