Inked (short exert from the book)

I have a friend named Mike who is literally covered in tattoos. Now for most Christian, Conservative, fundamentalist types I have surrounded myself with in the past… this is bad. It’s bad because... well… honestly… where we grew up we knew that smoking and drinking and tattoos were for “bad” people who hung out at the Beer Joint. Mike however, is NOT from the fundamental, conservative area where I grew up and in the past eleven years, my Christian walk has afforded me the privilege to meet many great guys like Mike who simply love Jesus. I can only imagine that in my arrogance and judgment of my past I would probably missed a lot of friends like him because I valued people on the merits of whether their background was the kind you find advertised in any issue of Christianity Today, if we were just being honest.

It really gets me excited when Mike shares his story of God’s relentless mercy and grace in his life and he gets to talking in his Chi-CA-go accent and waiving his arms all around the air and repeating his favorite expression “I don’t care” all the time. The other day, mike and I and the guys were chatting at Clay’s Curbside Grill (a hot dog stand in North KC, but this guy Adam who is the owner, has given it quite a reputation with that name) and Mike told a story about his old man. Apparently his dad was NOT a fan of the tattoos nor would he allow Mike or his brothers to get one. He told us he and a buddy had snuck out and he wanted a tat so he got it on his chest. He told us he had a pic of his mom tattooed on his chest so that way if his dad got mad and wanted to beat him, he could simply tell his Pops “Dad… Really?? You want to beat me for having a pic of Mom tattooed to my chest?” We all got a good laugh out of his story thinking it showed quite a bit of forethought and moxey, only to really bust out laughing when he raised his shirt to reveal an evil clown type face on his chest. Mike really gets a kick out of that bit. We really get a kick out of Mike.

I’ve thought a lot about how my judgments about others became so skewed early on in my walk. It got me to thinking… you know REALLY thinking about my self centered world and what it would look like if I hung around guys who only acted and looked like me. That was a pretty depressing thought thinking I would only know guys who wanted everyone to laugh all the time and had a deep love for fried food. You see, in my thought process as a young Christian, tattoos were just unsightly but it occurred to me how Mike’s tattoos were no more a reflection of his character than the silver cross I wear around my neck. My cross was not going to get me to heaven any faster than those tattoos were plunging him into hell and to me that was a pretty big revelation. I was actually quite impressed with my self considering I recently had also been spending a lot of my spare time trying to figure out if Mr. Snuffleupagus was really a long haired brown elephant or just an amalgam Big Bird conjured up from time to time to have someone who would agree with him…

Here is the thing… Mike’s character has been being forged from the fire of life and his daily walk with God since the day he became a Christian. He loves to laugh and show the pics of the scantily clad women he has painted on his forearms and tell stories about coaching little league soccer for his daughters team and having to deal with the concerns of other parents and the odd looks on their faces as they wonder if he is a death row escapee who is in charge of teaching their children the fine art of not touching the ball with their hands.

In my own walk in recent years, I realized I’d stop judging people based on their outward appearance and my assumptions of their supposed sins. Which for me is weird because if I got really honest with myself, I can admit that I’ve been a pretty shallow person most of my life. The pendulum swing in my life can be attributed simply to me dropping the ball so much in my own life that I woke up one day and realized there was nothing exceptional about me or my behavior and who was I to judge anyone else’s life. So in thinking about all of this I was reminded of something I heard on the radio the other day that stuck with me… some guy said “Who we really are as people is not who we are when we stand triumphant on the mountaintops, but who we are under the rubble of the disasters of our lives” At first I was indignant about this… in fact I was quite snotty about it. I wanted to argue and tell this man he was wrong to speak for us. Who I think I am is a man who is triumphant and making great strides to undo a lot of bad things losing weight, stopping old vices, making good choices, gaining ground in my life.
It weighed heavy on me all that day until finally a chord was struck way down deep within me. The guy was totally right! He was, I mean who we are is NOT who we have become when things are going well… who we are and the real character of who we are is who comes out when our world collapses… MY world has collapsed several times and I gotta say… I pretty much suck. I mean really. I would love to brag and say I was the guy who was on top of the world and when it all caved in around me and that I was still standing tall and rebuilding walls and being the mighty man and everyone’s superhero but you know? When my job went South, or my kids were sick, or any one of my girlfriends and I split? That’s when my whole world caved in. It’s not pretty either… I lack dignity and character and anything anyone would call good in their life. Like I said… I suck. I say this not in a manner of low self esteem, but I believe God... in his great mercy has allowed me to see who I am deep at my core. Not because he wants me to slobber and blubber at his feet exclaiming that I am worthless either in a real sense of cruddiness or in any kind of false humility, but because he delights in me finding my strength and my purpose and my life in him and not in me.

“Our God is the God of second chances” is one of my favorite quotes… I say it often because it’s true. You see…there’s an ethereal belief and visions of grandeur about how we will live with him forever in the sky by and by etc, and those kinds of moments are great and I’m not downplaying them, but I’ve got to tell you… every day I am faced with who I am and who I really want to be. My flawed character, my tarnished life and my broken heart are a daily reality in my life, and honestly? I thank God every day for those things. You see? I would love to say I am who I am on the mountains… but who I am, is this guy… right here, today. My ministry, if you can call it that, will be to always espouse the grace and love of a God who is relentlessly kind to those who have blown it, those who have waivered in their quest, the feeble, sad, frustrated group of broken down folks like me who are continually shifting the heavy weight of their own life from one foot to the other. When you have been to the place where you’ve lost all that you esteem and value in your life, you begin to realize that God’s favor is a gift. You can’t earn it, buy it or expect it. He gives it freely to those who will come forward to receive it. When you find yourself in the possession of such a gift, you find that you will never ever look at wounded, hurting, broken people the same again… and that’s when lives are changed and altered and repaired and the place where pure ministry happens.

Last night I laid awake thinking and I thanked God for my friends like Mike, and my buddy John, and my friend Shelly, and others in this Rag Tag band of folks who have either stumbled in their lives in one way or another or have endured hardships to gain a new perspective on God’s desire for them. Not one of us are people I would call ‘religious”. We have made the decision in each of our lives to do the Jesus thing. His grace sought out each one of us for his desired purpose and plan. Not one of us can say we are pure, or better or holy than anyone else. God doesn’t stand and applaud or yell because any of us show up at church or daily quiet time. We are travelers on our way… tattooed with the decisions, the choices and infirmities we’ve endured in our lives and all of us realize that short of God’s grace and mercy, we might all just be a story in the news you would find on the 5th page back of the paper, forgotten in time and just wasted lives.
You will find on our faces, a smile, and hope in our eyes and if you aren’t careful? You might just get a hug. : )