What My First Tattoo Taught Me: The Secret Code of Jesus

I was talking to a friend who is a high-powered, C-level executive in a large organization of which you have most definitely heard. She speaks all over the country, has a couple of side gigs, and is incredibly well-respected in her industry. Yesterday she said, “I don’t think people realize I’m scared almost all of the time.”

All I could do was laugh as her words resonated deep in my bones. Fear is a longtime friend of mine.

Last week, I got the first of three tattoos that I’ve wanted for about forever. To be honest, this first one was supposed to be small — just a little test to see if I could take the pain, because the second one, the one I’ve wanted the longest, would be a three hour ordeal. The more I thought about my nice little tattoo — a wooden cross — I fell in love with the idea and got excited about it in its own right, and not just as my “starter ink”.

Which was a good thing, because that “starter ink” turned out to be a 2-hour long, much bigger thing than I had planned.

I was scared. Really scared. That’s why I’m only now — at my age (old and decrepit) — getting my first tattoo that doesn’t wash off. But I’d decided I’d put this off long enough and this time, I was going to go get what I wanted.

The tattoo parlors I’ve looked into all had the same policy — you have to go in person to make your appointment and make your deposit. I drove to the parlor alone, half-hoping that they’d say, “Hey, we’ve got time now, why don’t you come on back?”

That didn’t happen.

Instead, I walked into the place, fear heavy and present, like just another thing I carry in my backpack. The parlor is a very cool looking place, very clean, well decorated with some amazing artwork on the walls but with a disconcerting number of drawings of both naked women and red devils. There was a woman behind the desk with two full sleeves and some art on her neck who sleepily made my appointment and assured me I’d be fine.

There. I had my appointment and they had my money. No turning back — now I just had to show up at the agreed upon time.

The day came and I once again had to drive to the tattoo parlor alone. I had to once again put one foot in front of the other, telling myself Just go get what you want. I walked into the shop and then had the painful, horrific wait while the artist created a stencil, took one cigarette break and then another, put the stencil on my arm, asked the other guys if it looked right, wiped it off my arm and did it again.

Finally, I was in the chair, about to explode with anxiety over the anticipated pain, while he painstakingly laid out tiny little paper cups and filled them with ink.

He carefully and with much care folded an inordinate amount of paper towels in what I could only imagine was the preparation for the twenty pints of blood I was surely about to lose.

He picked up one of his multiple tattoo guns and fiddled with it, arranging the pedal on the floor, doing something to make the tiny little machine whir and whine, and in my mind it was a chain saw and my fear level was something akin to a Texas Massacre.

Did I tell you I’m terrified of needles?

He was stoic and silent. There was no chatty banter like I’d imagined, where he’d ask me why I wanted the tattoo, and what it meant, and anything else to get my mind off the God-awful pain.

Finally, after fiddling with each one of his tiny little torture machines, he said, without looking at me, “Ready?”

By this time, I was ready to scream “HOLY CRAP YES I’M READY!” but decided it might be wise to show some discretion and so simply nodded.

Then I turned my head away, squeezed my eyes shut, and gripped the bottom of my chair with my left hand while he manhandled my right arm into position. I heard the whine of the gun, and then felt the needle digging into my arm and —

— it wasn’t so bad at all.

I opened my eyes, looked around, and realized hey, I can take this! This is no worse than a sunburn, or a cat scratch. This is no big deal. This is totally bearable. And I got my first tattoo.

In retrospect, as I was unpacking the way my fear was operating through the whole scenario, I realized that there were two fears swirling around in my head. Obviously there was the pain, but there was another fear that I’d carried and that, for the first time, I was able to name. And in naming it, I realized it is perhaps the oldest friend of all.

I was afraid I wasn’t cool enough. Hip enough. Weird enough.

I was afraid that there was some unspoken behavioral code for tattoo parlors that all people knew about except me. I was afraid that I would walk into the shop, not knowing this behavioral code, and I would make a complete and utter fool of myself.

And I realized that this is what I have been afraid of my entire life. Like my friend said, I don’t think people realize that I’m scared all the time. 

Based on the literature I’ve read, I’m pretty sure I can trace this all back to my roots as the only child growing up in an alcoholic family. Don’t get me wrong — I was loved, but we were hot mess of dysfunction. And when you’re dealing with addicted and / or co-dependent primary caregivers, you just never know what you’re going to get. I always felt like there was something I didn’t know, some key information that I was missing that — if only I’d had it — would make me feel safe.

Even worse, like most kids, I thought the world revolved around me and that people paid me much more mind than they actually did. I was sure people were always laughing at me, noticing every move I made, when in fact, the opposite was probably much more true. I don’t think I was noticed much at all.

Either way, I realize that even now, as an adult, that fear is still operating in the back of my mind, and it often dictates my behavior, keeping me from getting what I want.

And if I think about it more, I realize that it could have kept me from Jesus. After all, if any place is rife with a bunch of unspoken codes and rules, it’s the American church. Lord knows we might have a teensy little PR problem, and a tiny little issue with the way we’re perceived.

Sadly, that perception might be based in a whole lot of truth. And I don’t mean capital-T Truth, as in, The Way, The Truth, and The Life. I mean the truth that sometimes, we Christians kind of suck. We’re judgey and inhospitable to strangers and refugees, we’re annoying with our proselytizing and we think we’re always right. We are overly defensive and a lot less peaceful than we claim to be a lot of the time.

But Jesus.

It always comes back to him, and the thing is, he’s got no incomprehensible behavioral code. There is no way to mess up with Jesus because his grace is that big and wide and comfy. You can stretch out in it and not knock anything over. You don’t have to be nervous that you’ll say the wrong thing, or that he’s watching you with a critical eye, ready to catch you at your weakest moment, when you have spinach in your teeth or a booger hanging out of your nose.

He won’t scream at you to shut up, and he never, ever abandons you. There’s nothing that you can do that will make Jesus leave you. He doesn’t just disappear from your life with no explanation. His love is not cryptic, confusing, or conditional.

He wants to love, and so he does.

I talk often of little tiny altars of the heart — those things in our lives like our hurts and our angers and our judgments that we idolize, place somewhere above or outside of God’s grace, thinking that grace can’t reach there, can’t seep in through the cracks and melt that shit away.

I don’t necessarily expect my fear to simply go away because suddenly I have recognized it, as I might suddenly recognize my friend who moved away in first grade if I suddenly ran into him at the mall today.  But I do believe that God is in the process of chipping away at that particular altar. Every step I took toward that tattoo parlor, every time I muttered to myself, Just go get what you want! was a tiny little blow of God’s axe, and I never even realized what he was doing.

If Jesus does have a secret code, maybe it is this breaking down of the fears that keep us from letting him in. Maybe it’s the seeping of grace into all the little dyed scars we have — on our skin and inside, in those altar-ridden hearts.

Maybe Jesus worries about the code so we don’t have to. So we can just stretch out in his grace and get cozy.