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The Thunderbird Tattoo

Design by Spirit

By Jean SumrallPublished 4 years ago 4 min read
2
The Thunderbird, messenger between humans and Great Spirit

THE THUNDERBIRD TATTOO

Commitment to Spirit

January of 2017, I had been hearing the call of Spirit for a while. I tried to ignore it, but it persisted like a nagging wife. The voice kept telling me it was time for me to commit to living a more spiritual life. My resistance was based on the simple fact that I had no idea what that meant. Granted, the life I was living wasn’t sinful, but it was absolutely boring to me. I was enslaved to a housecleaning business that I had started only to make my fiancé happy at the time. It was now 25 married years later and I needed something to change in my life.

Without knowing what I was getting myself into, I agreed to make a commitment to live a more spiritual life. I needed to solidify this decision with an act of assurance that I would live up to my vow. A sacrifice of some sort was needed. I decided to get a tattoo, a permanent letter of intent on my part.

To be truthful, there was a tattoo that had been on my mind for a while. I began to research pictures on the internet. I looked at soaring eagles, the rising phoenix from its pyre and Native American thunderbirds. The thunderbirds captured the feeling I wanted to portray.

From my studies of Native American mythology, I knew that the thunderbird was the messenger between Great Spirit and Mother Earth. Prayers were sent with the thunderbird to be received by Great Spirit and answers were brought back the same way. I had no idea that this symbology was to become part of my life. I printed out a picture that was the closest to what I wanted on my arm and went to a local tattoo parlor in the next town.

I felt a little out of place once I was inside the shop. I was sixty-four years old and everyone in there could have been a child of mine by their ages. I gulped down my fear and embarrassment and walked up to the counter. I showed my picture to the gal and asked who the best artist was to reproduce my picture. She called the shop owner over. We chatted for a few minutes. He wanted to know how big of a hurry I was in as his availability was six months out. I explained I didn’t want to wait that long. He called over a young man whose name was Tanner.

Tanner and I hit it right off as I explained why I wanted this particular tattoo. He showed me pictures of his work and I agreed to let him work on the design. We discussed the brighter colors I wanted, size and an approximate price for the tattoo. He said he would call later that week when he had the picture ready for me. I left the shop praying that I had made the right choice.

A week went by and I was back in the shop looking at the design that Tanner had created for me. It was too big for my upper right arm. He shrank it down about four times before I was satisfied with it. He led me back to a chair to sit in that had an armrest for me to put my arm on. I was nervous but pushed the feeling down. This was the challenge of my commitment and I was not going to let fear keep me from completing this.

He went right to work on my arm. I asked him questions about himself to keep my mind occupied. He had started to do tattoos on himself when he was in his teens. Friends began to ask him for their own tats so he started doing designs for them. He really enjoyed the creative part of his work and liked working in this particular shop where he had been for about four years. Listening to him talk helped me to deal with the pain of a thousand needle pricks.

An hour and a half later, he was finished. He had given me exactly what I wanted and I was so happy with my new, beautiful tattoo. He gave me instructions on what I needed to do to take care of it while it healed. I paid him and left feeling that I had fulfilled my contract to my commitment of living a more spiritual life.

My spiritual journey since then has been filled with much inner growth. As I continued to listen to my inner guidance, I was attracted to learning about becoming a channel for messages from Spirit. These days I am an intuitive psychic reader with happy clients. My greatest lesson is, “when Spirit speaks, listen closely and do what you are directed to do without question. Spirit knows best.”

spirituality
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About the Creator

Jean Sumrall

I have led an amazing life with many varied interests including loving road trips, being a professional belly dancer, hand carving selenite, providing wise woman advice and intuitive readings for current problems. I love my life. Do you?

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