I got a tattoo. I know, I know, many of my closest friends are probably surprised. I set out on this Race with the same expectation I always had for my life: there’s nothing worth permanently marking my body for. I started to warm up to the idea over time. It became a constant thought; if I were to get a tattoo, what would it be?
Suddenly it came to me. When I was a small child, one of my favorite books was I’ll Love You Forever, by Robert Munch. Every night when my parents tucked me in, we would repeat the phrase back and forth to each other:
“I’ll love you forever.”
“I’ll like you for always.”
“As long as I’m living,”
“My daddy you’ll be.”
Every birthday card and letter I have ever received from my parents has been signed “Love you forever.”
If there’s anything that means enough to me to place permanently on my body, this is it.
Not only does it bring back memories of my parents, but it also is a symbol of the love I have received from my teammates. As I have been struggling to trust each one, I realized that I have to simply trust that their love is not a temporary part of my life, but something that will carry through team changes and after the Race. Putting a physical reminder on my body was a way to help me trust them.
And so, I said one day, “I have to do this for myself.” It moved out of the realm of possibility and into the realm of necessity. I needed the physical reminder every day of the love I have surrounding me from all sides. A token of my trust. I went on my birthday.
I freaked out a little bit, but I made it through. Now it’s permanent and I love it.
Yet, every night since I got the tattoo, I was having dreams. The tattoo would slowly fade away or disappear altogether. Sometimes it said something ridiculous or in another language I couldn’t understand. It planted seeds of doubt in my mind. Did I do the right thing?
It wasn’t until last night I realized the truth. I didn’t believe the very thing I had permanently placed on my body. I believed my family loved me and my teammates loved me, but God was another story. All those times I preached it, I believed it wholeheartedly, for everyone else. Despite all my talk of love, I never believed I deserved it.
Now it’s different. I slept like a baby last night with no tattoo worries. I see that God loves me and that I don’t need to hold on to personal failures. A small victory in my walk with Christ.
Time to move on to my next tattoo idea…
