# WayMaker ![[Assets/da9c9813df85d9089f7b815286362427_MD5.jpg]] ## Metadata - Author: [[Ann Voskamp]] - Full Title: WayMaker - Category: #books ## Highlights - “There were only three things I was certain about when I was twenty years old: I never wanted to marry a farmer. I never wanted to leave the Netherlands. I never wanted to have a big family.” She stood up, straightened in a patch of lazing sun. Said it slow, so I wouldn’t miss the summary of her life story: “And? I ended up marrying a farmer. I left my home country—my mother, my family—the day after I married. And then I had nine kids—and ended up burying two.” ([Location 399](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08ZMBSR63&location=399)) - Detours are the way dreams and destinies actually come true. ([Location 405](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08ZMBSR63&location=405)) - The destiny we all ultimately dream of is a destination where we are ultimately seen, safe, soothed, and secure. ([Location 406](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08ZMBSR63&location=406)) - Screens sell pipe dreams. Every screen is trying to sell the lie to you—from Hollywood to Netflix to Instagram—the lie that all you have to do is buy this, work out like this, wear this, style it like this, believe this, pursue this, get a career like this, find someone like this, and you, too, can find the way to a perfect life, just like this. But buy any perfectly filtered and marketing-framed illusion, and you end up painfully disillusioned. ([Location 417](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08ZMBSR63&location=417)) - It’s one Edenic question, whispered in the dark. An echo of history’s first good question: Where are you? And perhaps in response, all of us through history have had our own EPS—an internal Expectational Positioning System—with expectations of where we think we should be by now on the road, of where the road is supposed to go, expectations of how we’d be loved, of how long we’d all have together, of the way everything is expected to work out in the end. ([Location 427](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08ZMBSR63&location=427)) - Whatever road we expect to be on, the way we want most to find—is a way to be wanted and not left alone. ([Location 473](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08ZMBSR63&location=473)) - “Where are you?” Where is the One who promised if we did it His way, everything would turn out all right? “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9). It’s God’s first recorded question in all of history, the shortest question of the entire Hebrew Bible, and it hasn’t stopped echoing across the topography of time. Only three words: Where are you? The most life-changing questions always are the shortest. In Hebrew it’s actually only one word: ayekah. That one word God is speaking into this moment, even right now: “Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?” Where are you going with your life? Where is your soul on the way? Where you are—is this truly where you want to be? ([Location 502](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08ZMBSR63&location=502)) - God isn’t asking for Adam’s or anyone’s coordinates—He’s asking me to seek out and coordinate my own heart with His. The disappointments and disillusions, the dreams and desperate hopes, these are already known to an all-knowing God. He asks you where you are in your life because He wants you to name the place, see the place, acknowledge it, sit with it—even befriend it. ([Location 512](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08ZMBSR63&location=512)) - Ayekah means God understands everything going on inside and doesn’t want a soul to hide. Not to hide from the feelings, not to hide from the hoping, not to hide from the dreaming, not to hide from the grieving. Like Adam and Eve, the temptation is to flee. ([Location 516](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08ZMBSR63&location=516)) - But here’s what no one tells you: When you hide who you are, what you ultimately are hiding from is yourself. This is a haunting, exhausting kind of lost. ([Location 519](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08ZMBSR63&location=519)) - When Adam and Eve turned away from intimacy with God, God cried ayekah because He was asking more than simply, “Where are you?” He was asking, “Where are you in relation to Me? Where have you gone that’s taken you further away from Me? ([Location 539](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08ZMBSR63&location=539)) - You can’t control the way of waves—but you can control the way of your sail. You can turn the sail to fill with the wind of the Spirit, you can move forward in the current of His love, you can reroute through waves. Turn your sail toward the Spirit, and it turns out you can get out of the boat and walk on waves right back to Him. ([Location 568](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08ZMBSR63&location=568)) - Unlike Adam, when Abraham heard God calling for him, Abraham answered: Hineni. “Here. I am here” (Genesis 22:1, my paraphrase). I am here, my WayMaker, whatever Your way. ([Location 571](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08ZMBSR63&location=571)) - All the universe is echoing with His ayekah—and all we have to do is keep whispering the shortest one-word answer: hineni, here. Not in the sense of a roll call here, but in the sense of I am all here. Spoken only eight times in all of Scripture, and every time, a transformative turning point. ([Location 575](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08ZMBSR63&location=575)) - Any old way will not do with your only life. This is your only life. You have to brave the waves. When there seems to be no way, reroute through waves. It’s never about the storm—it’s always about your sail. When there seems to be no way, I can reroute my EPS, my Expectational Positioning System: If I am upset that he hasn’t responded the way I’d hoped, I can reroute and look for the ways he’s trying to connect. True, he didn’t gather me up and hold me long in the morning before getting out of bed. But also true, he did make the bed and get me a steaming cup of tea. When there seems to be no way, I can reroute and gently explain the ways I need to be heard and held, seen and made safe. When there seems to be no way, I could reroute and thank him for the ways of love I’ve felt. True, dreams didn’t happen. Hope hit a roadblock. Plans didn’t come through. And also true, reroute, reroute, reroute. ([Location 584](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08ZMBSR63&location=584))