It‘s been 2 months now since I left China so I thought it might be time that I wrote a blog about it.
In truth, China was a month unlike any other on my trip for a few different reasons that I will get to throughout this blog, but in order to explain my month in China I need to go back one month to one afternoon when I was sitting in a chair in a tattoo parlor in Nepal. So that’s where I’ll begin.
Coming on this trip I planned on getting a tattoo in Nepal. Quite a few racers go to a certain parlor because it is both cheap and clean, which is a difficult thing to find in the world of tattoo parlors. But this particular parlor did not disappoint. It had amazing artists, was incredibly clean, and was pretty adherent to the Race budget. So I went in and got a tattoo (pictured below).
In brief, this is my meaning of the buck. When I was a young child I dearly loved the character of the Great Prince in the Disney movie Bambi. In fact, I had a stuffed animal of a buck which I named the Great Prince. I also remember my mom telling me that the Great Prince represented Je.sus looking out for Bambi (me) and keeping watch over all the other animals in the forest (everyone else on earth). The Great Prince was mysterious to me but I loved the peace he brought. Just like Je.sus – the Prince of Peace.
As an artist I have also always seen tattoos as art, and a way of painting what matters most to us on the ultimate canvas that the Lord gave us. I wanted to paint what mattered most to me in plain sight on my body so I had a buck tattooed on my right forearm.
Ok. Fast forward one month to China.
We had just finished a bus tour through Tibet, which was also my final logistics duty and I was tired. We then arrived at a janky hostel in a smaller city where the bathroom and kitchen looked as though they had not been cleaned since installation. China was the halfway mark of the trip, and due to safety purposes I decided to go the month without WiFi, social media, or contact with anyone from home, which proved to be much more difficult than I thought. I missed my family, and my friends, and I began to miss Oregon. I missed the paths in the gorge that lead to magnificant waterfalls, and I missed Dutch Bros.
On top of all that we did not have much direction as to what the Lord was calling us to do in China. We were sometimes in areas where tourists didn’t necessarily just drop in, and therefore hardly anyone spoke English and we knew no one. I began to feel unproductive and lazy as the days went by.
As a result of both of these mindsets I started to feel depressed and frustrated. It was the first time on this trip that I had wanted to leave and head home.
But then, I started realizing something. You see, I only saw a couple people in China who had tattoos (at least in the part of China I was in). They weren’t a normal phenomenon and therefore my buck got a lot of attention. As I walked down the street I began to realize that people were not staring at my face because I was a foreigner but rather at my arm because of the tattoo. I then began to think “that’s what I wanted though. I wanted people to stare obviously and blatantly at the piece of art which represented what is most important to me – Je.sus.”
It was then that the Lord told me what his plan was for me that month. Since the language barrier was so difficult and the safety level in certain situations was relatively low I felt like the Lord was calling me to pray but not just any prayer. He was calling me to specifically pray for each person that looked at my tattoo. So that’s what I did. Everywhere I walked I watched for the eyes of people to drift from my face down to the buck on my arm and then I would take anywhere from moments to minutes depending on the person to silently, or sometimes out loud speak a prayer that the Lord would become evident in their life and that a seed would soon be planted in their heart that would direct them towards Him.
And honestly, that was a large portion of what I did in China. I walked around and prayed for people as they looked at the tattoo on my arm.
It doesn’t sound like much I suppose but in doing this I realized something. I realized that praying in fact is the most significant and powerful thing we can possibly do because it is directly inviting the Lord into your everyday life. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 says “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Je.sus”.
We are called to bring the Lord into everything we do. To consistently speak with him throughout our days. Prayer doesn’t have to be formal, in fact, it can just be a simple conversation between you and the father in your head or out loud. I also learned that as soon as I started making a habit of pulling the Lord into my daily activities it brought joy and thankfulness that I did not have earlier in the month. What a gift the Holy Spirit is, because through him we know that the Lord is with us wherever we go.
In the end, I found myself leaving China feeling closer to the Lord than I ever had before and hoping that maybe one day (even though I may not see it) one of those people who looked at my tattoo might come to know the father in all his splendor, justice, Grace, love, peace and mercy as well as have the opportunity to dwell with him forever in heaven.
