We are at our best when we are broken.
This is the essence of Ann Voskamp’s latest, The Broken Way. It’s not a book for those craving fragrant sentences and warm images, hoping to curl up by the fireplace and escape the hurting world. Instead, it’s a book that splashes us with the cold water of pain, ours and the world’s, forcing us to face it and find God in it.
The book begins with the fractured image of Ann’s own brokenness. The tale of Ann cutting herself as a teen and the way she craves it still (“I’m overwhelmed by how my skin’s starved for the cutting, for the breaking edge of glass again”). The tragedy of her little sister’s death (“…we’d watched that delivery truck knock her over like some flimsy pylon and crush her).
But just as at communion we break the bread and remember how we are blessed through Jesus’ brokenness, so Ann proposes, our own brokenness can become an avenue for receiving and giving blessing. In fact, she writes, “Everything that matters in living comes down to giving” and “the art of giving is believing there is enough love in you, that you are loved enough by Him, to be made enough love to give.” The ultimate brokenness is to pour out ourselves in love for others. And this, in turn, is the only balm for the brokenness in the world around us and in us.
The book is an extended call for sacrifice, breaking open ourselves for others, and letting God’s love flow through the brokenness life has caused within us. Ann weaves back and forth between calling us to accept God’s love in the midst of our brokenness and urging us to pour out that same love through our brokenness.
Ann’s writing is unique. She inks long and complex sentences which often require a great deal of the reader’s energy and attention. But she’s also an excellent wordsmith, hammering letters into works of art. The book is filled with memorable quotes about love, pain, giving and loving:
- Until you see the depths of brokenness in you, you can’t know the depths of Christ’s love for you.
- Why is it that only once you face life without the loveliness of those you love, you can finally see how much you love?
- We can only love in this world if we’re willing to suffer with the world.
- Your unspoken broken can start to rip you wide open.
- Jesus, with his pierced side, is always on the side of the broken.
- He never treats those who hurt on the inside as less than those who hurt on the outside.
- Everybody wants to change the world, but nobody wants to do the small thing that makes just one person feel loved.
- We exist to be Little Christs. Not Little Ladder Climbers. Not Little Control Freaks. Not Little Convenience Dwellers.
- You may believe in God, but never forget–it’s God who believes in you.
- No matter what they’re saying, everyone’s asking, “Can you just love me?”
- The best way to say you love is always time. The best time to love is always now.
- The best way to de-stress is to bless.
- You either leave your worries with God…or your worries will make you leave God.
- You cannot be love until you feel you are beloved.
Ann’s latest is not a devotional book. It’s not a how-to manual. It’s a peek into the life of an extraordinarily deep spiritual thinker and unusually transparent Christian figure. Using Scripture and her own life, Ann reveals how she is coming to grips with her own fractured past and present and how she is finding peace and joy in giving herself away to others. Her transparency is refreshing, especially in a Christian world where there is often pressure for prominent figures to put their best foot forward. Readers with an astute awareness of their own self-limitations or with a record of struggles, inner or outer, will find a welcome companion in Ann and an unwavering voice of encouragement in this book. It is an invitation to believe that when we are weak, He is strong and that some of God’s greatest work is done through the most “mustard-seed” among us.
The Broken Way: A Daring Path Into the Abundant Life
Ann Voskamp
Zondervan, 2016
ISBN-10: 0310318580
ISBN-13: 978-0310318583
