He responds by inviting us on a long walk, illuminating what’s really real, “Let me tell you a story, one that will take the rest of your life. Some parts will be so good it’ll be hard to believe they're true. Other parts will make you wish they weren’t. But if you will stay with me through every up and down, you’re going to love how it ends.”

This is the hard part in the meantime: he calls us to trust him, again. Every time in prayer, I feel like I’m checking that text thread with Jesus and seeing those three dots buffering … blinking … bouncing … building suspense. He’s alive, listening, interceding, receiving our dear loved ones, whispering reassurances through his Spirit, passing around love notes from those who’ve been on this path across the ages … and all the while, preparing for something big. Our inheritance is accruing compound interest, grace upon grace, still calculating …. He’s uploading his advocacy case file to the judgment database …. He’s airdropping his entire photo album of redemptive history so we can see how we fit into the family legacy. As long as we’re bound by space, this takes time. While we wait, he asks us to not unfriend him or unfollow him; not unpin him from our favorites or block his posts, for where else would we turn to find the words of eternal life; not ghost him or leave him on read, or worse, delivered but unread; not doomscroll past him for some more scintillating buzz or click the bait of some slicked-back grief-suppression snake oil salesman. So, we wait, mourning when we must. We trust, embracing the process. We obey, overcoming any obstacle. We take heart, even with a broken and depleted one, anticipating when we will get to rejoice together again.

Jon gets to rest in peace now, but you are left in pieces, restless. Jesus knew that pain. The eternal Word himself, speechless in the face of losing someone close, wept. He knows that place of emptiness, feeling forsaken and abandoned, even by the Father. But he drank that cup of suffering, not just of earthly sorrow, but of heavenly wrath, so we wouldn’t have to. We will suffer loss, but not in the final sense. We will face trouble, trials, and tribulations, but he has overcome the world, defanged the evil one, and is transforming our hard heart. This “brief” intermission may last the rest of our lives, but it will not last forever. The Lord of Life is returning. The dead shall rise, and we will experience wholeness afresh and sweet reunion.

If you’re like me, you imagine those three little dots now appended to your truncated marriage and everything (and every part of you) that went along with it: so many things left undone, untried, unsaid, un-enjoyed together. Our best relationship, so rudely interrupted. I don’t suppose many of us ever consider the ending punctuation of our life while we’re living it. Do we audaciously assume we’ll go out with an exclamation mark? Or anxiously fear we’ll end up with only question marks? Perhaps we all passively delude ourselves that our lives will end like a perfect song: rhyme complete, rhythm closed, tune resolved, and then a gentle, synchronized period at that peaceful punctuated moment when we breathe our last. But surely that’s the exception, right? So maybe I shouldn’t be surprised when our future fantasies get impaled on an em dash—interrupting in mid-sentence, ending the paragraph, re-routing the rest of the story, upending our entire lives. Our happily-ever-after gentle landing, replaced by a cry-for-help cliff hanger….

We’re always amazed at how fast children grow, and always let down when people pass away, no matter how old they are. This surprise suggests that we were expecting a run-on sentence, never having to write The End. When we’re cut off, when the blank pages that remain get ripped out, and we’re forced to sign the final papers, our trembling hand makes a solitary mark. That period may signify the end of some things and maybe eventually will provide incremental approximations of closure. But the wounds feel like they will remain open—gaping holes where once love bound two souls inextricably. Like the bindings and bars that poke out and dangle from the exposed brick when a sinkhole opens up and swallows half the building. A landslide has washed away our hilltop home, leaving the rubble to pile up at the bottom of the drop-off:...a trailing scree of dream shards.

The little dot on the paper may be a stray scratch that our pencil made when we started to write something next, but in exhaustion, drifted off to that place where the daydreams of growing older together got swept up and away by the nightmare of never even getting to go to bed together again. Our once pleasant, even if imperfect, raft floating down a gentle stream hit unexpected rapids, took on water, tumbled over the roaring waterfall that we didn’t even know was there, plummeting into a misty abyss of unknowns. I would take on whatever whitewater as long as we were together, but when the raft resurfaced, only I was on it. Now I must endure turbulent water alone. I’d rather be up a creek without a paddle than down river without my partner. Now I feel like I’m both. When “real” daily life—those practical tasks required for survival, snap us out of it, we notice our hand still holding the no-longer-as-sharp pencil, and we begrudgingly insert a scribbled period. It’s clumsy and messy, but it’s at least a place holder so we can move to the next fill-in-the-blank prompt that demands our go-through-the-motions attention. Then we are left to wonder what else is left, and fear that there’s nothing left, nothing more, or at least nothing as good, nothing else to continue on for. Everything’s missing. All have fallen short.

But God seems to like the ellipsis. All punctuation, of course, has its providential purpose. He evokes many question marks. He ordains plenty of exclamation points. He’s given us a few things we can quote him on, and he has an unlimited supply of commas to keep extending the list of blessings we receive. But there’s something special about ellipses. Heaven’s version extends into eternity, where there’s always more to discover, experience, enjoy, and share. Earth’s version of three little dots in a row is grounded, fixed, linear, and limited. We encounter them as redaction, as though our favorite part, our best part, was removed: cut to a clipboard and mistakenly deleted. But the incompleteness signaled by this subtle symbol also represents openness, mystery, intrigue, and potentially hope for what might follow.

The shadows haunt us, taunting us with rumors of futility, conspiracies of contempt, and whispered gossip of meaninglessness. But the deepest brightest reality perforates the veil of our downcast soul and shines through, where transcendent brilliance illuminates imminent radiance in the face of Jesus: his sacred purpose-filled way, his fear-slashing grace-filled truth, and his winner-take-all sacrificial life. We are not merely adding another dying dot to the downward-spiraling diagram, another never-mind node to the nowhere network. Each speck speculates, each spot tees up the next shot, each steppingstone advances a little farther along the steep path into the dense fog. When we think all hope is lost, all joy expired, all peace spoiled, Jesus tells us to get up, keep walking, this is not where your journey ends. The Father is supervening and standing by to celebrate. Our hand is cramped from exhaustion, our arm paralyzed in grief, and we can’t even read what we already wrote through our tear-blurred eyes. We think the story is over ….

Then, to our one little dot, God picks up his Fountain pen and adds two more. God reminds us that he owns the rights to this script. He has ordained that our little chapter, even with its terrifying development, is not the whole book. When a RomCom takes a tragic turn, we question whether this was all some psychologically warped horror story. We shove ourselves away from the table in disgust and dismay. But from that distance, we are able to regain perspective and see the book still sitting there; we notice how big it is, how much of the story is still left. God reminds us how he promised that these light and momentary rising and falling action sequences are all building up to a mind-blowing plot twist, a glorious climax, and the most satisfying resolution. There will be no cheap copout devices like waking up and discovering it was all just a bad dream (though I’ve admittedly wished for that). Rather, we will rejoice to realize just how real everything always was and is and will always be, and how everything from the least significant detail to the most precious covenant relationships—the ones that even if they persevered in faithfulness would have had to part by death at some point, were always contributing to everyone’s character development. All the side quests will be woven into the main flow of the narrative. It turns out it all matters after all.

The Author is still at work. He’s given us a spoiler alert: the good guys win, the guy gets the girl, and the mystery of who-done-it is solved. But he is the Master of great epics that take multiple epochs to tell and he is patient to let the many twists and turns play out along the way. Some of his character arcs are brutal. Some of our favorites get killed off. Some of the set props lose their appeal. The stage becomes dull and in other places, dangerous. Some days, the audience seems like they all showed up to watch a different show. Many days I don’t think I have any lines left to say. There are seasons where we need a break backstage to gather ourselves.  Maybe there’s a wardrobe change. There is sustaining grace in playing our many other supporting roles. One way or another, the story rages on. And so must we …