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Other essays on this theme
Essay: "Lost and Found"by Kevin Betts The phrase "lost and found" can be used as a metaphor for most of our lives. As babies, we are born blank slates. This can be equated with being lost. As we grow older our parents, our associates, our encounters with friends, and our experiences write on the slate of who we are to become. When we become who we are supposed to become, we can consider ourselves found.
I myself was lost for a very long time. When I speak about being lost, I'm not referring to where a person finds him/herself mentally and physically. All my life, I've considered myself at least average as far as intelligence goes, and I've worked to keep up my physical appearance with routine workouts. These two aspects of my life have always been foremost on my mind when it comes to evaluating self. Yet here, when I speak about being lost, I'm talking about being spiritually lost. Being lost spiritually can have more of a detrimental effect on a person than being lost mentally or physically. I'm a person that believes in God but never drew a correlation between God, my spirit, and myself.
As a child growing up, my parents did their best with me. Unfortunately, I was a bit much for them. As a preteen I was in foster homes, group homes, and juvenile detention. I spent countless years running the streets. Then there was jail, max prison, and now super max prison. Through all my trials and travels, people tried to tell me about God, about thinking positively, and about how I should behave. Through it all, I remained lost. A while ago, I was watching a children's cartoon. One of the cartoon characters was a bad man and the other was a good man. After the good cartoon character defeated the bad cartoon character, he asked the bad cartoon character why he didn't use his power for good instead of evil. It was at that point that I realized when I did the wrong thing, I was using my power for evil. I didn't want to be known as evil so I began searching for a way to use my power for good. This led me to the bible. Throughout my study of the bible, I've come to see the correlation between God, my spirit, and myself. The spirit in me is God; I am in God, and God is in me. The more I learn about God and the spirit, the more I learn about myself. It was recently, while studying a chapter in the bible, that I read something that reminded me: while I may have been lost for some time in my past, now that I've found God, I have surely found myself. |