Tattoo

This tattoo means a lot to me.  After all, it should being as it will be on my body for the rest of my life.  Luckily for me, I don’t plan on my foot skin sagging by the time I am sixty.  People are always criticized for tattoos.  Some I would agree are pretty stupid like getting your boyfriends name on your hip or a butterfly on your shoulder that serves no significance and does not come with a story.  To me, tattoos can be quite beautiful.  For example, my friends Holley and Heather Rose have a beautifully done tattoo on their foot of their deceased fathers signature.  I love being around them whenever someone asks about it because I can see their faces light up as the memories of this beloved man plays in their heads.  It allows them to honor him and share the good times they had with him, allowing these memories to stay fresh in their mind.  They also have a rose symbol above their ankles that reminds them of the importance of family.  These two are just wonderful and I admire them so much, more than they could ever imagine.  They have faced things no one should ever have to deal with at their age and still manage to not only power through the trials and tribulations, but they do so with a smile on their face and make the people around them laugh and have a good time.  To me, it is the story and meaning of the tattoo itself that makes it so wonderful and so unique.  It’s a permanent reminder of something that made such an impact on ones life that the individual felt it deserved to be on their skin forever. 

             I have been drawing my idea on my foot for quite some time now.  So much so that people actually thought it was already tattooed on me.  Starting my freshman year of college did not excite me.  In fact I was tempted to fail my senior year of high school so that I could stay in Gainesville for another year, not seriously it was just a dramatic threat to myself.  Its not that I didn’t feel mature enough to leave my family and friends, or that I was insecure or anything but I was honestly just scared.  My family, for those of you who don’t know, is really tight-knit.  I love my mom, I love my dad, and I adore my siblings.  Everywhere we go and everything we do together makes me so happy.  My parents are and always have been supportive of everything I do.  They came to years and years of lacrosse, soccer, basketball, and softball games.  Dance recitals, band concerts, award ceremonies, and speeches I’ve given.  My siblings always put a smile on my face and we honestly have such a good time when we are together. It breaks my heart when I hear stories about broken homes because I could not imagine not having such a strong support system behind me.  We are a team and I don’t know what I would do with out every single one of them.  In leaving for school, I didn’t want to make new friends because I loved the ones I already had, and I didn’t want to live with someone I didn’t know, but most of all I didn’t want to leave my church family.  The church I grew up in in Gainesville played a huge part in my life.  I was there 3-4 days of the week, my youth director had always been like a big sister to me, I sang in the church choir for six years, and my best friends were those I had made there. The people there had such a huge impact on my life.  Whenever I needed someone to talk to or somewhere to go to get away from the stresses of my busy life, I could go to Julies house and watch glee, or go to the church and be surrounded by people who loved me. I prayed and prayed for God to bless me with at least one other Christian person that together, I could dodge the temptations that college would throw in my face.  I prayed this but did not expect it to happen, unfortunately.  I expected college to be this hellhole of a place filled with alcoholics and deceptive people, all trying to pressure me to do things that my morals would show opposite. 

God is good.  To this day, and for the rest of my life, I will swear that the reason I ended up at UNF was by the grace of God.  I had no idea where to even begin searching for colleges, mainly because I was still bitter that I HAD to go to college, and my mom constantly threw around UNF.  I had lacrosse tournaments in Jacksonville and we would occasionally stop by and look at the campus.  For those of us who know UNF, I went on the weekends and thought that nobody attended the school.  I knew it was smaller than UF, the campus I grew up knowing, but I had convinced myself that a total of five people went to the school.  A good family friend of ours, Larissa Jonson, would always tell me how much she was obsessed with the school and always encouraged me to keep looking into it.  I figured that if someone as amazing as Larissa liked it, it had to be good, so I applied.  A couple months later I found out got into the university and I was so excited, but the application I was concerned about was the one that would put me in the honors college.  To my amazement, I got in!  I started to accept the idea that I was going to a good place and that God had been with me this far, so it must be a good sign.   The very first day, we spit up into our honors groups and the amazing Kathleen Coughlin was my temporary Facilitator, yet another act of God to calm me down and show me peace.  Kathleen was part of my church family back home and was always someone I could look up to as a role model, so seeing her beautiful smile on my first day put my nerves to ease.

            As the semester progressed, I started loving the college more and more.  I made a ton of amazing friends and our dorm was so close that I felt like I was living with fifty or sixty of my closest friends, and some even seemed like family.  The first person I got really close to was my friend and sister Heather Deyarmin.  We hit it off right away, bonding over similar experiences and interests.  She is such a sweetheart and a lot of people could not refer to one of us with out mentioning the other.  We had both pondered the idea of rushing or “going through recruitment” and submitted our applications thirty minutes before the dead line.  Little did we know what our future had in store for us.  Heather and I stayed up for nights too excited to sleep and siking ourselves up for the whole process.  The first room I walked into was that of the amazing Alpha Chi Omega girls, and the first person that took my hand was Courtney Warner.  She put me right at ease.  Courtney had also been a part of my church in Gainesville, and even though she has no idea, I always looked up to her.  She is such a beautiful person inside and out and doesn’t even realize the impact she has on some people’s lives.  She truly is a real strong woman and is always so encouraging and loving just as a sister should be.  In order to bring this full circle, I must bring in some other information and switch the focus for a little while. 

As I said before, I was really concerned about not finding a church family like the one I had back home.  Larissa, having been from the same church in Gainesville, begged me to come to the church she attended in Jacksonville.  Naturally, I did, and I could not be more obsessed with it.  The preacher is amazing, the music is awesome, and the people are welcoming, not to mention it was right across the street from the beach.  I started to realize that both Kathleen and Courtney attended the church too, so it must be good!  After church, some people would go out to eat which I was usually invited to by Larissa, in attempts to introduce me to people being as she is the most social person I have ever met. I didn’t know how important one of those people would be in my life.  One of Larissa’s best friends was in Alpha Chi, which I had just been invited to join.  Her name is Brittany Wiggin, and she is the light of my world.  She is the epitome of a Big sister and is one of the best things that have ever happened to me.  She is a strong Christian woman and inspires me to grow in my faith everyday.  She is a role model, an amazing listener, beautiful, fun, silly, serious, and every single good quality of anyone you have ever met wrapped into a single person.  I am so blessed to have her in my life because honestly, I do not know how I lived before I knew her.  She is what keeps me sane most of the time and always has good advice.  Coincidentally, she was also Courtney’s little which was an added bonus because I got the most amazing big ever, and now I had the best grand big I could have ever asked for.  These two have no idea how obsessed I am with them.  I can honestly say that I have not met two more amazing people, especially to act as Big sisters to me, something I’ve never had.

            As I continued me first year in college, the blessings kept pilling on.  One good thing would happen right after another, I was scared at one point because I told myself that something bad was going to happen because it was only fair.  The people I met were amazing and have forever changed my life.  My sisters Dasha and Ivy are so wonderful and always make me laugh, while challenging me on a daily basis, in a good way.  My friend Kaley and I never have a dull moment together and sometimes I feel like we are sole mates as weird as that may sound, but we just understand each other on a whole new level.  We can be silly and have dance parties together, and be serious and cry and complain together, and we can sit and comfort each other wen we are going through hard times.  

            Like I said, one good thing would happen right after another.  I soon found out that I had been accepted to go on a study abroad trip to Athens, Greece with my honors professor, Dr. Kaplan.  This experience has been more than I could have even fathomed.  I have experienced a whole different culture and met people I will never forget.  I formed friendships that will last a lifetime and memories that will never fade. 

            I have put a lot of thought into this tattoo, as you can see, and I feel really great about it.  I am getting a Christian fish on my left foot right underneath my pinky toe.  For something that is only about an inch in size, it possesses a lot of imposrtance.  It will serve as a constant reminder of how blessed I am and the wonderful things God has given me in my past, my fisrt year in college, and in my life to come.  It will remind me “God has a plan. A plan to prosper and not to harm you plans for hope and a good future.”  It will remind me of the people that have influenced my life both spiritually and physically.  It will, being on my foot, encourage me to walk in the foot steps of Christ and be the person I want to be, not someone other people want me to be.  It will give me opportunities to strike up conversations with people who do not know Christ, and allow me to share my stories and listen to theirs.  It serves as a daily sticky note if you will of everything God has done for me in my life, and the strong and supportive family I was blessed with.  So for those of you who are wondering what possessed me to get this tattoo, I hope this sufficed.  Now you know the power and meaning, the importance and strength this one-inch object holds.