Eucharisteo

I find a lot of power in what a name means. I earned the nickname "Monte" back in my freshman year of college while in InterVarsity and it has been my name ever since. I love the name because it was my grandfather's nickname as well. It tied me to a part of my family. It enforced that I was a "Montecuollo", the only one in fact, at my school or in my neighborhood. Interestingly enough I found that the longer I was called "Monte" the more I missed being called "Melissa." Melissa was who I was, it was the name given to me at birth. Whenever I heard my own name used by someone who called frequently called me Monte I felt as if they saw the true person, not the persona I put up.

I'm not going to talk about my first name or my last. Today I'm going to talk about my middle name, Anne. I rarely acknowledge my middle name and I'm not sure why we even have them in the first place. I decided one day to look up what Anne mean and found that it is Hebrew for "full of grace." I was greatly taken aback because it seemed that in my life I was anything but full of grace. Full of energy, full of boldness, full of talking, sometimes even full of myself but rarely full of grace. I'm not quite sure what it is about grace that makes it so hard for me to comprehend or to give out. Perhaps it is because I tend to hold tightly to the deep hurts and wounds of my past. Perhaps I have too high of expectations of people and to little expectations of God. Perhaps it is because extending grace is actually the harder thing to do.

I have been meditating a lot about grace every since picking up the book, One Thousand Gifts, by Ann Voskamp. At the beginning, Ann talks about the meaning of the word grace. The word, "eucharisteo" is seen when Jesus, while at the last supper, took the bread and gave thanks. Literally he took the bread and "eucharisteo". Ann describes the word likes this:

"The root word of eucharisteo is charis, meaning 'grace.' Jesus took the bared and saw it as grace and gave thanks. He took the bread and knew it to be a gift and gave thanks. But there is more, and I read it. Eucharisteo, thanksgiving  envelops the Greek word for grace, charis. But it also holds its derivative, the Greek word, chara, meaning 'joy.'"

Grace. Thanksgiving. Joy. That was a lot of meaning for one small word but as soon as I read it knew that it would be my word for a while. How would I live out eucharisteo - grace, thanksgiving, and joy? How would I live a life full of grace rather than a life full of disappointed expectations? This is when I wish I had the answers laid out before me but I'm still journeying. I'm still learning and seeing but one thing Ann challenged me in is to take the One Thousand Gifts challenge - to make a list the one thousand gratitudes I have. It is hard, it is difficult but it just may be necessary to begin to live this life of eucharisteo.