WayMaker: Finding the Way . . .
Ann Voskamp recently released her latest book, WayMaker: Finding the Way to the Life You’ve Always Wanted (Thomas Nelson, 2022). In addition, Ann is the wife of a farmer, mama to seven, and the author of four New York Times bestsellers. Like the full moon starting to wane, our dreams, hopes, and loves ebb and flow. Yet, it’s when we expect an easy life that life turns hard. Consequently, God wants you to name, see, acknowledge, sit with — even befriend — your place in life. However, you’re only able to find your way when you ask where you are every day. Certainly, although we want things to go the way we choose, God wants us to choose His ways. And that chosenness denotes a life of withness, not perfection. Because a way that seems right to the senses may lead nowhere good for the soul.
Hence, when we forget ourselves, we find exactly what we’re looking for: joy. In Christ we are in via, on the Way. To know God, we need to touch, experience, and encounter Him. Furthermore, God makes the way for us to rest in His strong arms, to trace His kind face. Especially in the pitch-black dark. Thus, shalom means more than complete peace; it’s peaceful completeness. Rather than letting circumstances dictate your belief about God’s heart, commit in advance to what you’ll believe about God. For when it feels as if all hope is lost, that’s the exact time to figure out where you truly place your hope. Because, Ann stresses, there’s one miracle you can always count on: the sustaining withness of God.
Most significantly, your daily life bears witness to the way you put on Christ — or not. So, let the WayMaker hold you close and lead the way. Lean back and trust the wraparound presence of God to hold you safe. When all you can see is waves, hold on to hope, the sacrament of waiting. Jesus, the WayMaker, works all the waves in your line of sight into the way you cannot see. As a result, every exodus represents an attachment to a loving Savior. Instead of a way out. Thus, in every moment you possess two options: bondage to material things or bonding to God. Therefore, Ann counsels, purpose to utilize the strength of stillness. The antithesis of stilling = murmuring, stopping to rail against God.
In conclusion, Ann observes, wholeness is more about the health of your attachments that the hellishness of your adversities. The only way to do the right thing, even when that task feels impossible, involves choosing the cruciform thing. Rather than strain and strive upward, still and go down to the depths of God. For the WayMaker rocks all your aches, like a Father singing a lullaby until the peace finally comes. Keep the beat of your heart in rhythm with Jesus. Ann exhorts:
“When cruciform surrender is our way of life, the waves of life, one after another, can be but a rocking rhythm that balances us in the rest of God. The waves in the way are making a way.”
