Ampersands and Ellipses

Most of you probably know I love words. Obviously. But many of you probably don't know that I'm very choosy about my word loving. For instance, I love words that start with P and have three or more syllables. Pertinacious. Predilection. Persnickety. Perpendicular.

I hate words that have a hard G in the middle. Nugget. Frugal. Gaggle. Frigate. 

Words that start with M-e make me feel like I'm talking through my nose: meal, menial, meme. 

Most of you will be surprised to know that, as much as I love words, and as many words as I love, my absolute favorite word is a small, everyday, utility word, often overlooked or placed in the middle of a sentence to hinge it all together. 

My favorite word is "And". 

Yes. Strange. Small. But what it carries in those three little letters is hope. A sense of something more, an expectation, a "what's next?" One of my favorite commercials is for Coke Zero, where a man is facing the firing squad and they ask him for last requests. He keeps saying "And?", and they keep giving him more and more, until he's freed and riding off into the sunset. That's what "And" is. Hope. Holding your breath. Not afraid to ask for more. My favorite symbol is the ampersand, followed closely by the ellipsis. One indicates there's more coming. The other says this isn't the end. 

But lately, while I've been counting on the "and", my life has felt more like a "but". The ellipses have changed to periods, and I've found myself wondering if there really isn't a "what's next?" We've hit dead ends and corners everywhere we've turned. Doors slammed in our faces, backs turned on us, and a sense of hopelessness and futility pervading our everyday.  2013 was not an easy year at The Box House. Hard changes, hard truths, hard realizations of what our life is and most likely will be. Upheavals- big, and at the same time, not big enough. All of my ands feel like buts. Wasted away, dried up. Is this it? Nothing more? 

There's a verse I read today in Matthew 5. Jesus is talking about His fulfilling of the law, saying, "I'm not here to demolish, but to complete." (MSG) This sent me into a little bit of a tangent. Most days I feel absolutely, utterly demolished. I wonder where the good is in this? Or even, if it's like the metaphorical tearing down and rebuilding of the temple, when are my "three days" up? I feel like I've been sitting in this tomb forever, waiting to be called forth. Waiting for my stones to be rebuilt, waiting for my truth to be completed. If He is the Caller, the Builder, the Completer- where does that leave me? Where are my ands? 

However. If there's one thing I've tried to grasp and wrap my head around in 2013, it's that my feelings don't determine my circumstances- not do they often even correctly interpret them. Although I feel trapped in this holding tank, waiting, waiting, waiting, feeling myself surrounded by walls and buts and periods, my feelings are merely temporary reactions to temporary situations, real or imagined. 

2014 is only a dawning day. Full of questions, full of promise. Full of my ampersands and ellipses, full of room to hope and hold my breath. Full of "there's more coming" and "this isn't the end". So this is what I'm doing. Holding my breath, holding out for that expectation, that big "what's next?" Holding my arms open, waiting for my And. And it's coming... It's coming.