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Commemorate the Clarity

The time is ripe for trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming.

—Frederick Buechner

Steve and I have spent almost a third of our marriage living in the Middle East because of his job in the Navy. Twelve years ago, we were newly married and living in Bahrain. I was doing a couple of odd jobs on base, but basically I was not working. Steve, on the other hand, was working nonstop. So that meant I had time. Free, discretionary time. Like I’ve never had before or since.

What happened, in that spaciousness, is that I picked up a pen and I began writing. I wrote what felt like a world’s worth of words that had been bottled up inside me and came tumbling out. I was lost in my own world, in all the best ways, and I awakened to an internal world that had been dormant. During that year away, words and stories broke free, spilled out of me.

I have always written. Always. Since I was a very young child. And my adult self—my newlywed, twentysomething, totally unscheduled self— returned to writing. Returned to the soul voice.

When we are quiet, and give ourselves space, isn’t it interesting what emerges? Often, I’ve found, we return to something familiar more than we arrive at something new. But we are returning to the familiar in a new time and a new space and in a new body, perhaps, and that gives the familiarity new significance. But it was there all along. Resting in our intuitive self. A divine expansion.

Maybe our soul voice was protecting this “deeper yes” for us, until we could return. Until we had the time or the space or the courage to return. In that way, we owe so much to her because she guards what we are unable to access until we are able.

So there I was, in the Middle East, with so few expectations of me and even fewer interruptions, and I returned to something I didn’t even know I had left. Sometimes the most foreign places can be where we find our most familiar self. Crazy, right?

We had just received orders to return to San Diego, and I sat down on the floor of Flat 41 and asked God what I should do when we got back. I didn’t have a job waiting for me, and besides, I had some awakenings that I didn’t want to ignore, that—in fact—I wanted to honor. But I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what it was supposed to look like going forward. I knew I couldn’t stay sequestered on the other side of the world forever, and yet I had no idea how to integrate my soul stirrings with the future that was waiting for me.

If you’ve ever been through any kind of reentry, which I’m pretty sure we all have in some form, you understand what it’s like to have been through something significant—something that is now lodged in your soul—and to try to walk back into a world where you look pretty much the same on the outside but are completely unrecognizable on the inside.

This is a staggering chasm to navigate.

I wanted the awakening to accompany me back. And, of course, it did. But it isn’t the same, is it? Not when you’re back in the noise. I had an inkling of this, and so I asked God to show me how to honor what had happened to me there in the Middle East because I couldn’t see how to leave it behind, but I couldn’t see how I was supposed to take it with me either.

I knew, academically, God could help me out in this situation, though he was also someone I perceived to be frustratingly cryptic. I was “going through the motions” as they say, knowing I should invite God into this situation, but not really expecting much of a clear sign.

On the floor, with a candle lit, I asked for a bit of direction. And what happened was the clearest encounter with God I had ever experienced. It was so real and so personal that if I ever doubt the existence of God or his love for me, I only have to think of that experience to be re-convinced.

In a moment, God revealed to me the next step of a new future.

He literally opened a door that I could have never, in a million years, opened for myself. He invited me to walk through it, and I did. Absolutely nothing changed overnight. If anything, it has been the slowest of unfoldings. But, there in the Middle East, he gave me a chance. That one chance changed the trajectory of these last eleven years.

When something this significant happens, I am a firm believer in never forgetting. To that end, I decided to commemorate the entire journey with a tattoo. So I chose a tattoo shop, which was painted a darling shade of turquoise and had a huge bison head on the wall, which is just the kind of juxtaposition I go for.

On the day I was to get the tattoo, my tattoo artist with the solid black tattooed arms emerged from behind the curtain with a tracing paper copy of the tattoo I had emailed her a few weeks before. She wanted to go over the drawing and touch it up so it would be tattoo-ready. There was just one problem.

The image I sent her was no larger than four inches and the image she was carrying was blown up to what might as well have been a poster.

She laid the tracing paper on my inner forearm and asked me what I thought. I felt so panicked internally. I told her it wasn’t going to work. The image spanned from my wrist to my elbow when I had intended to get the tattoo just on my wrist, more or less.

This was waaaaaay too big.

My tattoo artist looked at me and said, with a sort of mustered kindness, “Well, no matter what size it is, people are going to be able to see it.”

Yeah, got it. I was trying to get a tattoo and also hide it at the same time.

I had waited five months to get in to see her and I knew my mental health could not handle leaving and reevaluating this decision and then waiting another five months to get back in with her. I knew I wanted that image and I knew the color I wanted it too. I had the perfect aqua polish on my toes—Moon River by Lechat—that I needed her to match exactly. So the whole scene was set, except that the sample was practically crawling up my entire arm.

She said she could reduce it slightly but the detail of the henna design required she not reduce the image too small or the tattoo needle wouldn’t be able to create the detail. I asked her to reduce the image as much as she could. She came back with something I had not intended to get—something so much larger than I had envisioned, yet somewhat smaller than her initial attempt—and I went for it.

Nothing about getting the tattoo hurt physically. I think I was in such a state of borderline panic about it that I was numb to the pain. My memory is only of the anxiety I felt around getting it done.

Steve and Elaine were there, offering me sparkling water and trying to make me laugh. They tried to distract me from my own nerves and they both adamantly cosigned on the new size. Steve had even said before we went that I needed to get it 25 percent bigger than I wanted. Just to be a bit more audacious.

Ugghhh. That man.

The tattoo commemorates this journey: God’s whisper in my ear all those years ago—in our flat overlooking the Persian Gulf—that sent my heart pounding and my fingers flying on the keyboard and started me down a path that I am still very much in awe of today.

The tattoo commemorates a Come Apart season for me and the tenderness and struggle and overwhelmed-ness that birthed me fighting for myself in new ways. And this tattoo commemorates me, showing up with my big voice, even though I get scared. Even though.

The biggest obstacle for me with this tattoo was not the fear of the pain. It definitely wasn’t “comfortable,” but I have been through much worse pain, for sure. Essentially, everything related to childbirth.

My biggest obstacle to getting this tattoo was what people would think.

We all have a Soul Bully that is constantly telling us how we should be doing things. This voice never takes into consideration what’s actually happening in our lives, the reality of our particular circumstances. It stands far off, making blanket judgments about what it means to be “good” and what it means to be “bad.” This is every bit as unhelpful as it sounds.

What’s so insane about the Soul Bully is that, as Beth-with-Dreads says, “There’s no grace in his system.” And she’s right.

I bow to the bully because his voice is loudest, yelling at me about what it takes to be accepted by and pleasing to all the right people. But it just doesn’t work. The bully drowns out essential aspects of my soul, my story.

I am asking God to help me heal from this disease of needing to know that everyone approves of everything I’m doing and saying. Of not wanting to disappoint anyone. Of not wanting to displease in any way. So, maybe as much as anything, this tattoo commemorates my brave step toward letting go of what others may or may not be thinking and welcoming my own desires. This is actually deep, incisive work for me. Goes to the core. The struggle between wanting to own my voice and yet not wanting to make any waves with it. This is the work I will continue to do, and I hope that every time I look down at my arm, I will be inspired anew to be brazen.

So many of us are dying to connect with that soul voice inside us, struggling to set him or her free, desperate to celebrate—shamelessly—our unique expressions of self. We are longing for a touch from God’s transcendent hand that shifts everything, absolutely everything. And we need someone to give us the permission to be true to the work of God in our lives, letting go of how others believe we might need to be doing it.

Of course I don’t think you need to get a tattoo to be your true self or to celebrate God’s work in your life. But, for me, this was a huge step in owning my own story, my own voice, and my own creativity.

The tattoo is designed to look like henna, inspired by the Middle East. I chose turquoise-y aqua (a perfect blend of green and blue) because it makes me blissful, a signature color. And I chose to put it on my right arm because that is my writing hand.

Here’s what is very unexpected: Every time I look at it, I think, WOW, IT’S SOOOOO BIG. And then I think, WOW, IT’S SO BEAUTIFUL. I’m a little bit afraid of it, and I love it, which is maybe the intersection where more of life needs to be lived.

I think we’ve all had it with being muted, even if—especially if—we’ve been the one muting ourselves.

On those occasions when we begin to find our soul voice, begin to offer it out into the world, we must commemorate our clarity and our courage. We must memorialize the transformative work of God in our lives. We can do that any ol’ way that feels meaningful to us personally—stacking our very own stones of remembrance.1 In a journal. Up our arm. With a paintbrush. Over coffee. On a prayer. In a message in a bottle.

So that we never forget what God has done.

Reflection & Expression

If you were to get a tattoo, what would you get? See this exercise as a way to identify something that is meaningful, symbolic, and significant to you.

For Your Brazen Board

Add an image that represents your “tattoo.”