Lost & Found

Charlotte Shurtz
Nov 1 · 2 min read
Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

Every college student loses

something —

earbuds, a book, dance shoes,

their backpack, a half dozen pencils,

the key to their room, an important paper they forgot

to save before sleeping, or themselves

on the first day of class. One day

I realized I’d lost

my Heavenly Mother.

I sought Her in religious classes,

used techniques from rhetoric to scrutinize

phrase after phrase and word after word

for clues of Her, and asked question after question.

So I asked myself where

do the lost things go?

To quiet, musty shelves in the basement

of the WILK. Shelves filled with boxes

of gloves that fell from pockets and coats

forgotten on warm spring days, calculators

accidently forgotten in class, rows

and mounds of water bottles, a box

with random pieces of games like Apples

to Apples cards and Dominion, a tub

of basketballs and tennis rackets.

But She’s not sitting on a shelf

at the Lost and Found just waiting

for someone to say “Hey, I lost my

Heavenly Mother? Have you found

Her? Is She here?” I sought Her

in other places — sunsets and forests and poetry

and essays and scriptures. The Monday

in October when I finally found

Her, I was crammed into a tiny apartment by the mall

south of campus with a couple dozen young

adults to listen to Rachel’s poetry.

There were so many people eager

to hear Rachel’s words about Heavenly Mother

that the floor was packed, the couch filled, the stairs,

even the windowsill like when people filled

houses and roofs to listen to Jesus speak.

Sitting on the floor listening to Rachel read her poetry,

that’s when I found Her. She was there,

loving each of us irregardless

of our mistakes or pranks or Her own weariness

from living through the waxing and waning of many,

many moons, whispering “I love you” and

“You can do this” and “I am with you” to children

struggling with history or calculus or roommates

or depression or any part of life.

Charlotte thinks and writes about gender, politics, rhetoric, and Mormonism.

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