Eucharisteo.

For the first time in what feels like forever, my heart is quiet. My head is not spinning. My mind is at ease.

Creating this room for silence was relatively simple. Deactivate Facebook. Unsubscribe to the plethora of emails that bombard me daily with this deal and that fashion advice. Remove some apps from my phone. Remove some obligations from my calendar.

Today is my day off work and I am up before noon. This is different than how I have been…hiding under the covers until half the day is gone. No, today is different. It is good. Something has been ignited inside me. It started as a dissatisfaction, a gnawing for more. More what, I did not know. Certainly not more possessions. I am up to my ears in STUFF. I have been working diligently to get rid of the stuff. No, not more things. But more. A deeper, truer experience in my day-to-day life. More meaning. More purpose. More…something.

Then yesterday the book One Thousand Gifts was placed in my hands. I stayed up late delving into it, and each page I turned breathed new life into me. Every paragraph was whispering into the dry and weary parts of my heart. I want to experience eucharisteo - a life of thanksgiving that ushers salvation into every nook and cranny of my life. I am tired of feeling dissatisfied, when I really do have everything I could ever need or want. When did it cease to be enough? No, it is more than enough. Let’s get back to that.

“I remember once sitting at the hairdresser’s. The woman beside me reads, and I read her title in the reflection of the mirror: 1000 Places to See Before You Die. Is that it? Are there physical places that simply must be seen before I stop breathing within time, before I inhale eternity? Why? To say that I’ve had reason to bow low? To say that I’ve seen beauty? To say that I’ve been arrested by wonder? Isn’t it here? Can’t I find it here?...Why do I spend so much of my living hours struggling to see it? Do we truly stumble so blind that we must be affronted with blinding magnificence for our blurry soul-sight to recognize grandeur? The very same surging magnificence that cascades over our every day here. Who has time or eyes to notice? All my eyes can seem to fixate on are the splatters of disappointment across here and me…

I don’t need more time to breathe so that I may experience more locales, possess more, accomplish more. Because wonder really could be here – for the seeing eyes.”  - Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts