Have You Glimpsed Your Soul?
An unexpected reflection as I passed a store window or mirror used to clue me into some form of self-care that needed tightening up. Now a notification that I’ve been tagged in a friend’s online photo makes me throw out an old favorite sweatshirt or lean closer to the magnifying mirror with my tweezers. A non-curated view of myself encourages better self-care.
The same thing can drive changes in my soul.
Soul mirrors are harder to come by than physical reflections. Although the messages they hold are less obvious, they’re a precious treasure. After the initial uncomfortable flinch, if we learn to stay in the moment, the truth will emerge. When it does, we can become something new. Writing for the Glorious Table has been this type of soul mirror for me.
I sent my first submission to our editor, Harmony, on July 31, 2015. It came back with much-needed red ink and kind but firm instruction. “Also,” she wrote, “you need to work on eliminating ellipses. I suggest looking at the CMS section on ellipses and thinking about when it’s appropriate to use them . . . You had eight ellipses in 800 words—that’s a lot.”
Alone in front of my computer screen, I felt myself blush. I was embarrassed to need a Google search to define ellipsis ( . . . ), but I was also excited to see a path to grow. I thought Harmony was holding up a mirror for my writing, but it turned out to also be a mirror for my soul.
The Chicago Manual of Style taught me that an ellipsis—a form of punctuation composed of three dots—is used in two main ways. The CMS says ellipses can indicate “the omission of a word, phrase, line, paragraph, or more from a quoted passage. Such omissions are made of material that is considered irrelevant to the discussion at hand.” The second time an a ellipsis is useful is when an author is trying “to suggest faltering or fragmented speech accompanied by confusion or insecurity.”
In this piece, I had no incomplete quotes requiring ellipses. Neither was there any dialogue where I was trying to show faltering or fragmented speech. Yet as my eyes traveled over the ellipses dotting my writing, I realized I had dropped them at the end of sentences to soften uncertain opinions. To put a period after a sentence sharing an opinion would have meant it was complete in a way my thoughts hadn’t been. I’d wanted to float a partially formed thought out into the world and stand behind an ellipsis, waiting to see how other people would receive it, hoping to earn confidence through their approval. I realized my lazy writing came from lazy thinking.
The overused ellipses in my writing made something else painfully clear—the thoughts inside my head were incomplete, confused, and insecure. They showed up this way in my speech as well. The mirror of my first TGT editing highlighted a condition of my soul of which I had been completely unaware. If I had a strong opinion but didn’t want to offend someone, I talked in ellipses. If I wasn’t sure exactly what I thought, I wandered around the conversation, trying to find confidence in incomplete thoughts. When a dilemma required focused thinking, I’d flit around its edges and table it before coming to a conclusion. My mind was full of ellipses. Seeing those red-ink corrections had led me to a soul diagnosis.
The mirror forces a choice. That first glance shows us something we never really wanted to know about ourselves, and it can be the only look we take. We can choose to be like the fool James talked about, who “looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like” (James 1:24 (ESV), or we can take a deep breath, flip the mirror over to the higher magnification, and decide to grow.
As I’ve worked to replace ellipses with periods in my writing, I’ve also worked to add periods in my life. The CMS says, “A period marks the end of a declarative or an imperative sentence.” It required an active uptick in my intellectual fortitude and emotional confidence to make a statement or give a command.
Writing without having developed fully formed ideas by the time I’m finished is folly and mere self-promotion. Living without developing fully formed thoughts is a shadow of what we can be. It’s like the anti-drug public service announcement popular in the eighties that represented a brain on drugs with a fried egg—This is your brain. This is your brain filled with ellipses. Get the picture?
I looked in the mirror, I got the picture, and I think differently today. I’ve learned how to wrestle with ideas to find my own conclusions. I’ve discovered that even if you disagree with it, my complete thought is of more use to you than my incomplete thought. I’ve learned to finish a sentence with a period and then stand beside it in confidence.
Sometimes our reflection shows up in unexpected places and at inconvenient times. We’re surprised when we see pieces of what we expected wrapped in bits that feel completely alien. These moments are a gift. As we’re given short glimpses into our blind spots, they offer opportunities to be thoughtful in our forward motion. We can learn to love them and grow.
Keep your eyes peeled for truthful glimpses of your soul that are normally hidden to you, even when they come in red ink. When you see them, lean in, be curious, and be willing to hear what they might be telling you. Growth can happen only in the raw light of truth. The first momentary flinch will soften into a new and improved you that feels great!
lives a life that is all about her people. She’s convinced that being Mrs. to one and Mommy to eight will be her most significant way to serve Jesus. She wants to use her life to cheer on and coach the women around her. She is on staff with Project Hopeful working to give a hand up to moms in poverty in Ethiopia. You can find her at loriflorida.com.
Photograph © Ashim D’Silva, used with permission
