A small note: This post contains a brief description of an unsettling moment from my youth. I share it with care, trusting that even the harder memories can reveal something of God’s light and His nearness.
This week’s verse took me back to a memory I have not thought about for quite some time.
“The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?”
Psalm 27:1
There are verses we read with our minds, and verses we read with our memories.
This week, Psalm 27:1 did the latter. It reached back into a moment I lived as a teenager, a moment when fear did more than fill the room; it became a living, suffocating thing. I learned then, without words, what it was to ache for refuge, to be desperate for a shelter strong enough to withstand the terror pressing in.
I was at home when Ashley arrived with a younger girl I’d never met. She was restless, unsettled in a way I didn’t yet know how to recognise. Ashley told me she’d run away. I told her she needed to go home. And somehow, that simple sentence turned into the three of us walking through the streets together, as if we were being pulled toward something I couldn’t name.
On the way, the girl began talking about God. Not lightly, not curiously, but with a heavy, unsettling urgency. Her voice was so confident, her warnings about Armageddon so absolute, that the air felt suffocating. I remember my heart pounding, a knot of dread tightening in my stomach; I sensed something was wrong, but had no words.
When we reached her house, her family ushered her inside, a mix of relief and anger on their faces. Ashley and I were guided into the kitchen and told to sit. I chose the seat farthest from the door, instinctively wanting a wall at my back. The family’s voices rose as they scolded her, the room shrinking around us.
And then everything shifted.
Her voice changed, dropped, twisted, so wrong it sent fear down my spine. Her eyes turned black as voids, then rolled back, erasing the girl I’d known moments before. In a flash, Ashley gripped my arm. The girl lunged, hand clamping on the knife, and her voice, guttural and monstrous, snarled, “I’m going to kill you.” All other sounds vanished but the pounding of fear.
Chaos erupted. Her family restrained her. Her mother tried to reassure us. “It’s okay, it happens when she’s behaving badly.”
Nothing about the moment felt okay. Every sense that I had screamed danger. My breath caught; I knew in my bones we were not safe.
I ran for the door, but it wouldn’t open. Panic overtook everything. I remember screaming for someone to let me out, and then the world slowed, as if time folded in on itself.
Everything went black.
When I came to, I was lying on a bed upstairs. Ashley was beside me, frantic. I didn’t wait to understand anything. I ran down the stairs, out of the house, across the street to the police station. We poured out the story, gasping, voices quivering with shock. The officer just stared, blank and unmoving, as if our fear was something invisible.
Something in me snapped. “Let’s go,” I said, and we left. We stepped back into the daylight, breathless and shaken, unsure what to do next.
As we hurried away, the girl’s brothers appeared behind us, insisting they needed to walk us home. I didn’t want them anywhere near my house. I walked fast, weaving through streets, praying the Lord’s Prayer out loud and in my mind, refusing to hear anything they said. Eventually, at the top of my road, they left.
Ashley and I took another detour just to be sure before finally reaching my house. We told my mum everything, every terrifying detail, before I collapsed into bed, exhausted. Ashley stayed over, and we lay awake replaying it all, half in shock, half in disbelief.
But even now, years later, the memory sits in me like a stone.
The eyes.
The voice.
The moment everything shifted.
And this week, Psalm 27:1 brought it back. Not to frighten me, but to show me something I couldn’t see then.
Back then, fear felt like the strongest force in the room.
Now, I can look at that moment through a different light. The light David names in the psalm.
A light that doesn’t erase fear, but outshines it.
A stronghold that doesn’t always remove us from danger, but holds us steady inside it.
I didn’t know it then, but even in that kitchen, in the panic, the blackout, the running. I was not alone.
The Lord is my light and my salvation.
The Lord is the strength of my life.
And sometimes, it takes an old memory to remind me what that truly means.
Psalm 27:1 speaks of light, salvation, and strength, words that have followed me through memories like this one and through the quieter battles most people never see. Over the years, I’ve carried my own set of afflictions, ones that sit beneath the surface of my life: anxiety that rises without warning, moods that swing harder than I ever intend, and a mind that has needed more care and support than I once knew how to name.
I used to wonder what these struggles meant about my faith, whether they were failings, or signs of something darker, or thorns I was meant to carry alone. But I’m learning to see them differently now. These places of weakness have become the very places where His strength meets me, where His light reaches into my shadows, where His salvation steadies my trembling.
Sitting with this memory reminded me that it isn’t the only one. There are a handful of moments like this tucked throughout my life. Four or five stories I’ve rarely fully spoken aloud, each one carrying its own weight, its own questions, its own unexpected brush with fear, grace, or mystery. I’ve kept them quiet for years, not because they were insignificant, but because I didn’t know how to hold them. This week’s verse reminded me that light doesn’t only reveal what is ahead; sometimes it gently illuminates what we’ve buried behind us. Over the next few weeks, I may share more of these moments. Not for drama, but for the way they have shaped my understanding of refuge, courage, and the God who was there even when I didn’t recognise Him.
Coming This Week
Beginning tomorrow evening, I’ll be sharing a short series called Grace in the Merge Lane: five reflections from the week’s commute and the quiet work God does in the middle of rush hour.
Each day has its own story, its own struggle, and its own small mercy.
The first instalment arrives on Monday evening.
The Eleven One 
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