Sarah's Story 
I didn’t know my roommate coming into this year. As I’m sure you can expect, I had my worries if we would get along or not. When I finally met Sarah on Getting Started Weekend, I knew we had a few things to connect on—gymnastics and volleyball. We both had been involved with gymnastics (and/or acrobatics) for a majority of our lives, and we had both been a part of volleyball in high school (with Sarah moving on to play volleyball at our university).

 

Still, I had some apprehension if we would get along…and, as she admitted to me later on, she did, too. And though we had our similar backgrounds in sports, one of the first things we actually bonded over was tattoos.

 

 

 It didn’t take me long to notice Sarah’s tattoo behind her ear, because tattoos especially seem to just catch my eye. Similarly, Sarah saw my tattoos on the first day we met, and she says seeing them indicated to her that I wasn’t as “sheltered” as she first thought (which just makes me smile because I get that response a lot—people telling me they would not pick me out as a tattoo enthusiast—but it’s fun to be a little unpredictable!)

So the day I settled into our dorm, Sarah and I swapped stories about our tattoos. Sarah, who is the youngest of three kids, says she has always been a little avant-garde and artsy, which, for her, translated into wanting tattoos.

She says her dad, who is a pastor, bought her and her sister rings with the Trinity symbol on them while he was in Dallas for a conference.

(In Christianity, the triquetra [Trinity symbol] is used as a reminder that the God of the Bible is the one true God who is made up of three distinct beings. It is a pretty mind-blowing concept that long-time Christians can’t even fully comprehend, because that is just the reality of being a finite human trying to understand an inexplicably big and amazing God; no matter how much God has revealed to people through the Bible, we just cannot comprehend Him. Still, some people, trying to comprehend the Trinity, relate it to humans being made up of body, soul and spirit, which are three separate entities but all intermixed to form the full picture of who we are. Here is a study on that concept for those who are interested: http://bible.org/seriespage/man-trinity-spirit-soul-body)

Though Sarah’s ring fit her for a time, she eventually grew out of it. When she was older and understood the meaning of the symbol, Sarah says she missed being able to wear the ring, so she decided to get it as a tattoo.

So the summer after her 18th birthday, Sarah went to a tattoo shop near her hometown with a couple friends and got her tattoo. She had the artist do it behind her right ear, and instead of getting it in traditional black ink, Sarah got hers in a deep purple 1) because of its royal connotations that apply to God and 2) because it would fade some by the time she is working and has kids.

 

As far as future tattoos, Sarah has plans for at least two more: she wants the words “I am second” in white ink on her hip and a purple cross on her ribs. The cross serves as a reminder of Jesus’ death, which bought believers’ their salvation. And “I am second” reflects the Bible’s teaching that God comes first in believers’ lives (a concept that is the basis of the “I am second” movement: http://www.iamsecond.com/). Hopefully I can have Sarah back on here when those tattoos happen!

Thanks for checking out Sarah’s story. Please feel free to tell me what you thought of it in the comments below. These next two weeks are going to be insanely busy for me as I am finishing up my final year at college, but I hope to post again soon.