a little lost and found

i got a little lost.

if i could title the book of my 35 years, i would choose those five words. they would be written loudly in red ink with exclamation points and three underlines beneath the word "lost." and there would probably be a line through the word "little."

yeah.

if i'm honest, i've gotten more than a little lost. there have been times when my sense of direction has been, well, downright backwards. i've traveled miles out of the way. sometimes unknowingly. but more often with eyes wide open. there have been boyfriends, jobs, friends and way too many decisions in the shouldn't-have-done-that/what-was-i-thinking/well-that-was-nice category of my life. in my effort to make it from the point As to the point Bs, i always seem to end up at the E, F and Gs. sometimes i surprise myself by landing at C (or H. ahem.), but usually i'm predictably just a bit off course.

as a good little journalism school graduate, i should now cite some specific examples for you, the reader. but i'm not going to. the details are more than you really want to know. i have a tendency to big-screen the lost part of my life. my failures. i'm going to spare you that adventure because the lost is really not the good part. it's what comes next that makes my story worth reading.

found.

jai is a little lost and found.

it's just one word, but in my book, it's the word written over and over again, with huge amounts of gratitude, across page after tear-stained page. it's the story of a girl rescued from herself. of her journey to the edge and back. it reads of her husband, her boys, her family, her friends and every person who ever helped her find her way back home.
and, of course, it's the story of her Jesus. my Jesus.

after all, He's the real reason i'm found. it's His extravagant, unrelenting love that has led me down every right path i've ever taken. it's the same love that has sustained me through the gentle, gracious consequences of every wrong path i've taken. amen.

so welcome to my words. they are a little piece of me. the good and the appalling. the beautiful and the shocking. the whispers and the screams. the yes and the no. my words are my story. my story is my life.

and my life -- yep, you guessed it -- is a little lost and found.