Lost

I just love the TV series LOST. Although I've never been lost and alone in an island but I know how it feels to be lost. I remembered going to another country one time and I was wondering around the shops with my sister and cousins. I was looking at something and lost track of my whereabouts. I turned around and I couldn't find them, i looked for a good 5 to 10 minutes without luck. I could feel panic rising. How do I get back to the hotel? I don't speak the native language? How-? just before I finished my last panicky thought my sister nudged me from the back and said, "hey, where did you go?" to which I replied, "where did 'you' go? i thought I got lost".

In the bigger scheme of things I do find some similarities in the series that applied to my life. The characters in the series they call the "others" are the people who are from the island, nobody knows how they got there and why they seem to have some sort of 'power' to rearrange the survivors lives just by showing up and taking some of them hostage. Similarly, when we allow new people to enter our lives, our lives change somehow. Some for the good, some not so good. I guess it's a good balance of sorts. But sometimes the scale tips heavily on the 'not so good' and you feel a little lost. We tend to move and push things around to tip the scales to balance and we sometimes end up back where we started.

I, too, have become a hostage and a prisoner of a war, an emotional one. As a hostage and a prisoner, I can only go as far as my hostage takers allow me. Just when I thought I know the way out, they would come back again and this time they use a more powerful weapon that renders me powerless. In my previous post, is anyone ever truly happy?. I said something was bothering me, well it has cropped up once more and I feel powerless again. Everyday I hope and pray that things will get better but from the looks of things, nothing is going to change. It's at these times that I miss the old days, I miss my old family, I miss my mom and dad - they're there but things are not the same anymore, I miss the things we used to do, the silly things we do together. Somehow the "others" are changing the script, somehow the new characters are changing our lives just by showing up. Again I am led to a place where I am unsure of everything. And all I can do is trust that God will show me the way.

These are the words I hang on to:

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to propser you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future..."