Ann Voskamp, unedited

Ann is one of the most charming people I’ve ever interviewed —15 years ago before Patrick Henry College students. Since she rightly has lots of fans, including me, here’s the whole unedited transcript

Tell us about where you live.

My husband and I make our home in southwestern Ontario, about an hour and a half from Toronto. We farm 600 acres of land and we have 650 sows. We have about a thousand little piglets on the farm at all times.... So we live on about 600 acres of land in southwestern Ontario, farm corn, soybeans and wheat in 3-year crop rotation, and we have 650 sows with a thousand little piglets in the barn at all times, so we feel very blessed.

And it’s at the end of a gravel road?

We are at the end of a gravel road. Actually, many of the farms, the houses were built a hundred years ago off side roads that run this way. Our house for some reason was built so it’s off of the far side of one road, so I face out to bush one way and bush the other way. I feel very secluded and quiet.

And where do you write in the house?

My husband is not a reader. We close every meal with scripture, morning noon and night, so he reads his Bible and he reads the farm newspaper, but my side of the bedroom is floor to ceiling, literally, of books. He’s supportive of the writing, and he built a little ten by ten foot cabin on the edge of the cornfield so I go out late at night and early in the morning and write in a very quiet, still space. The kids are either in bed or all six of the kids get up at 5:30 in the morning and work two and a half to three hours in the morning in the barn with Darryl in the morning so I can write.

So what time in the evening do you head out to the cabin, typically?

It’ll be late, after everyone has gone to bed, depending on if my oldest two have finished up all their homework, 9:00, 9:30, and write for a few hours.

How far away is the cabin from the house?

Not very far. How many, would that be, 200 feet from the house? So, not very far, and the year I wrote One Thousand Gifts, a lot of hours out in the cabin, and not a lot of sleep, whereas I have a much better sleep schedule now.

So you’d be writing, when you were writing One Thousand Gifts, you typically start at 9p.m. and work until...

Yeah, until about 2:00 in the morning, and then I got 4 hours’ sleep, and then I’d get some hours in the morning before they started school. So it was an intense year. In the month of January, when the book was due, Darryl’s not out in the fields in January, and normally he would take on projects in the shop and in the barn, but he chose that particular month, he home-schooled all the kids, and did the laundry and made the meals, and I’d come in and say, “I can’t do this anymore,” and he would be like, “The Lord has called us to this. We can keep going.”

And in January, it was very cold.

Oh, yes, very cold. But he insulated that cabin very, very well. [laughter] And it has a very toasty little heater when it was snowing, for me, but the cabin is, step into that space, and it was a space.

Do you write on a computer?

I write on a computer, yes. I’ve gone through a few lately.

And as you’re writing, are you self-editing as you go along?

Yeah, I’m not a fast writer at all. It comes slow. I really believe I come empty and wait upon the Lord. So it really is all a waiting process, a patient process. And I write a chapter, and then edit it and edit it and edit it and edit it. But I don’t think we mine creativity from within. I think it’s bestowed from on high, from God. So honestly, I didn’t think anyone would ever read One Thousand Gifts at all. It’s quirky, and idiosyncratic, and the language -- it’s not an easy read. But my husband and I both felt that the Lord had used it to change us. And what would show up on the screen would be things I didn’t know of, that spoke to me and ministered to me in my own life so that we were just grateful for the process for us as a family, and we’re humbled that He’s used it for other families.

I tend to feel that I don’t really know what I think until I have to write it.

Yes, exactly. That is exactly it, or I would begin to write a story and not really know where it was going to go, and be surprised how the Lord was really leading threads that I didn’t see when I was living it. When I was writing it, to see how He is weaving everything to bring glory to Him. Now I don’t know what I think. I view writing lots of ways as a handicap. Other people can just live their life and they understand it. I have to write it to understand it.

And, there’s that famous line in Chariots of Fire from Eric Liddell: “As I run I feel God’s pleasure” –

Yes, yes. Actually, Marvin, there were lots of nights where I would run in from the cabin and wake him up from out of sleep to say, “I thought it was about this, but look what the Lord gave us.” And, yes. To feel his smile and the exuberance and the excitement over God and His word and His character and who He is.

So let me go back aways, because you and your family haven’t always felt God’s smile. You start out One Thousand Gifts with the death of your sister. Can you talk about that a little bit?

I was raised in a non-Christian home. My mother was raised Catholic, a cultural Catholic. The death of my sister, she was 18 months old and killed, crushed by a farm delivery truck in our family’s farmyard in front of my mother who was standing at the kitchen sink. My father never shadowed a church door after that, for probably 18 years after that, and then only came to church after that to witness my baptism. Really, his line was, “If there really was a God, He was definitely asleep at the wheel that day.” And for me, the death of Amy was my first memory.

How old were you then?

Four. So I really felt my life was formed by fear, formed by a very dark horrifying day. So that particular event really shaped our family, seriously, detrimentally impacted my parents’ marriage, and shaped who I was as a person. But I think One Thousand Gifts was working my way back to living open-handed and accepting the sovereignty of God and that all is grace because all is being transfigured to bring glory to Christ. And understand that as God sustained the Israelites on manna, which literally means, “What is it?”, then can we be sustained in situations where we don’t understand the whys, but we trust the Who. Not needing to know the why, but allowing God to feed us on what seems to us like mystery.

The book sometimes feels as if you’re preaching to yourself.

Exactly, Marvin. I do it in the house all the time. I actually preach the gospel to the person who needs to hear it the most: me. I think honestly the blog in lots of ways is the same way. There’s not comments on the blog. I’m not preaching to someone else. It’s me taking Scripture and preaching it back to me. We need to hear the truth of the Gospel over and over and over again. I am chief among sinners. I need the truth of God’s word, and to encounter afresh the grace of Jesus Christ. It is a preaching back to me, Marvin.

So you grew up with a sense of fear. How did that affect you, and when did that start to change?

By my second year of university, I was experiencing anxiety attacks and agoraphobia. By the time I got to finish off that second year, before we were married, I was on anti-anxiety medication and antidepressants. I think my husband is firmly, firmly rooted in Scripture. I was saved in a Good News Bible Club ran by his mother. She ran the Bible club through Child Evangelism Fellowship 23 years with an average of between 60 and 80 kids every Friday night. She was a beacon of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our community. Marrying him and entering into the family, it was the entire paradigm, the lens of the world was through Christ. I think that began to change me. I think homeschooling my children, and as a mother, what was I imparting to my children? I didn’t want them to grow up the way I grew up. And being very intentional about my motherhood and the baggage I was still carrying. How was I going to be a different kind of mother than my own mother had been with her own baggage. I think One Thousand Gifts is being very intentional about looking for the grace and the goodness of God and beginning to see God very differently, that He was using all things to conform me into the image of Christ. I didn’t have to be afraid of the world any more because everything was being used to bring glory to Christ. There’s nothing to be afraid of. And I think One Thousand Gifts really was a turning point for me, and I think blogging in general, because it’s journaling. It’s writing, seeing your life in print, and do I want all my stories to read this way? If I don’t, what do I have to change so my story reads differently?

Do you have a sense that your children are growing up without fear?

Yes, I would, definitely. Because, in our home, my default is still to go back to fear. And I will out loud preach the Gospel to myself. My children hear me quoting Scripture back to myself, giving thanks in situations, being very intentional about focusing on the Lord. And they’re writing their own one thousand gifts. Their default. And for us to close every meal reading Scripture, we’re constantly re-orienting ourselves to truth that I didn’t grow up with, and had to re-learn sometimes.

And you homeschool all six of them? And so do they learn about God’s providence in their academic subjects?

My two oldest, Caleb and Joshua, are enrolled with Veritas Press Online Academy out of Lancaster. So, all of those classes open and close with prayer and scripture, and our sovereign worldview. So the paradigm is definitely the sovereignty of God, and the Providence of God. And I’m grateful to still have my four youngest ones, that I am primarily homeschooling, to take all of the literature, all of what we learn in the day, and filter it through God’s word. And, I wish I’d had a different upbringing, but God uses all things for His purposes and His glory. So I wouldn’t change any bit of the story, but I’m grateful that their lives are growing into a different story from my own.

How did you become a reader and a writer? Because that really wasn’t in the family...

No, it wasn’t. I think a lot of my pain as a child was easier to escape into books, into words, than to try to wrestle out what was happening in our family life. Words were a different place to go. So I was a voracious reader, read all of the books in our public school library. Words were safe for me.

And then you started writing?

I’ve always journaled, and shelves in my study are filled with journals. It was a way to process when I didn’t know how to talk to anybody about the fears, or what was happening, so I wrote it on the page.

It really wasn’t until college and that group that you started hearing the gospel?

I was saved at a Good News Bible Club when I was 9 and a half. But to live that faith out in a non-Christian home-- I wasn’t attending services on Sunday morning. When I was 16, Darryl’s family that had the Good News Bible Club, they started picking me up and taking me to church every Sunday. So by the time I was 16, that’s when I started living it out in my own quiet times with the Lord and the scripture. So I wouldn’t say I started growing in my faith till my mid-teens.

But then you met your future husband in that situation and environment. So you knew each other for quite a while before getting married. And then you were married at age 20, which is younger than average.

Oh, I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone.

You wouldn’t recommend it?

For my own life, I wouldn’t change any of that at all. Darryl and I had been together since were were 16. We grew up together, and grew in the Lord together. We were young and poor together. I think, if at 20, you’re mature, and you know who you are in Christ, and you understand you’re stepping into a covenant, then yes. But I think that’s with a great deal of prayer, and you have the blessing of your parents, that they believe you really are ready to take that kind of step of commitment. I pray our children are at that age. But I look at 20-year-olds now and I say, wow, were we really that young? Yes, we were.

So you’re journaling all the time, and at some point that becomes public. When did your blog begin?

I think that’s fall of 2003 or 2004. And I had journaled up until that point as a young mom, journaling, not just journaling in a vacuum, but taking Scripture that I’m reading and laying that down in a journal, and how am I living this out, and where is the sin in my life that I need to confess, and work through, so never journalling apart from God’s word. I think blogging came out of, still continuing on the journalling, but if God could use it in public form, if God could use what I was wrestling through in another mother’s life, was it a way to go into all the world while still being a stay-at-home mom and serving my husband and my kids?

Have you shown your journals to anyone else?

No, no, no. Nobody. Now my husband, and Darryl still doesn’t read the blog. I still see it as a very-- well, in the last 6 to 8 months it’s been harder to see it as that space-- as a quiet space between me and God.

But somebody, when you started doing the blog at 2003, it’s really not just between you and God at that point, so you had readers.

I’ve never had comments. I’ve never installed a site meter on it. So it was never, I was never thinking there was anyone really out there. I mean, now and then you’d get an email, but you have no sense of actually literally, up until last fall, the screen was black. I saw it as a dark, quiet space, and needed it to be a dark, quiet space for me to write in.

You don’t really know how many people are reading?

I actually ask, when my agent has to send numbers to Zondervan about who reads it, I ask her to go and find out what that is. Because honestly, I really feel, it’s like David taking a census. This is for God to do whatever God wants to do. When you write, it’s to an audience of one. It’s to Him. If He takes it to one person and changes or impacts or influences or encourages one person, that counts. Jesus left the 99 for the one. I don’t like numbers, Marvin.

But there’s a literary agent who reads it.

Yes, he takes care of all that with Zondervan. I don’t. And he’s been very respectful and sensitive that with One Thousand Gifts, I don’t want to know numbers. I don’t want to. That’s for God to do whatever He wants to do, or not want to. That’s not my responsibility. I’m to be faithful to what God has called me to do.

So you’ve never looked at where you are on the Amazon list.

No. Actually, when I buy books from Amazon, I feel anxious to get out of there as fast as possible. I don’t look at Amazon, I don’t watch the numbers. Zondervan will email me if it’s on the New York Times that week, but I don’t look at the New York Times each day. It’s not my business. That’s for God to do whatever. Art, really, is never about applause. It’s about coming to an altar. It’s about laying it down for God to do whatever He chooses to do with it.

Then the making of One Thousand Gifts comes not through your impulse, but from the agent calling you, and...

Yes. You don’t pay to read a blog. A blog can go anywhere in the world that God wants to take it. I believe that’s a Jesus kind of paradigm. So I wasn’t interested in writing a book per se, at all. And that was an agent who came alongside. He was another homeschooling dad, who was interested in what my life had looked like, very sensitive and respectful to my calling to serve my family and to serve my husband, and the words had to come off the fringe of that. So, One Thousand Gifts came out of readers, authors of his that read the blog and contacted him and said maybe God can use this in print format, as opposed to just on a screen.

And then it takes off, in the sense of readership. And is this a surprise to you?

It’s very uncomfortable for me. Very much so. I have to be very intentional, being faithful to what God’s called me to, to say it doesn’t impact my day to day life.

Do people send you letters asking for advice on things?

Yes. And a lot of those emails, I’d love to answer. My husband says -- and he’s right-- every time I say yes to that person, I say no to my children and my home. So I feel the burden and the weight of not responding to people, but if I respond to those people, at the end of my life, where are the souls of my six children? So you don’t want to see what my inbox is like. I’m not very good at answering a lot of emails. There are times and places where the Lord lays one person, and I will really make an effort to respond to that one person, but I could spend all day emailing and I wouldn’t be doing what I’m really supposed to be doing.

Is there an example of one letter that really did touch you so much that you had to respond?

I think I resonate with-- I’m very intentional about responding to women who have lost children, or to women who have lost a sibling. I understand to some extent what that does to a family. So to come alongside those women, and I think, women who are in marriages where there is infidelity, I don’t know where to speak of that pain, those are women that I will try to come alongside of. And women who have come out of horrific family origin or life story, and they’re really struggling with all is grace, how can all be grace? What is this ugly situation? To come alongside that kind of heart, and acknowledge it. God wants us to lament. That’s very different than complaint. Complaint doesn’t see the goodness of the character of God. Lament is honest and authentic about the feelings but knows the goodness and the benevolence of God. So to be authentic about the lament, then come back to what does Scripture say about the sovereignty of God, how God allows these things to happen, to conform us more into the image of His son, to ultimately bring glory to Himself. So those are the kinds of letters that I really try to take the time to serve, and to wash the feet of someone in pain.

It seems that people react differently to this understanding of the sovereignty of God.

We can know it intellectually. We can know it scripturally, but then something happens, a bomb happens in your life, and ok, how do I take what I know, and know it in my heart and live this out? How do I deal with all this pain?

How do you do it?

I think, for me, as I wrestle through, in One Thousand Gifts, the hard eucharisto to have. Can I give thanks in the dark, because if I can’t give thanks in the dark, if I can only give thanks in the good, what does that say about who God is? What does it say about who I trust God is? When I can give thanks for the things that make no sense to me, the things that hurt, that is my public manifestation of what I say I believe, which is God is in control, that nothing happens randomly, that He is at work in all things. So I think for people to be honest about the pain, we look at Job, we look at David, it’s never to put a bandage on things or a facade on our pain, but to be honest and lay the pain out before the lord, and say, like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego as they were about to go into the furnace, Even if I never understand why this is happening I will not deny that You are good, that I’m always loved by You, that even when the chisel hurts, that You are using this to conform me into the image of God. So it’s back to preaching the Gospel to ourselves.

So your father in a sense never recovered, your mom did, you mentioned at the beginning of the book the sadness involved in the death of your two nephews. What’s happened to your sister and brother-in-law?

It was a genetic disorder that took both of those little boys home. So it was always supposed to happen. The doctor said one in four, so God chose to take the second son also. Much prayer, they have had a third son. Sawyer does not have spinal muscular atrophy. We rejoice in Sawyer, he’s now just turned 5, but, yes, there’s always an acknowledgment that there would be two older brothers. So there is sadness there. But I think they’re-- John and Tiffany-- they lived out out open-handedness. John’s life verse was from Job: “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Nothing is ours to hold onto. It’s not just lip service. They are living that out, that it was God’s to decide. And they’re grateful for Sawyer now, and grateful for the gift of Dietrich and Austin as long as we had Dietrich and Austin.

Another question about your living situation, as you’re raising your children, do you have a television in your house?

No television, no radio. And I can’t remember the last time I watched a movie. My husband grew up with no television, so when we got married we never brought a television into our home. I used to listen to public radio in Canada, I listened to a lot of politics, and what was happening in culture, and my husband said it would agitate me, and I would be very involved, and just to turn it off and let’s live a quiet life unto the Lord. So we probably haven’t had a radio for 10 years.

Newspaper, magazines...?

No newspaper. The farm newspaper comes into the house. But the Internet-- we are aware of what is happening in the world, but no magazines. I think we’re very intentional about the literature we bring into the home, and that we really long to be a family that’s word-formed. If we’re going to spend the time reading, spend the time reading Scripture, and meditating on the truth of God’s word.

And you wrote at one point on your blog about the importance of not sequestering homeschool kids.

I think we’re called to go all the world with the Gospel. Greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world. So how now do we not get ourselves into homeschool ghettos, but we engage the world, and to be a bright light of the hope of Jesus Christ. I think of my mother-in-law, if she had sequestered, she had the truth, but if she hadn’t had that Good News Bible Club for 23 years, with 80 kids every week I wouldn’t be saved. How do we bring the Gospel to families around us, in careful thoughtful ways that don’t leave our children in places of disadvantage at all, but places where we as a family are going into the community with the hope of Christ. There are families around us that will die Christless if someone doesn’t share the gospel with them. So to be intentional about reaching those around us.

Do you have any particularly favorite books or authors? And second, do you ever encounter writer’s block and how do you deal with that?

Actually I think the two questions go together. When I encounter writer’s block, it’s really important to be reading, because I never am reading one book at a time, I’ll be reading three or four different books at a time, so those books begin to have a conversation with each other, and then I begin to engage what that conversation is about, and words come out of that. So I think if I don’t have words, it really is a sign I’m not reading enough. I don’t read a lot of fiction. I really have to be intentional. When I’m reading fiction, I’m reading aloud to my kids. Personally, I read mostly nonfiction, classics, a lot of C.S. Lewis. I’m reading contemporaries, John Piper... I read a lot of theology because I’m trying to figure out how do I take theology and make it very practical, for the kitchen sink, [36:40 unintelligible] and with my kids. So those are the kinds of things. I don’t want to only live out of my head. It has to put flesh on it. And I think that’s the blog and One Thousand Gifts, is how do I put theology and make it very very practical, for the moms with a lot of young babies.

I was fascinated by how you manage your time, and how you sometimes have to say no to people. How do you work through and make those decisions? What do you use to determine what to focus your time on?

I’m still in deep process through this. Going back, understanding that when Jesus, God Himself, was here on earth, He didn’t heal every single person. And that’s God. To live in a place of humility, I can’t meet everybody’s needs, I can’t. I’m one broken sinner clinging to the cross in grace. I think it really is keeping company with the Lord and praying through every situation, the Holy Spirit speaking and you being attentive to that discerning voice saying, “This is the way, walk in it.” And to know that this is a person that He has called you to, and that this is a person that I’m praying for in this moment. To never be flippant, whether you can respond or not, you can be praying. And to bring that person to prayer immediately. There’s people that I have never responded to, that the Lord brings to mind months later, and I will stop and pray for that person. There are other people you can bring alongside you, to say can you meet the needs of this person here, and sometimes to forward and redirect an email to someone that you know who can reach out. There are no formulas to these things, but God is living and active, and for us to live in a posture of, “Direct my footsteps, Lord, to who I can respond to,” and to be very intentional about what is your vocation, what is your calling, and for me my first calling is my children, serving my husband at home. Writing comes after that and then, is there enough margin to reach out beyond that?

How did you, the farm girl, bring your manuscript from your own computer to a published book?

It was an agent coming alongside and saying, “These are themes that you’re writing about and wrestling through in your life over and over again on the blog.” One Thousand Gifts took about twelve months to write. The outline took almost two years to come about, and the living of it a lot longer than that. I really believe books can’t be manufactured or come out formulaic, or even when you have a theological understanding in your head, writing it will mean nothing to someone else unless they can see how you put flesh on that. So it has to come out of your life and your living to carry any weight. The Word incarnate. You have to live it.

A freelance editor came alongside me. Every time a chapter was finished, I would send a chapter to him, he would say, “You’re holding back, you need to go deeper and tell us what’s really going on and not just on the surface.” To be accountable to somebody, who says, “You need to tell people the truth here.” The hard things, the vulnerable and transparent things. So to have someone, one person come alongside, so that was a 12 month process. Before the book went to contract, I only had the first three chapters of the book, which really came more as a whole because the story began with Amy’s death, and that’s always been what was so formative to my life. So those first three chapters and the twelve months writing after that. But, a farm girl doesn’t know much. I think, God bringing other people to come alongside me, and say, “This is how we go through this process,” because I still can’t say that I’m a writer. I don’t feel like a writer. I tap things out on a keyboard. I feel like a blogger, but not a writer.

Some people after reading One Thousand Gifts have started making their own lists. For students here who want to be writers, do you recommend starting with a list?

Yes. G.K. Chesterton says the greatest poetry comes out of lists, and you’re thinking, “Really?” The list-making is slowing you down long enough to see, and writing comes out of attentiveness, and about the way you see the world, the way you see the sovereign hand of God moving. So the list doesn’t seem like literature at all, but it is becoming very intentional, a practical way of opening your eyes up to your life and seeing your life and starting to notice the things otherwise you would have missed. So I think, while the list itself may not spawn any great thoughts, it will be the practice of seeing. I don’t feel like the Lord has gifted me with talents in any way, but if you can slow down enough to see, you will see what other people are missing, and be able to bring that to the table. Genius is a long faithfulness. Faithful with how we slow down and see. Faithful in a world, we’re all moving way too fast to slow down enough to go ahead and see.

I guess when you slow down, you have to pay attention to specific detail, pay attention to the physicality of things, and...

And that all plays into writing. Really good writing, from my perspective, I see it runs a lot like a visual on the screen. So you need to create that kind of detail and have that kind of credibility with the reader, that the reader knows that you were really there, that you really experienced it, that you know the details, and that comes out of seeing.

[Audience member offers statement on Chapter 8]

I was in the cabin writing that, and the cabin does not have internet connection. There was a woman I knew who was going through, I think it was about 23 weeks, and the baby’s heartbeat had stopped, and she was going though labor and delivery to deliver a stillborn child. Those two pages came when I was typing that out. I didn’t know those words before they came on the screen. That sounds audacious, and I say that very hesitantly and humbly, and I mean it humbly, and all of a sudden, an email shows up from that particular woman going through labor, that was terrified. And I said, “These words are meant for you right now,” copied and pasted, and sent those. I have no idea why there was internet connection in the cabin at that particular moment. But yes, when He tucks you into the cleft of the rock, and it’s dark, the dark that surrounds the holiest, God is passing by.

What is God doing in your life right now?

If I believe He is real, and He is using all of these events in my life for His ultimate good, it may be painful for me in the moment, it’s ultimately to shape me into being more like Christ. I can trust Him. It’s one thing to write a book out of my story.... With One Thousand Gifts, I’ve had to learn to trust Him on a whole new level. I’ve had to learn to live this all over again. God has an interesting sense of humor. Practically, if we believe what we say we believe, it has to be manifested in our attitudes, in our words, in our own stress levels. And if He’s real, and I say I really believe Him, I have to live in an open-handed place moment by moment, trusting what He gives me. That’s a life-long process. I’m not there. I haven’t arrived at all, and He brings new challenges, and says, “Will you trust Me with this too?”

Stories aren’t created in vacuums. They rub up against other people. Are they ok with me sharing this story? … But I think, for mamas to know, you’re not alone. There are really hard days that our own flesh comes through in our mothering, that our own children are struggling to act in Christ-like ways, and I’m stumbling through it. It’s not my default to get this right. My default is I am fallen, I am vulnerable, and how do I intentionally reorient to the cross and to Christ and to God?

Honestly, in this particular season in my life, I have never felt more committed to motherhood and the eternal value of children. My life right now in this particular season doesn’t look like I want it to look. I want to be home with my kids this morning. So right now my husband and I have been very prayerful about what I say yes to and what I say no to, because ultimately how those 6 children walk with the Lord means more to me than anything else does. At the same time God calls us to go into all the world and to exalt Christ. I feel called to do that from a keyboard late at night. And when a mother does eternal work in hidden, quiet places, there is no applause for what you do every day that shapes culture. I feel very uncomfortable about the position I’m in right now because it is of minimal value than what women are doing every day, men are doing every day, in places where there is no applause for what you’re doing, no accolades. Christ didn’t get accolades for what He did. Christ didn’t have a place to lay His head. Christ went lower and not higher. So in my own life right now, I’m working very intentionally about the things Christ is about, in hidden and quiet places, that He can use the words that He needs to, but I need to stay as invisible as possible, and Christ alone, people are drawn to Him, and I’m just broken like everybody else.