Every Time I Turn Around

Every Time I Turn Around

The days had been marked out on my calendar for weeks: “On-site/NYC.” I had come to enjoy the city in small doses, but working there required a focus and energy quite different from my regular routine.

This time I was anxious about traveling alone and being alone in the city. Nothing I could put my finger on. Not quite fear. But close.

Before I left, I read these words from the Psalms in Eugene Peterson’s The Message: “God-defiers are always in trouble; GOD-affirmers find themselves loved every time they turn around” (32:10). I read them but didn’t think too much about them. Until . . .

I received a text the night I arrived from a dear friend, who said that he thought I might be in New York that evening and that he was praying for me. After a flurry of texts back and forth, “I’ve got your back” were the last words he said, and I felt every muscle in my body relax.

The next morning, in the hotel elevator (where no one smiles), an older couple rode with me, speaking German to each other in hushed tones. As I glanced their way, he winked, then touched his forehead to his wife’s. She smiled too. And I felt seen. Included.

Later, during meetings with three colleagues, each one, individually and at different times, showed me kindness. One winked at an especially exasperating point in a meeting. Another asked about my ailing parents. The third, on our final day of meetings, asked, “How are you feeling about all of this?”

But it didn’t end there. I relished an unexpected, arm-in-arm stroll up Broadway at night with an old friend who’d found time for dinner out. A man in a seat across the aisle on my flight home lifted my carry-on into the overhead bin when he saw me struggle. Then, after I arrived home, on my front porch sat a dinner ready to reheat, with a note on the container that said, “Welcome home, Leigh!” Through the kindness of strangers and of friends, I found myself loved—at home and away—every time I turned around. “There’s no place you can go that I am not,” God seemed to say. “Look around, and you’ll see me everywhere.”

God-defiers are always in trouble; GOD-affirmers find themselves loved every time they turn around.

Psalm 32:10, MSG