I love the relatively new freckle on the tender side of my left pointer finger. I love that if you look closely enough you can see the wrinkles that separate it into four smaller freckles. I like to think of it as the mark of a challenge that I faced—the kiss of some difficult experience. I don’t remember exactly when it showed up, so I can’t pin it to any experience in particular. Instead my freckle represents the culmination of my experience—essentially it is me. When I first noticed it, I thought it was a sliver so I dug it out with fingernail clippers. But when the skin grew back, it was still brown, a little bigger than before. Its freckly-roots go down too far to erase, like the core of my character. When I fear change, I look at my freckle and remember the strength of my inner nature and the impossibility of losing it. When I am cut down, my freckle represents the promise that I will grow back, a little stronger than before. When I feel inadequate, I cup both my hands in front of my face and think how much I prefer that unique little sun-scar to no scar at all and then I don’t feel inadequate anymore because I understand that inadequacy is just the place where a little brown spot will be after the Son works on it for a while.