If you know me at all one thing that is clearly evident is this: I LOVE MY HUSBAND. Period. The end. I love him. I could extol his virtues all day. If you know him, you'll understand, if you don't then I'm sorry. He is an incredible man of God who loves Jesus, his family and his work. He pushes me in surprising ways and is never afraid of self-valuation and recalibration.
All that being said, he is not the most spontaneous man. He thrives on analysis and planning, two things I am honestly surprised are even in my vocabulary. He keeps me grounded, I keep him guessing. This why I was so surprised when, on the way home from some random meeting one evening, he turns to me and says, "I think we should get a tattoo." Ummm...excuse me?! Do you know who you are? I was floored! Mostly because the last discussion we had about tattoos ended with basic sentiment that tattoos were not the sort of thing he desired for his wife to possess.
You see, God has been pushing us lately. Testing our limits. While the topic of tattoos is still controversial in some Christian circles, it seemed as though God was using this to push us closer together and challenge us to embrace the freedom of Christ in different ways. So when my husband asked me to get a tattoo with him I knew immediately what it should say.
Jesus has been revealing Himself to our family in great ways. In specific, I have spent the last few years becoming deeply acquainted with a Jesus I thought I knew, but had no clue about. He has uncovered truths about Himself hidden to me in the past and has blown open the idea of who He is in history, in the world and in my own heart. Study of Hebrews, Romans, 1,2 & 3 John and John's gospel is beginning to revolutionize my heart in ways 5 years ago I would have condemned. Jesus is showing me who He is and who He's made me to be.
With this in mind and having just finished up a study in 1 John 4, specifically 1 John 4:18, I turned to Tony and said, "It should say 'perfect love'". To my utter shock without missing a beat he agreed! We were both on the same page and we both knew immediately what this meant. Although none of it had to be explained, we conversed at length about how "perfect love" had transformed us, not our love for each other but rather the love that Jesus had blossomed in our hearts over the past 9 years of our marriage and is continuing to cultivate.
It wasn't until we got home and spent some time digging through exactly what John meant by "perfect love" in 1 John 4:18 that we found God was truly revealing Himself deeply through us and this was a sentiment we wanted to permanently mark our physical bodies.
The Greek words for "perfect love", which is how Tony's tattoo reads, are "teleia agape". Agape of course refers to Divine Love. This is the kind of love that God has for us, unending, never-failing, unconditional. Teleia or it's root Teleios is the real kicker for us. This word is so delicate and intricate it makes the English equivalent of "perfect" seem small. Teleia, in this context is defined by Strong's as mature (consummated) from going through the necessary stages to reach the end-goal, i.e. developed into a consummating completion by fulfilling the necessary process (spiritual journey).
This therefore, means that the "perfect love" described by John is indeed complete and being completed. It is finished yet active. It is in process to a goal that has already been achieved! How lovely and Divine! And how well these two words illustrate the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. How perfectly He loved us! He accomplished His goal and is loving us toward the same goal. He has restored all things to God and IS restoring all things to God. I love the way God has conquered time through Christ and yet lives within it in His people. It is no less than "perfect love".
So one random Tuesday night we left our 3 kids with my desperately cool younger sister (who, by the way, had just had her quarter sleeve filled in with gradated color) and walked into our neighborhood tattoo parlor. Nothing will make you feel more uncool than being a 30-year-old couple getting wrist tattoos as you sit across from your artist with the word EDGE scrawled in permanent ink down the side of his face (my super cool sister and her hipster husband did try to explain this to me, I still don't really understand it). Paul (who also wore a tweed newsie cap, by the way) was awesome and patient with two tattoo virgins one of whom was beyond chatty and excited and the other who quietly endured the process - I'll let you sort which was which.
We walked away with our cool tattoos. His a perfectly metered Greek rendition of "perfect love". Mine a scribbled sentiment in my husband's handwriting. We know that to some people it reads cheesy. We're okay with that. We know that other people will be annoyed, if not miffed that we desecrated our bodies with ink. That's okay, too. We're okay with all of it, because that is what it's all about! 1 John 4:18-19 reads, "Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. We love each other because he loved us first."
The rest of the chapter is pretty awesome, too. But that will have to wait for another day. For today we stand in the promise and the hope of His perfect love. Accomplished and active yesterday, today and forever.
With this in mind and having just finished up a study in 1 John 4, specifically 1 John 4:18, I turned to Tony and said, "It should say 'perfect love'". To my utter shock without missing a beat he agreed! We were both on the same page and we both knew immediately what this meant. Although none of it had to be explained, we conversed at length about how "perfect love" had transformed us, not our love for each other but rather the love that Jesus had blossomed in our hearts over the past 9 years of our marriage and is continuing to cultivate.
This therefore, means that the "perfect love" described by John is indeed complete and being completed. It is finished yet active. It is in process to a goal that has already been achieved! How lovely and Divine! And how well these two words illustrate the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. How perfectly He loved us! He accomplished His goal and is loving us toward the same goal. He has restored all things to God and IS restoring all things to God. I love the way God has conquered time through Christ and yet lives within it in His people. It is no less than "perfect love".
So one random Tuesday night we left our 3 kids with my desperately cool younger sister (who, by the way, had just had her quarter sleeve filled in with gradated color) and walked into our neighborhood tattoo parlor. Nothing will make you feel more uncool than being a 30-year-old couple getting wrist tattoos as you sit across from your artist with the word EDGE scrawled in permanent ink down the side of his face (my super cool sister and her hipster husband did try to explain this to me, I still don't really understand it). Paul (who also wore a tweed newsie cap, by the way) was awesome and patient with two tattoo virgins one of whom was beyond chatty and excited and the other who quietly endured the process - I'll let you sort which was which.
We walked away with our cool tattoos. His a perfectly metered Greek rendition of "perfect love". Mine a scribbled sentiment in my husband's handwriting. We know that to some people it reads cheesy. We're okay with that. We know that other people will be annoyed, if not miffed that we desecrated our bodies with ink. That's okay, too. We're okay with all of it, because that is what it's all about! 1 John 4:18-19 reads, "Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. We love each other because he loved us first."
The rest of the chapter is pretty awesome, too. But that will have to wait for another day. For today we stand in the promise and the hope of His perfect love. Accomplished and active yesterday, today and forever.
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