New York Tattoo Company

THAT SAME JENN has become one of my best friends in the last few years. Not only does she let me vacation with her and her husband but she has also walked with me through all kinds of relationships. She and I have talked through friendship situations and work problems. She’s listened to me share my excitement about a new romance and sat with me when I poured out my fears about whether or not a new guy was right for me. And through the ebbs and flows, the ups and downs, she’s repeatedly said the same phrase to me: “Savor this.”

On my best days, when a guy I’m dating is being incredibly sweet and exactly the kind of dude I’m looking for, she’ll say, “Isn’t that great? Savor this. Don’t rush it. This is the good stuff.” And she is right. At the same time, on the days that feel confusing or a guy is being quiet and the panic starts to rise up in me, she’ll say it again, “Savor this. There’s something to be learned here. Something to be healed. You should sit in it.” And although I want to escape the pain, like a snake trying to get out of its skin, I know she’s right. Even if that pain leads to pure sadness, Jenn asks me if I’m willing to savor that too.

I’m not great at that. When a relationship ends, I give myself a day or two to cry, but then the voice in my head changes from being a comforting friend to a motivational coach. I tell myself it’s time to stop feeling sad. It’s up and to the right from here on out, Downs! Time to move on to someone or something or someplace new! Go do something fun! But Jenn doesn’t always agree with that, and I’m grateful.

I’m learning. A little while back, after a man and I decided to end things, when I normally would have made myself believe all should be well, I was still choosing to savor the sadness, to experience it and call it that. I was still very sad, but I didn’t make myself do anything about it. I got to work and for some reason two of my friends who are on staff at church, Ashley and Mike, were the only people in the office. (At the time, my office was in the creative team section of the church office space. So while I had my own room that had a door that closed, the best part was having some of my favorite people, my church’s creative team, just outside the door.) I walked over to Ashley and tears were in my eyes before I could even stop them. She grabbed my hand and we sat down, right there on the floor, right at the edge of the bank of desks where Mike sits. And then Ashley said, “I need to lie down,” so there we were, backs on the floor, side by side, her right hand holding my left hand, tears streaming out of the corners of my eyes, Mike in his desk chair right beside us.

It felt holy. I can’t explain it. But something about the childlikeness of just lying on the floor, something about being with these two friends who have walked almost a decade of life with me, something about being allowed to keep crying when my brain told me I wasn’t allowed to anymore, it just all felt holy and connected. I kept thinking, Savor this moment. It matters.

So often in our world today, no matter if your personality is just like mine or totally different, we think strength is shown when we force sadness to end. We think we have grown up, matured, and increased in health and humanness when we put a full stop to feeling sad or disappointed. Pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps is always rewarded. But it just wasn’t ever meant to be that way. We rush seasons in our personal lives, hurrying through dating for engagement, hurrying through college to get to adulthood, hurrying through the toddler years to get to kindergarten, hurrying through the chemo to get the clear diagnosis. But what is there to gain from letting the season decide its own length instead? No amount of self-control, willpower, or changing your wardrobe is going to make the summer turn to fall fast enough for some of us. Fast enough for me.

So even in August, when the sun is hotter than you want it to be, and as September approaches and “Surely we get to wear fall clothes in North America now, right?”—we need to remember we actually have no control of that. We notice the mornings that start to have a bite of coolness in the air, we love the nights when we have to grab a cardigan or a jacket on the way out the door to dinner. But we have no control over any of it. We just get to notice it, enjoy it, and savor it.

I HAVE A couple tattoos. (I’ve told you in detail about the first two in my book Looking For Lovely.) The decision to go from zero tattoos to one tattoo was massive and took years of prayers and counsel and way too many thoughts to get me there. But going from one to two or two to three, is significantly (and possibly concerningly) easier.

The first one, a simple cursive script of the word grace in my friend Molly’s handwriting is on my left wrist, and when I see it, I remember to be kind to myself. The second one, on my right arm, is in my buddy Connor’s handwriting, reminding me not to give up—persevere, it says—and I sometimes rub my thumb over it like a rosary when I need a reminder to hang in there. They are both white ink, and on my very pale shade of white-girl skin, they practically look like brands.

And ever since that day, lying on the floor crying with Ashley and Mike, I have known I wanted savor this as my next tattoo. But listen, I’ll tell you what I DID NOT want is a tattoo connected at all with any particular dude or any particular relationship ending. So I knew I needed to wait a while to make sure the phrase stuck around in my life and continued to be true for a few seasons on the calendar before I permanently marked it on my body.

I HAVE SUCH a proclivity to rush out of THIS and into THAT. I just don’t sit in the middle of things very well, even the things I love most. I love soccer but I sometimes find myself wishing for the final game of the World Cup while the first game is being played, simultaneously feeling sadness that since the tournament I’ve been anticipating has now started, that means it will end. (I’m a complicated woman, y’all.)

But as I continued to practice what it looks like to savor things, I never wavered. It felt so deep inside me, it was a part of me. So when I was planning a trip to New York City, a city I connect with on a lot of levels, at a pivotal season change for me personally, I knew it was the right time. I asked Jenn to write out the phrase in her handwriting, much like Molly and Connor had done for me with the other two tattoos. But as the day got closer, something in me shifted. I wanted to see my own handwriting telling me to “savor this.”

I was heading to New York to hang with Ginna Claire and Mary Kate. These two women who toured through Nashville as part of the cast of Wicked became two of my best friends after the show packed up and moved to another theater in another town.

I had booked a flight to the city for a few days to see them, to eat ramen, and to write. I love writing in New York; there’s just something about the buzz and the hubbub and the way the city never sleeps (or even gets quiet) that absolutely puts juice in my creative booster. Looking back, I can pick out the pieces of my work that have the stamp of being written in New York. Even if I don’t exactly remember, I can feel the cadence and the intentionality around the words.

I mentioned to the girls that I might want another tattoo, and Mary Kate wanted one as well. So we made a plan that Friday morning before Ginna Claire, who was no longer the touring Glinda but the Broadway Glinda instead, had to be at the Gershwin Theater for the matinee. Mary Kate and I made appointments at a recommended tattoo parlor, I drew out exactly how I wanted it to look and, in the end, I combined my handwriting with Jenn’s. SAVOR is mine; THIS is hers. And it feels absolutely perfect because of how we’ve walked through life together the last few years.

Then later that day, right at dinnertime, Mary Kate and I showed up for our appointments. The tattoo didn’t take very long, but it hurt VERY MUCH INDEED. Dean, the artist, was as compassionate as a tattoo artist should be, which is to say a little but not too much because I was literally getting two words in pretty small font on the center of my left forearm, not a massive eagle across my whole back.

The buzzing started and I wasn’t allowed to clench my fist because the muscle had to stay soft. So as he was needling all up and down my forearm, I was definitely in pain. And sweating. And using my other hand to grip my thigh tightly. I felt like I could barely handle it, and then I remembered exactly what he was permanently affixing to my arm—SAVOR THIS. I started thinking through what that meant in this scenario. What did it mean to savor this very pain I was experiencing? To call this fun because it’s something so different and special. To stay in it, to appreciate it, knowing it will never happen again just like this. To slow my breathing, slow my rushing heart and mind, and just be in the moment while I was getting a tattoo. So I tried. I kept saying to Mary Kate, “We are the lucky ones. This is what we get to do on a Friday night.” And I would continue to list ways we were lucky, even through gritted teeth. I would look Dean in the face, when I thought the pain was going to be so much that I would have to ask him to stop, and instead I would thank him. I would say out loud how grateful I was he was available to do this thing that was bringing me pain that I had volunteered for. I told him how thankful I was for his skill and his time and how much I loved what was happening. I did all I could to sit in the moment and realize it was unique, it was special, and it was—if I wanted it to be—a memory to be had with God.

I felt so loved right there in the New York Tattoo Company, this long skinny store off the main thoroughfare with just a couple of tattoo chairs, fluorescent lighting, and walls covered in photos of past work and sketches of possible tattoos. It’s not that I felt loved by Dean, per se, though I think we are definitely friends by now. But I felt very loved by Mary Kate, who stood by me and videoed moments of the process and told me how brave I was. I felt so loved by God, who had orchestrated so many things to align at just the right time and just the right place with just the right people to be able to get this tattoo. So many details had to fall into place for that moment to happen. But there isn’t anything about happenstance or things simply falling into place in the kingdom of God. It’s all handled. It’s all aligned. It’s all a gift. And God does that a lot, it seems. When I look for His hand in the stories that I’m living, I always seem to find Him.

But I also felt so loved by me. I was behaving with such kindness and courage. I was honoring myself and the strength that lives in me by getting the tattoo I had long wanted and sitting in the pain of it. I was doing what reminded me of the best parts of myself.

I’M WORKING on falling in love with myself. I know that may sound weird unless you love Lizzo like I do and then you KNOW that you’re your own soul mate. But for too long, I’ve decided that how I feel about me is based on how you feel about me. Or more honestly, how he feels about me, whoever the current “he” is. I know it probably sounds a bit New Age-ish to you, to work on the love I feel for myself, but I just have to. The lack of it has become somewhat toxic for me. Well, more than somewhat. Significantly toxic is a better descriptor.

I talked with Jenn recently about how I have to change how I view myself. And it’s not a problem that a marriage or a man will fix. Because I know that my insecurities while trying to find a man will not disappear upon acquiring one; they will simply shape-shift. It may look like new iterations or sound like new questions, but it will be the same old toxins. New bottle, same poison.

So moments like getting my tattoo—when I am fully present in my body, in my pain, and in kindness to myself—are proof that I’m not drinking the poison today.