One Year Ago

May 23, 2010 was a pretty big day in The Life of Amy Joy. I had spent the previous year completing all requirements for my Master’s degree, and on May 23 I got to walk across the stage in John Paul Jones Arena and take my diploma (largest diplomas in the Commonwealth of Virginia, what?). I said see-you-later to a lot of wonderful people I had gotten to know during my Charlottesville stint. I was getting ready to head to Haiti the next week, a trip I knew would change me but I did not know how much.

But let’s be honest. Something way more important than these things happened on May 23, 2010.

It was the series finale of LOST.

Yes, I am one of “those” people. Yes, I am writing about LOST a year later. Accept it and move on! I know that some people were not too happy with the show’s ending. Upon my first viewing, I too was in shock. At 11:30pm that night, the TV screen turned to white and there was no more Jack, Kate, Sawyer, or anyone else, and I thought, “What the h*** just happened?” I didn’t hate it or love it at first. The jury was very much still out because I didn’t know what to think.

Then I ruminated. I read some online commentaries. And I watched it again.

And I loved it.

The moral of the LOST story? That it’s not about what you do in your life that makes it so important. Sure, the setting is this magical, moving island and there are all these mysterious people trying to save the world by protecting whatever that light thing was in the center of the island. In my interpretation of the ending, the setting was simply a mechanism. The setting could have been anywhere and anything because it doesn’t matter what you do in life. What matters is the people with whom you spend your time. It’s the relationships that make a life mean something.

I could not agree more.

After leaving grad school and spending the month of June 2010 in a third world country, I had had it with the rat race. I cannot express the amount of relief I felt that I didn’t have a job to get to once returning from the Caribbean. That I had the option to take an “unreal” (as opposed to "real") job in a coffee shop and be able to spend the fall with my sister and new brother-in-law helping to plan their wedding was huge. That I could move to Missouri on blind faith and know that everything would be fine because I knew that the community here would be incredible is nothing short of the best thing ever.

It’s not about what I’m doing in life, it’s about the people I’m living life with.

If you’re reading this, that means you’re one of my people. Thank you for being so incredible and for being a blessing in my life. I appreciate it more than you will ever know. So when the world goes white just like the end of LOST, please know that whatever God wanted me to see or know about this life, He showed me through you.