Permanent Ink

Permanent Ink

I sat down to dinner next to a lovely young woman I’d just met, and we began trading bits of our stories over steaming plates of chicken enchiladas.

We talked about food, faith, community, and music. We even discovered a handful of acquaintances we held in common. She told me how she and her musician husband met and how much they loved traveling together at this stage of their lives. I could have listened to her beautiful voice all evening and not grown weary of it.

I knew a bit of her story already, though, and I wondered if she hoped I’d avoid it or acknowledge it. When the conversation veered toward children, I took a risk and asked about the two babies she’d lost just months before. “Did you have boys, or girls, or one of each?” I asked.

“A boy and a girl,” she answered without hesitating. “Jack and Lucy.”

I asked if those were family names, and she said they weren’t. “We thought we were having two boys until they came,” she explained. “We had decided on Jack and another boy’s name—but we liked the sound of Lucy.”

I couldn’t (and still cannot) imagine the grief that must have swallowed them. She acknowledged it, saying, “People asked what got us through it, as if they were expecting us to share a good book or a few verses of Scripture we’d clung to.” Then she said, “I realized the answer was simply ‘Jesus.’ He held us.”

As she spoke and gestured with her hands, her sleeve slipped away from her wrist, and I saw the tattooed words Jack and Lucy.

“My husband has one too,” she offered. “We wanted to do something that would last.”

I might one day forget these children’s names. But their parents will not. They cannot. The names written on their hearts will last longer than the faint wisps of permanent ink etched on their skin. And they’ll need no reminder of what to whisper between kisses when they hold their precious children once again. Hearts broken by love always remember. They can do no less.

Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for the child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you!

Isaiah 49:15