Chapter one of Awe: The Re-Imagined Tattoo

 I was about sixteen when darkness began to feel strangely familiar to me.

I was struggling in ways I didn’t know how to name. I was suicidal. I cut myself. I drank. And before meth addiction would eventually become part of my story, I found myself fascinated by spiritual things I did not understand.

At the time, I called it Wicca. Looking back through the lens of my Christian faith, I understand that season very differently. I was reaching into spiritual darkness while having no idea just how desperately my soul was searching for something transcendent.

I practiced calling the corners. I focused on the elements. I experimented with spells and different forms of divination. I was fascinated by the idea that there might be something beyond what I could see—another realm, another reality, something spiritual just beyond the veil of the physical world.

The irony is that I was right about that part.

There was more.

I was simply looking for it in the wrong place.

Then one night, I had a dream.

In the dream, I saw a specific symbol—a symbol I believed represented the spiritual world I had become involved in. It was so vivid and so compelling that when I woke up the next morning, I drove to a tattoo shop and had the symbol permanently inked onto my body.

I thought I understood what I was doing.

I thought I knew what the symbol meant.

But sometime later, I was at my parents’ house and showed my mom my newest tattoo. She looked at it and then disappeared into my old bedroom.

When she returned, she was carrying a Bible.

It was the Bible my grandmother had given me when I was about seven years old.

And there, printed on its spine, was my tattoo.

The symbol I had dreamed about—the symbol I had permanently placed on my body believing it represented my commitment to darkness—was staring back at me from the spine of a Bible I had owned since childhood.

It was a symbol of the Holy Trinity.

Father.

Son.

Holy Spirit.

Even now, there is something about that moment that leaves me in awe.

Long before I understood grace, grace was there.

Long before I was searching for God, I believe God was searching for me.

Long before I knew enough theology to call it prevenient grace, I was experiencing the mystery of it: the grace of God that goes before us. The God who moves toward us before we ever think to move toward Him.

I had gone searching for mystery in darkness, and somehow, mysteriously, God met me there and pointed me back toward Himself.

That tattoo is still on my body.

It is small. It is faded. And, aesthetically speaking, it is terrible.

I have almost had it redone half a dozen times.

But I can never quite bring myself to change it.

Because that imperfect little mark has become sacred to me—not because there is anything magical about the ink itself, but because of what it reminds me of.

It reminds me that there was a time when I thought I was marking myself for darkness while God was already writing a different story.

It reminds me that I did not have to understand Him for Him to love me.

I did not have to recognize Him for Him to be near.

I did not have to clean myself up, find the right theology, say the right prayer, or somehow stumble my way back into the light before He would come looking for me.

Romans 5:8 says that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

While we were still.

There is mystery in those words.

God did not wait for me on the other side of my darkness.

He entered it.

And when I think about that sixteen-year-old girl now—the one searching for something spiritual, something powerful, something beyond herself—I sometimes wish I could sit beside her and tell her:

You are right. There is more.

There is a spiritual reality greater than what your eyes can see.

There is mystery.

There is wonder.

There is a God who cannot be contained by the boundaries of your understanding.

But you do not have to summon Him.

You do not have to manipulate the spiritual world to find Him.

You do not have to know the right words.

He is already near.

And maybe that is one of the greatest mysteries of grace: sometimes we spend our lives believing we are searching for God, only to look back and realize that God had been pursuing us all along.

Even in the wilderness.

Even in addiction.

Even in rebellion.

Even when darkness seemed to surround me on every side, there was a God who had already stepped into darkness Himself.

He hung on a cross beneath a darkened sky.

He entered suffering.

He entered death.

And He did it for sinners who had not yet learned to look for Him.

For me.

And for you.

That little tattoo still reminds me of something I couldn't understand at sixteen:

I thought I had chosen a symbol.

But every time I look at it now, I remember the God who had already chosen to come looking for me.

Awe and Wonder: the book

 This  most recent book is one that I began on over a decade ago when I began to notice things happening around me that had no real explanation, or atleast not in the human realm. Once it happened once, I began to notice it more and more. Soon, I was writing these chapters as blog entries in what I hoped would publish someday. These are the stories. 

One thing that I believe is that so often, we try to put God in a box. I know that I grew up hearing the stories about how God parted the red sea for Moses, or made walls fall around Jericho; but many times, I admit that the "Big G God" operated in such a place of awe and wonder that when given stories about the not-so ordinary everyday occurrences that might happen on the playground or even at an intersection of a light, God's brilliance could be seen in the daily instances of our lives. 

As I share these stories, my hope is that you will begin to notice how God is a great communicator, and not just when he parts the seas or makes bushes burn; but also when he allows us to see him in the ordinary days of our lives. I pray that this book takes God out of that box and places him in the grand cosmos of his creation where the depth of his existence can't be contained. 

1 Corinthians 4:24

A person should think of us in this way; as servants of Christ and managers of the mysteries of God. In this regard, it is required that managers be found faithful. 

Chapter 10: The Man with the Puppy

 He was one of those people you don't forget once you meet him.

I heard his voice before I really noticed anything else.

It was rough and gravelly, the kind of voice that sounded like life had worn against it for years.

But underneath the gruffness was something gentle.

He spoke carefully.

Kindly.

And most days, he carried a tiny puppy tucked inside his coat.

You wouldn't always see her at first.

Every now and then, a little nose would poke out between the folds of his jacket before

disappearing again into the warmth of his chest.

He protected that little dog like she was all he had left in the world.

And maybe she was.

His wife had died less than three months before I met him.

He talked about her often.

It didn't take long to realize how much of his life had disappeared when she did.

Some people lose a spouse and lose the person they love.

Others lose the person who helped hold their whole world together.

He seemed to be grieving both.

When we first met, he was living out of an old truck.

It wasn't much, but it gave him somewhere to sleep. Somewhere to keep the few things he had.

Somewhere that little puppy could curl up beside him at night.

Then the truck broke down.

And when it did, he walked away from it.

No tow truck.

No repairs.

No backup plan.

He simply gathered what he could carry and kept going.

That's how quickly the little stability he had disappeared.

Then one afternoon, I got a call about a blind woman who had been abandoned outside of town.

By the time we finally got her to the shelter, she was terrified.

She couldn't see her surroundings.

She didn't know the building.

She didn't know where anything was.

She was completely dependent on other people to help her navigate a place she'd never been.

And then something happened that I haven't forgotten.

The man with the puppy began taking care of her.

The man who barely had anything himself.

The man whose wife had just died.

The man whose truck had broken down.

The man who didn't have a home.

He noticed her.

He would let her hook her arm through his and slowly guide her through the building.

“There's a step here.”

“Doorway.”

“Watch your foot.”

At mealtime, he'd fix her plate before he fixed his own.

Then he'd carefully put it in front of her so she wouldn't have to reach around trying to find it.

Nobody assigned him that job.

Nobody asked him to do it.

He just did.

I remember watching him and thinking about how badly we misunderstand people.

Someone could have walked into that shelter, looked at him, and immediately decided what they

were seeing.

A homeless man.

A grieving man.

A man with nowhere to go.

A man who needed help.

And all of those things would have been true.

But they wouldn't have been the whole truth.

Because I was watching a gentleman.

I was watching someone whose own life was falling apart make sure another person didn't have

to be afraid.

He needed help.

And he was helping.

Both things were true at the same time.

Eventually, he stopped coming around as much.

That happens in this work.

People disappear.

Sometimes they find another place to go.

Sometimes they enter a program.

Sometimes they relapse.

Sometimes they move.

And sometimes you simply don't know.

You learn to live with unfinished stories.

For a while, his was one of them.

Then one day, I heard a familiar voice.

That gravelly voice.

I turned the corner expecting to see the man I remembered.

But the person standing there looked different.

Healthier.

Steadier.

There was life in him again.

He had entered a program and was close to graduating.

And that wasn't all.

They had offered him a job.

They had also offered him a place to stay onsite afterward.

He had somewhere to go.

Something to do.

A future.

I can still remember the look on his face when he told me.

Hope looks different when you've seen someone without it.

He hugged me that day.

And I mean hugged me.

We both cried.

He talked about everything he had survived.

Everything he had lost.

Everything God had carried him through.

And over and over he kept saying,

“God sent me to the Ministry Center.”

“You guys saved my life.”

I understood what he meant.

But I've thought about those words many times since.

Because I'm not sure the helping went only one direction.

He changed us too.

Takeaway

One of the easiest mistakes to make in ministry is assuming we know who the helper is.

We think it's us.

We're the ones with the food.

The resources.

The office.

The phone numbers.

The connections.

The programs.

So naturally, we must be the helpers.

And the person walking through the door must be the one who needs helping.

Then somebody like the man with the puppy comes along and messes up all those categories.

Because yes, he needed help.

He was grieving.

Homeless.

His transportation was gone.

His life had come apart.

But then a blind woman arrived who was frightened and vulnerable, and he saw her.

Before himself.

He guided her through the building.

He fixed her food.

He helped her navigate unfamiliar spaces.

He became safety for someone else while he was still looking for safety himself.

I'll never forget that.

Because it taught me something I desperately needed to learn:

Need does not erase what a person has to give.

We sometimes look at people in crisis and see only what is missing.

No home.

No job.

No transportation.

No money.

No stability.

But human beings are not lists of deficits.

A person can need help and still be helpful.

A person can be grieving and still comfort someone else.

A person can be homeless and still be a gentleman.

A person can have almost nothing and still be generous with what remains.

Sometimes what remains is kindness.

Sometimes patience.

Sometimes strength.

Sometimes it's simply an arm for a frightened woman to hold onto while she walks down a

hallway she cannot see.

That matters.

I've learned that ministry gets unhealthy when we always place ourselves above the people

we're serving.

When we're always the giver and they're always the receiver.

That's not relationship.

And it's certainly not the way I've experienced this work.

The people who have walked through our doors have taught me.

Prayed for me.

Made me laugh.

Frustrated me.

Changed my mind.

Challenged my faith.

Shown me generosity.

And sometimes they've demonstrated the love of Jesus better than I did.

The man with the puppy did that.

He didn't have to preach a sermon.

He fixed a woman's plate.

He gave her his arm.

He told her where the steps were.

Sometimes that's what love looks like.

Then, sometime later, I got to see another side of his story.

He came back.

Healthy.

Working toward graduation from a program.

Offered a job.

Offered a place to live.

Hopeful.

I love that part of the story.

But I don't want his eventual success to become the thing that proves he was valuable all along.

He didn't become worthy when he got healthy.

He didn't become worthy when somebody offered him a job.

He didn't become worthy when housing became possible.

He was worthy when he was living in the truck.

He was worthy when the truck broke down.

He was worthy when everything he owned could be carried with him.

His restoration didn't create his dignity.

It simply gave the rest of us another opportunity to see what had been there all along.

I think that's one reason God has used this work to change me so much.

I entered ministry thinking I would spend my life helping people.

I didn't understand how many of those people would help shape me.

The line between “us” and “them” gets awfully thin when you actually know people's names and

stories.

Eventually, you realize there really isn't an us and a them.

There are just people.

People who sometimes need to be carried.

People who sometimes do the carrying.

And most of us, if we live long enough, will be both.

I'll always remember that gravelly voice.

I'll remember the little nose sticking out of his coat.

I'll remember him walking beside a blind woman with her arm wrapped through his.

And I'll remember what he told me when he came back:

“You guys saved my life.”

Maybe.

But that's only half the story.

He gave something back long before he had anything to give.