(:::::Sidebar:::: I just heard Kelly Clarkson's Mr. Know It All on Leno...WOW. Love it.)
Before this, I watched an episode of MacGyver in one of his master of disguise episodes...and hours prior to that, Josh came home and put on his new camo in preparation for this year's hunting season and MY very own private fashion show. mmmmHmmm. Yum to both the hunter and the hunted.
Now if he could only sustain a British accent, have salt and pepper hair, make something stop exploding with a chocolate bar, and be a brutally honest maverick physician that specializes in infectious diseases... Hmmm. There is something terribly wrong with me, but it could be the fact that it is now almost 1am and I am still not sleeping.
So...Tangent Time.
I heard a sermon recently that I appreciated. The discussion revolved around Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary issues of faith. On tertiary issues, piercings and tattoos have a place. So the teaching is that there is no explicit scriptural evidence of support or discouragement for tats. However, in Leviticus 19, it does mention that the good Lord does not want people defiling their bodies with pagan markings. So in short, this is a grey issue but the Bible does mention tats and it isn't exactly positive. The pastor put it this way, unless the tat glorifies God, and there are few that do, don't do it. He said that even a cross tat would most likely not lead people to Jesus unless of course you were living in a pagan community. Until that moment my tats have been mostly silent...they are quiet testimonies. I guess I can't keep them quiet anymore.
There's a cross on my rib, and the boys' names underneath. There is one on my wrist that reads, "Integrity." So here's a piece of my story, and maybe it will be food for thought.
When I was 14, my maternal grandmother passed away. She fought breast cancer for years, and it later moved to her colon. She died at 64. She's the only person that ever showed me what faith looked like. I mean, I saw faith when I saw her...I could smell faith, touch faith, laugh with it, cry with it, hold it...IT was her. I know that no person can be perfect, and she would admit she was far from it, but to me, she was "walking faith". I wasn't supposed to watch her pass away from one world to the next, but I did. I was not supposed to be in the room when she died, but I was. I heard her breathe her last breath, I heard God steal her from us way too soon. I watched EMS take her out of the house through the living room where we sat. To make a long story shorter, my paternal grandmother died from esophageal cancer the following December. My maternal great grandfather died a few weeks later in January. Then my maternal grandfather died in his sleep. My maternal great grandmother died a few months later. So they all died and I was a teenager. Naturally, I hated God. My friend and pastor told me I must be the biggest believer he knew because I hated God that much. It seems you can't hate somebody you don't believe in. For a few years I lived and breathed, but I'm not sure who was around me. And then, one night... I dreamed. I was in my grandparents house and it was the day my grandma died. My family was there, but I had this feeling that someone was missing. It occurred to me, in the dream, that it was her. She was missing, but everyone was so happy. Suddenly she appeared, beautiful, elegant, and angelic. She was going from family member to family member, sitting next to them, hugging them, talking quietly to them. When it was my turn, she sat down next to me on her favorite spot on the couch, and I could smell her again. I could feel her hair, and touch her skin. She was so real that when she hugged me, it was one of her hard hugs that left my arms squished into my body and hurting. She whispered, "Keep your integrity." That was it. She smiled at me, and stood up. I woke up all too quickly, crying, but content. It was a terrified peace. She never came to me again and I've forgotten her smell. I started going back to church the next day. Maybe my grandmother knew my convictions, or knew what my battles would be. I can't help but think that she was warning me, and trying to protect me. I wish I had listened. But I haven't. So a few months ago I had that word put permanently on my wrist as a reminder of her, of what "walking faith" felt like when I thought it left my world and put me in complete darkness, of that moment when I knew I had to give my life back to God (the good parts and the bad parts), and of what I know I am not, and what I know I can be...
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