By Andrea Sanger
One morning I woke up from a dream with a word on my mind. I felt it was a word that I shouldn’t forget, so, I leaped out of bed (totally abnormal for me). I grabbed my phone, pulled up my Dictionary.com app and typed in the word. There were no exact matches, but what did come up was Eudemonia – a noun that denotes happiness and well-being. Being a fanatical word person, I wanted synonyms for the word, so I jumped into Thesaurus.com: comfort, contentment, happiness, health, profit, prosperity, protection, safety, security, success, and welfare. What a great word, right?
Considering that in the past few months my family and friends have been racked with health and financial setbacks, it made me laugh. God has frequently done this in my life – dropped a word into my dreams that I don’t know that shows me something amazing about His plan and purpose for my life and those around me. His plan for us isn’t the stress we are embracing but “eudemonia.” The remainder of the week when something came up that could have been stressful, my dream word would pop into my head and make me smile.
When one of my friends shared the immense stress that she was carrying around, I realized that although eudemonia was a good word for me to know, it was a word from God for my friend. She is on track to fully express all the synonyms and have a huge impact on the community. However, she was internally blocked by a myriad of fears (some seem valid). Eudemonia became my prayer for her and all that she touches – a short one-word prayer that packs a big punch. Since that encounter more stressors have been dumped on her plate, but there is a new level of living well and doing well in the middle of it.
As I sit here typing, I pray God’s eudemonia would cover your life. Also that you, like me, will wake up in the mornings with a smile on your face, knowing that no matter what happens with the rest of your day in Christ, you are living well and doing well.
