Last month, to celebrate my birthday, my husband and I went to Austin to hang out for a few days. We didn’t really do anything of note, except eat really good food and drive around looking at how much the city had changed over the years.

All of the sudden he said, “We should go get tattoos.”

And I responded without a second thought, “Don’t tease me with a good time!”

I’ve already gotten all the tattoos I’ve ever dreamed of getting, and I don’t want to be fully covered (I mean, I only have 7), so I hadn’t planned on getting any more, but I am, obviously, easily swayed by the power of suggestion. I started brainstorming what I could get and where. I thought of going simple and getting a small cross in the space on my hand between my thumb and index finger, but let’s be honest, age and repetitive weight gains/losses have left my skin a little stretched and wrinkly. Plus the artist said tattoos in that spot don’t hold up well over time. I decided to move it to the front of my wrist, but I wanted it to have a bit more of a punch.

My verse for this year is Romans 8:18:

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 18 Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.”

For the first part of this year I was focused on the “suffering” part of this verse before my husband sat me down and helped me see things differently. I’ve been focusing more on the “glory is coming” part of the verse lately, and so I toyed with the idea of including that phrase with the cross, but that felt like too much. I let the idea roll around in my brain, and then the solution came to me, and I was absolutely sold:

See, the ellipsis is my favorite punctuation mark. Is it weird to have a favorite punctuation mark? Probably for anyone who doesn’t love writing.  In this scenario the ellipsis infers that there is something else coming. . . There is an anticipation felt when an ellipsis is seen. It draws your attention to what’s next.

What is coming after the cross? What’s next?

. . .GLORY.

Glory. Is. Coming.

We live in anticipation of God’s glory coming, every single day, and we wait for the day when Jesus returns in the ultimate display of His glory. This little ellipsis reminds me that the cross wasn’t the end. Jesus suffered temporarily, and everything we suffer on this earth is temporary. GLORY IS COMING! If we focus on that, then we can make it through whatever comes our way.

I have this stamped eternally on my body where I will see it all of the time because that is how often I am prone to forget this truth and get my eyes stuck on my temporary suffering. Every time I reach forward, or start typing, or do anything that puts my hand in front of my face, there is my constant reminder that God’s glory is coming, and we are to live in expectation and anticipation of that glory.

The ellipsis is where we live.

Show us your glory, Lord.