looking through me

I was starting to pray as I turned out of the parking lot, a weary, monotone, “God, you are g—WOW!!—amazing!”

What was going to be “you are good” was derailed by a split-second glimpse of the moon sitting low on the eastern horizon. Big, yellowish, almost whole.

Almost whole? As I dismissed my tired mind’s loss of language—the moon is almost full, not whole—I realized ‘almost whole’ was more telling.

Almost whole. That’s how I feel so much of the time. Almost, but not quite, whole. But like the moon I am always whole, though sometimes part of me is hidden by the shadows of the world. And like the moon there is a pattern of waxing and waning, of wholeness and hidden-ness. More or less of me reflects the light of the Son.

It may not be as calendarized as the phases of the moon, but my seasons of nearness and farness—illuminated and veiled—follow a relatively predictable trajectory. And while I’m slowly staying longer in the light, I slip so easily into the shadows, into the almost whole . . . or scarcely a sliver.

Almost whole. I’m tired of being almost whole. The shifting luminosity of the moon is beautiful; the shadow lines across my soul are not. I want to live wholly, to dwell in the light—to be holy. I long for the day when ‘almost’ is past and ‘whole’ . . . says it all.