Waymaker: Finding the Way To The Life You Have Always Dreamed Of
Review by Jane Walters
Ann Voskamp is a Canadian Christian, author of four New York Times bestsellers and mother of seven children. Her latest book, Waymaker, draws on her experiences within marriage and motherhood – with, at times, disarming honesty – to demonstrate God’s love.
She begins by describing the early days of her marriage when they cut their honeymoon short. In her confusion and disappointment, she went to the water’s edge and cried out to God, ‘Where are you?’ (in Hebrew ayekah). It happens to be the first recorded question in the Bible, aimed at Adam and Eve by God in the Garden of Eden. More than being concerned with location, ayekah says, ‘Where have you gone? Where are you if you are not here with me?’ God aches over the space and distance between Him and His people. As Voskamp concludes, ‘God has always been a Waymaker, making more than a way through. The Waymaker is making a way to you.’
The author talks about the Hebrew word hesed which is often translated (inadequately) as ‘loving-kindness’. It’s a love that is all to do with attachment; with God covenanting to love us unconditionally and inseparably. Ultimately, it is this ever-present love of God that is the answer to all life’s ills.
I found it interesting that she points out how, in the Hebrew, the word for heaven is masculine while the word for earth is female. Right from the beginning of creation, everything was designed to dovetail. ‘The universe is a metaphor for union.’
Another Hebrew word mentioned is yada or ‘being known’. She quotes Tim Keller as saying, ‘Yada is the most deep and intimate and experiential word in the Hebrew language for knowledge. It is knowledge so passionate and so intense and so intimate that it’s a synonym for sexuality when used in the book of Genesis.’ A natural consequence of yada is fruitfulness: intimacy with God bears fruit for God.
After having six children together, Voskamp felt they should adopt a Chinese baby girl who had been born with a severe heart defect. Her stories about the lead-up to receiving Shiloh and what happened once she came to live with them are wonderfully compelling. The author admits that she ‘had no imagination for the ways of God’ and, despite the promises, had doubts and questions. However, she was able to get to a place where she could say, ‘Even when you can’t imagine how He’s working, He’s working His way to you.’
The route to adoption was far from easy but God gave them promises through the story of the parting of the Red Sea. ‘Facing waves and finding a pathway through has been part of the human experience from our very first breath.’ Going deeper into the Red Sea, with all its uncertainties and fears, is a type of baptism in which we find God in the depths. There is great rejoicing afterwards, which we don’t always anticipate. Voskamp points out that, although the instruction was to flee from Egypt, taking nothing with them, the women had had the foresight to grab their tambourines, knowing they’d be needed on the other side!
The author refers often to a set of spiritual disciplines that she follows daily. With the acronym SACRED, they are: stillness (and surrender), attentiveness, cruciformity (reaching our arms out towards God and others), revelation, examine and doxology. ‘Habits are the way we dress in our deepest desires, and our daily rhythms reveal our truest romances.’ However, despite these practices and her faith in the God who hesed loves her, Voskamp found herself in trouble once Shiloh was going through her heart surgeries. She spares the reader the details, but it’s clear that her marriage was in jeopardy and, in due course, she fell seriously ill with heart failure. She attributes this to the human tendency to turn in on itself, what she describes as incurvatio in se. We move away from God and from others, choosing to self-satisfy and self-soothe. Our good attachments go awry as we turn towards destructive things. We no longer trust God to take care of us, even when we’ve been witnesses to His goodness and miracles.
Eventually, brought to a desperate place, Voskamp was able to reach out to her husband and to God and re-established her SACRED devotional routine, realising that ‘The Way is a Person and the only way to be a whole person is to embrace His SACRED romance.’
I found this book had a profound effect on my own understanding of God’s love and felt drawn to Him through its pages. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who is seeking to go deeper with God.
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About the Author
Ann Voskamp is a New York Times bestselling author of ‘One Thousand Gifts’ which has sold more than one million copies and been translated into more than twenty-one languages. She was named by Christianity Today as one of the fifty women most shaping culture and church today.
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