Lost and Found: Accepting My Karma

How I Accepted My Karma and Found Hope Again

When I got my second piercing in my ears, I was so excited. I was 13, and I misplaced the earrings given to me at birth because I was so excited to put the new earrings in that I took them out of my ears at Claire’s. When I looked in the box when I got home from the store, the earrings were not in it. 

The earrings were ones my Grandma (who I was very close to) gave me–gold and diamond earrings. And I lost them, and I was so sad. I loved them because I wore them since I was very, very young, and I couldn’t believe I lost this most precious thing, and I felt so guilty. So guilty. 

Then I got in trouble with my parents when I told them I lost them. They were SO mad. But then I thought that they had a right to be mad at me, because diamonds and gold are expensive. But they said if I was serious, I would find them. I kept looking. I checked my closet. I checked my Claire’s bag, and I checked all my bags. And they weren't coming to me. What am I going to do?  

I kept looking for two weeks, but I never found them. I looked in the dryer, I know that things fall in there, and that’s partially my fault. I checked places I had no idea why they would be there, like I even checked the trash cans, and like every pocket. Sheets, definitely. 

About two weeks after looking everywhere, I said to myself,  “Ok. I am responsible, and I should have been more careful at the store.” But I still felt so guilty and so hopeless. I am always the finder.

Even when things are lost, I am so good at remembering where everyone’s things are, and my family depends on me. I remember where I leave things like my hairclips, and when I look at things I take a picture in my mind. (But sadly it doesn’t work for school like that, I wish.) But I like to take pictures of people I love and places, like a memory album. So, I can see where things are because I remember them easily. But in this case, I couldn’t see my earrings because I thought they were in the box, and they weren’t.

So many times I would think, I will never find them, because I couldn’t see where I left them in my mind. I felt so lost, so lost like there was no hope. How would I ever find these such small things, not knowing if I would ever find what my Grandmother who helped raise me gave to me. 

For about two years I didn't have them. And I was so sad deep inside. And then one day I took a shirt out of the closet, and I found them in my lap, and I was in total disbelief, like I kept thinking that there is no way these earrings could pop out of nowhere. I was in shock. 

When they were returned to me, in a way that I could not explain, I felt like God was telling me I learned my lesson and I would get my possessions back now. They aren’t alive, like a pet that can get lost and come home. Earrings are objects that are not alive, so you can’t call them or use a GPS collar. 

When I saw my earrings, I thought my Grandma was the one who helped me find them, and that it was her telling me to be responsible, and not jump from one place to another so fast and be more careful to place things back. I had this joy within me because she gave them to me, and they match everything. I never took them out till that day in the mall. 

I was so shocked seeing them in my lap that I couldn’t move. I wondered if I was even seeing them. How did they appear? Why did it take two years? Where did they come from? What did I need to do to find them? Did I do it?

I felt shocked, surprised, confused, wondering why they came to me, and yet still feeling so happy. But then I was like, my goodness, and I thought I could never make the same mistake again. 

Before I found the earrings, or before the earrings found me, I was actually still not careful with things, even though I had lost them, like maybe I should have been. But after they came to me, I was never careless with my things again because I knew I could do it. And since I was 15, I never lost anything again. I never take them out of my ears, and I am so grateful that I have them.