My evening was set. My good friends flew out and I had two days until another friend joined me on a 10 day beach vacation in Turkey. When I say my evening was set, I mean I was alone at dinner reading a book waiting for my burger and fries. My evening plans were this.
When I’m alone in a foreign place like this, I keep to myself. I don’t want trouble. I want to be in my Airbnb before dark. I want to be as unnoticed as possible. This particular evening was changed pretty quickly when a little blonde girl probably around 9 years old came near my restaurant just bawling her eyes out. Her scared face made it clear that she was lost. The beach town I was in is filled with foreigners from all over the world, so my initial thought is she might not even know English. The Turkish workers saw her and asked her in Turkish what was wrong. She caught my eye and I asked the simple question, “do you speak English?”
“Yes.”
“Okay why don’t you come sit down at my table and tell me what’s going on.”
“Okay.” She came and sat with me as my food was served. I closed my iPad where I was reading and we chatted. “Did you lose your mom?”
“Yes.” Her crying slows a bit.
“Okay, tell me your name and let’s think through the last place you were.”
Sophia was a sweet little girl from the UK with a darling accent. She was also really scared because she had just lost her mom as she was “shopping around in the store with the fishies”. She explained to me what her mom looked like and recited her England address to me which really was no help but I’m sure it made her feel a bit better. Maybe? Do kids think like that? I don’t know. What I did know is I was worried for her, her mom, and the restaurant workers basically handed her case to me because I’m also a blonde girl who speaks English. Really, the only one in sight. The workers grabbed another blonde woman to talk to her, but she was Russian. Sophia was very much English and very confused as a sweet Russian lady tried to help her. Sophia sat with me while I ate my burger and she had one of my french fries. Eventually I saw a woman of the description of her mom that Sophia gave me, frantically walking down the street, and I asked Sophia if that was her mom. Sophia ran up to her and jumped in her arms, her mom let out what I can only describe is the loudest sound of relief, and the restaurant workers gave a big round of applause.
Had Sophia and I not been an unlikely pair that night on the corner of a small street in a beach town in Turkey, I think that poor girl would have wandered for much longer. I see two very clear common graces tonight: the comfort of sameness and a lost child found.
Her mom had red hair, anyway, so the restaurant workers were doomed as they informed me they were looking out for a blonde woman. I guess that’s the third common grace.