The Semicolon

Some people have asked me about the semicolon tattoo on my wrist. The story, the purpose, the reason. Most guess that it means I’m an English major. I am not. The most far-out guess I’ve gotten, if you’re curious, is if I was in the military; not really sure why. Most people for the most part know what the tattoo means. There is a well-known reason behind the tattoo that is pretty generic but each story is unique to the person who has one. Let me explain mine.

I was on a balcony at my next door neighbor’s apartment surrounded by three women talking about my tattoo when the scholarly one gave me the clearest explanation of a semicolon’s use. I know we all struggled with semicolons in school so you could benefit from this explanation too. A semicolon separates two equally weighted independent clauses. People who have semicolon tattoos, besides the English majors, have struggled with or have known someone to struggle with suicide and/or self-harm. Usually, people who get this tattoo for this reason say it represents them choosing to continue living life instead of ending it. This parallels the sentence structure with a semicolon in it. The semicolon does not stop the sentence like a period would; instead, it continues it. I have struggled with self-harm and suicidal thoughts myself, but my semicolon has a little bit of a different meaning.

I got the tattoo before I stopped self-harming. Long before, actually. It had a different meaning at the time. It was more for the hope that I would stop and be able to share my story with others. Unfortunately, there was still a lot going on that I was a slave to and the only way I coped with it was through cutting. This is a hard subject to write on. I don’t like to think back on how my mindset was or about the people I hurt and vice versa. I wallowed in a pit of self-destruction and self-pity. I longed to feel peace but had forgotten how to obtain it. I wanted help but was too prideful to give up my ways. I wanted an easy way out and that’s where the suicidal thoughts creeped in. It was the fear of not knowing where I stood with God that kept me from killing myself. What if I was going to Hell?

Two years after I got the tattoo was when my semicolon had a real meaning. What I just explained to you in the last paragraph was my first independent cause. All throughout that time, Jesus was chasing after my heart. I could write about every single moment that He did, but we would be here for a long while. I’ll try my best to be brief. After experiencing so many more hurts, Jesus showed me that He was there with me through it all. At first, I was blind as a bat. Then, He opened my eyes by having people I respected point out the ways He cared for me and for them, too. I began to see that the people who loved Him back were full of joy and life. Sure, people who don’t believe in Jesus are too but it was different for the Christian. They had a special dependency on God and a faith so deep that they even counted suffering as joy. I wanted that. And when Shannon, my sister, told me that Jesus still wants a relationship with me even after all the stuff I did and the person I was, I was overjoyed. I believed her! I began seeing the destruction in my life that kept me down. It all had felt so good, even the cutting, but only temporarily. I started to despise sin. Life with Jesus looked so abundant! And believe me, it is.

The day I decided to be obedient to Jesus’ way of life was the day I officially stopped engaging in self-harm. Oh, I wanted to cut so badly! But I finally understood it to be a temporary fix. It was something I did to get out of hard situations. That day of obedience was the day I faced the struggle dead on. I wasn’t alone, though. God was with me. This walk of obedience and faith is my second independent clause.

Jesus is my semicolon. He separated me from my sin. The first clause: I was a slave to my sinful life. Thankfully, Jesus intervened, and I am able to live a life completely free of the weight of sin! Yes, I still mess up to this day and will until the second half of my sentence ends with that dreaded period. Except now, because I have Jesus as my semicolon, there is eternal joy and bliss with Him waiting for me after I leave this earth; and that joy is beyond anything that could be put into a sentence.

~Written September 22nd, 2020