A Work In Progress

In 2018, I got a solid, flat black cross tattooed on the inside of my forearm.

At the time, it represented something I wasn’t ready to talk about. It held a lot of things I just couldn’t fully deal with yet; trauma, pain, anger, hurt, and everything that came with them. But it also represented the one thing that carried me through all of it: my faith and my relationship with God.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, what I would call a great Christian. I don’t always get it right. I have questioned it all, gotten angry, and probably made things much harder than they needed to be, but I try.

Through everything, though God has remained.

For 4 years, the cross stood alone on my arm. During that time, I tried therapy again to try and work through my past, and hopefully begin working on my current and future self. In 2022 I decided I was ready for the next phase of the tattoo.

My idea, the whole concept, was that God makes all things new, He will make something beautiful out of what once held so much pain.

So we started surrounding the black cross with flowers. The most important flower—and intentionally the biggest and most prominent—is the sunflower. I’ve written before about the significance of sunflowers in my life, so there was never really a question about which flower needed to stand out. 

There is also a June bug and a beetle tucked into the tattoo, representing my daughter and my son. And hidden among everything is a tiny ladybug that has its own complicated story.

I got it with my mother and my sister, even though I didn’t really want it. (I cried as soon as the tattoo machine touched my skin and not because it physically hurt.) I did it for my sister because my mother asked us to. To this day, I prefer that it wasn’t there. But it belongs in the story too. Not every piece of our story is something we would have chosen for ourselves but it doesn’t change the story.

What I love most about this tattoo is that it isn’t finished.

It’s changed as I have changed. Things have been added as I’ve healed, grown, understood more, and become ready for the next piece. What started as a simple black cross representing pain, survival, and faith has slowly been given life and has beauty growing all around it.

We’re both still beautiful works in progress...

Tattoo Credit: Tony Black (all the flowers, beetle, June bug) Photo Credit: Ryinne Parrish