LOST but found

“Community” is one of those Christian words that gets old after a while. It’s something we’re all encouraged—over and over again—to find, but we may wonder what it looks like or how we’ll even know it when we find it.

I found it first in an office building. In the beginning, I thought of The Navigators as merely my job, albeit a job I loved. But as I grew up, it became clear to me that the people I sat with and worked with and lunched with were not just coworkers. They weren’t even just friends. They were “community”—the people I shared my life with.

It didn’t take long for our community to move beyond our cubicles, and it soon branched out into the Girl Network. It defies all junior-high experience, but I worked with a group of about nine women who all get along beautifully. We are truly a group without cliques or feuds or jealousy or backstabbing. And we welcome other women with open arms, as long as they watch LOST (or at least pretend to).

A silly TV show (really, as genius as we might believe it is, it really is just television) has brought out the best in our community. We gather several times each season to watch new episodes. We gather in the off-season to reminisce over our favorites. We pawn off our children and bring decadent food and enjoy fellowship with Jack and Kate and Sawyer—some of the women really enjoy fellowship with Sawyer—and, even better, with each other.

After waiting not-so-patiently for nearly nine months, we gathered last night for the premiere of Season 4. Pulling out of my driveway, I felt as giddy as a five-year-old on Christmas Eve. We gathered together—women in their 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, mothers of married children, mothers of small children, married women, single women, divorced women, women in the midst of tragedy and women living out the best days of their lives—huddled around a TV show. It’s my community, and I’m so lucky to have found it.