“Fresh tatts, Miss!! Fresh tatts, Miss!!”
This is something I have been hearing over and over for the past three days while teaching and ministering at a school in Belmopan. I hear it across the courts, through classroom windows, from balconies and down staircases. Students have stopped me in my tracks to ask if they can look at my tattoos, turn my arm to see them all, even take pictures.
For those of you who don’t know, I have a 3/4 sleeve on my left arm, 2 tattoos on my right, as well as a few on my legs. Therefore when I walk into a room, tattoos are probably one of the first things you’ll see. One of my fellow teammates here in Belize has a pretty big tattoo on her upper arm, and after a class we taught this week, the kids were asking us questions and one asked how much her tattoo cost. She thought about the math in her head and said about $750. The class then looked over at me and it immediately hit me that I couldn’t answer that question without tearing up. In that moment I did the math and realized that I have ~$3,500 worth of artwork. That’s about $7,000 here in Belize, enough to buy a really good car, feed a family for months, and even make a grown man cry. It brought about a mindset I had never been in before. Something that I had perceived as an expression of art, people here simply see as money. That night I prayed and gave my feelings of anxiousness and insecurity over to God, and He did what He does best; He opened a door.
Now does this mean I’m done getting tattoos forever? I’d have to say no (sorry mom and dad). Am I ashamed to show them in a place like this? Absolutely not. God has completely shifted my perspective on my tattoos and not just what they mean to me but what they mean to others as well. As kids continue to ask how much my tattoos cost me, I simply answer them with the truth. “It’s not about how much it cost me, but how much it means to me.” These kids jaws hit the floor when I tell them one of my tattoos is a symbol of strength, being proud of my identity and who I am, and actually covers up scars from when I was younger and struggled with my own mental health. I share with them how my relationship with the Lord went from a braided rope, thick as my forearm, to thinner than a piece of thread. This is when I struggled with my own mental health, and turned to things I thought would make me feel full inside. What I didn’t realize at the time was the reason I felt that way was because my relationship with Jesus had all but completely disappeared. But I still clung to my faith by that tiny little thread, and eventually that ghost of a relationship is what brought me out of the darkness I was in. Little by little I became healthier, my identity in Him started to form, I beginning to love who I am in Him, and that little thread became a rope that has grown thicker and thicker every day.
My tattoos are part of who I am. They tell a story of what I’ve been through, where I’m going, where I want to be, and the Almighty God who will be there in the end. I now welcome the many questions I get about my ink because it gives me an opportunity to share of my relationship with our wonderful Creator. It never occurred to me that lines of ink on my skin would be part of my testimony, but hey, our God works in mysterious ways.
