Footprints

“God I am here, crying out!”

“Why won’t you answer me?”

I remember the night vividly. I don’t remember exactly what had made me so upset. I don’t

really know why I was at such a low point, but I do remember being there. I was living in Florida

at the time. I had moved down there to go to college. I had always been in love with the beach. There is just

something indescribable about being there and letting the sea wash away all the pain and just soothe the soul.

It was late at night and the moon was barely showing over the horizon. I had grew quite accostumed to many long walks on the

beach to ease my mind and try to make sense of life. On this particular night I was just so low. I felt like God didn’t even care.

I was crying out, “God please take away the pain, please help me through this.”

I stopped and looked out across the ocean. A light mist lifted up off the waves and sprayed across my face. It felt so soothing as the salt air mixed with my recently fallen tears. I glanced over my shoulder down the beach where I had just come. And through my tear filled eyes I could barely make out one set of footprints slowly meandering down the beach. And I felt this gentle voice speak into me and remind me of a poem I had heard and read many times growing up.

It was about a man walking down the beach of life. And as he looked over his life he saw two sets of footprints and one was his and one was Jesus’s. But then as time went on he noticed that during all the hard times of his life there was only one set of footprints. And so he asked Jesus, “why is that when I was at the lowest points it is as if you left me to walk alone.”

And Jesus quietly and gently answered him. “It was because in those times of hardship, it was I who carried you through.”

And I fell down and just thanked the Lord for carry me through..

But as time went on and I got older, I moved away from the beach and in a sense maybe moved away from the gentleness of letting Jesus carry me through. I remember one time a few years back, I was going through one of the roughest times of my life. I couldn’t make sense out of anything. Life was just so confusing and so useless. And when I looked at the footprints on the beach, I didn’t see one set of footprints where Jesus was carrying me, but I saw one set of footprints where I was walking alone.

I struggled with it for a long time. Why would God just leave me during this time of hardship? I constanly would ask myself. And finally one night sitting out under the stars it hit me. God didn’t leave me to sit there in my pool of self pity to walk along the beach alone. It all came down to one thing. God couldn’t pick me up and carry me through the tough times, because I was to busy trying to purge my way through them. Instead of falling to my knees and crying out for mercy, I started running.

I thought maybe if I can just run fast enough and hard enough. Maybe I can just outrun the pain. Maybe I can conquer it on my own.

Why is it that we are so blind to see the simple ways of God? I don’t know why it took me so long to see that all I had to do was stop running. All I had to do was to stop trying to do it on my own.

So there I kneeled down in the dew dampened grass under the star filled sky. And I stopped running. I stopped trying to do it on my own. It was so simple and yet so profound. I let Jesus carry me. And when I looked at those footprints in the sand, I didn’t see mine running down the beach, but I saw a completely different set of footprints for I was being carried.