In the spring of 2013, I lost my friend Vin, a beautiful local artist married to a woman who had been like family to me since childhood. All these years later, tears still fill up at the mention of his name and the heavy lump in my chest is always quick to surface when I think of how much we all lost when he passed.

I had the privilege of helping with the memorial events, and that week running from one task to another I found myself lost in a grief fog at a stop light. The lights moved from red to green to yellow and red again without me budging. The same CD that had been playing in my car for months had faded into background noise, but out of nowhere a phrase flung itself into my consciousness and woke me up.

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In high school I was the weird kid who drew designs on my arms with a pen.   Before long, I was the weird kid who drew on a lot of people’s arms before track meets.  Eventually the IHSA said I couldn’t do that anymore, so then I was just a weird kid.

I’ve been dreaming about what my first visible tattoo would be since I was probably ten- so I think it surprised everyone that it didn’t happen till I was thirty.  Turns out it’s a lot harder to decide on something that won’t wash off when you get tired of it.

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When you think of driving in the Midwest, you probably picture miles of boring interstate, sandwiched between flat cornfields stretching to the horizon on both sides—broken up only by the occasional exit for a small farm community, consisting of nothing but two or three churches and a Casey's gas station, which also doubles as the only pizza joint in town.

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I got my first tattoo when I was 18.

It’s a terrible tattoo.

I got my second tattoo a few months later.

It is also a terrible tattoo.

Many, many years and a few tattoos later, I got my first “visible” tattoo: a delicate strand of leaves around my left wrist, with a rising phoenix and the word “hope” on the inside.

And for ten years, that was my last tattoo.

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We bought a new book for Kaylynn this year for Easter. I had seen one I knew I wanted to grab for Kristin, and because keeping things as even as possible in our household seems to be the best approach, I obviously needed to find one for Kaylynn as well. I landed on one entitled, “Maybe God is Like That, Too” by Jennifer C. Grant.

The book begins with a boy who lives in the city having a conversation with his grandmother about God. The boy, having never “seen God”, is wondering what God is like.

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It was last September and, emotionally,  I was perhaps in the worst place I had ever been. I had experienced my first real heartbreak and was not taking it well at all. Between anger and grief, I a felt like a burden to be around, even to myself, and then I received an email invitation to a special celebration, Ganesha festival.

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I have been asked leave or been kicked out of two churches because of my sexual orientation. One of the pastors of these churches told my siblings and mother, “treat him as if he were dead.” I believed in God and asked him to be my savior, long before I ever knew I was going to have an attraction to the same sex. I have known no other way of life, so how can this be a sin? And who created the concept of degrees or levels of sin?

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I’m not sure where my all-or-nothing view of life started.

Was it growing up Lutheran? Things were pretty simple at my church, and people were basically good or bad. Mostly good, to be honest, because that’s how we saw the world. Bad guys were somewhere “over there” and not a real part of our lives.

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In life, everyone has ups and downs. For some, these can be a series of ant hills; for others, they can be great peaks and valleys. None should be discounted, as we know everyone grieves each situation differently.

A couple of years ago, my family was feeling the effects of a joyous season when my sister, who had struggled mightily with infertility, had announced she was pregnant with twin boys.  

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Sometime last year I realized my life was about to change.  This change wasn’t one I was orchestrating, managing or really playing more than a supportive role in.  I was the mother of a senior in high school and my oldest daughter was about to leave for college.  I realized things were getting serious when I watched my eighteen year old daughter look people straight in the eye and say, “ I am moving to Chicago in the fall and I am attending North Park University.” Wait…what? 

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The two constants in my life have always been my struggle with faith, and comic books. I am very new to Imago Dei, but it will probably comes as no shock to anyone who goes there on a regular basis, that I found Imago through Bryan and Laura Holmes. Like them, I often find wisdom in works of fiction, my favorite being that of a “graphic” nature. Puns aside, I have always gained a sense of morality through the lense of the astonishing. I also grew up in the Catholic Church, which comes with its own lense of penance and guilt, so naturally my favorite characters are those who struggle and lose faith.

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