Three Lines, One Life

Unalome, Trinity, and the grace that holds our becoming

I got a tattoo yesterday in the place where my heart failed ten years ago. I wasn’t planning on getting a tattoo while on vacation here. I have been back twice since then, but this time, being here for the 20th anniversary celebration was a stark reminder of my time here for the 10-year anniversary.

The first time we were here, for the wedding, I got my first tattoo—almost everyone did. It felt communal, spontaneous, a marking of that moment in time. This time, as people began returning to Bae, coming back with pieces that held their stories, their losses, their becoming, I found myself wanting one too.

I wanted one full of meaning, but all I could think about was an EKG of a healthy heart. I was sharing with friends, and Laura suggested adding a blessing. I took a photo of the EKG and told Bae to add some sort of blessing. Bae knows my story of being in heart failure here ten years ago and how having two massages a day probably saved my life.

Ten years ago, the line nearly ended here.

And yet

It didn’t.

Bae chose the unalome. The unalome is drawn as a single line:

beginning in chaos, looping and circling, before finally straightening into something like clarity. But I came across a rendering that named it differently:

Three variations of the unalome. one line, complete.

Three. Not separate, but held in relationship. I can’t help but hear it now, an echo of the life I have trusted: Creator, Son, and Spirit. Not three paths, but one life moving toward me, holding even this.

The variations aren’t deviations from the path.

They are the path—each life winding in its own way.

Some lines circle tightly, returning again and again to the same questions, the same wounds.

Others break sharply—sudden turns, unexpected fractures.

Still others wander long and wide before anything resembles a straight line.

What matters is not how clean the line looks,

but that it continues, that it holds. That it arrives.

So now the loops are no longer abstract.

They carry fear, disorientation, the body breaking.

The line that follows is not theoretical clarity, but breath returning, rhythm restored.

This is my line.

Not straight. Not simple.

But still here.

One life.

One path.

One line

still unfolding,

still beating,

still complete.

May we trust the lines that did not go straight.

May we release the need to make meaning too quickly of every turn, every unraveling, every return.

May we come to see that what looked like detours were, in fact, the path itself—forming in us a wisdom we could not have learned any other way.

May the One who creates, the One who accompanies, the One who breathes life into all things hold every version of our becoming.

May the circling not shame us, but soften us.

May the breaking not define us, but open us.

And may the line we are still walking—unfinished, imperfect, alive—lead us not toward arrival, but toward deeper love.

Amen.