Valley of the Shadow of the Death and the Footprints in the Sand
Coming from humble origins, my maternal grandparents didn't have much money to give to my mother, her sister, and their six brothers. But they gave them love and a decent life.I remember being thirteen years old, still living in a state of innocence after a happy childhood, playing at my grandparents' house. Next to the old wall clock, there was a small frame hanging with the most important quote from the famous poem "Footprints". I was curious and sometimes stopped there for a minute to read it.
Time passed by, and life began to get complicated. And a couple of months after my 26th birthday, precisely in the summer of 1993, and already struggling with a Drug problem for almost seven years, Hell broke loose in my life.
I had my first psychotic episode in the summer of that year.
I felt unbearable pain, and the first thing I did was curse God for abandoning me, even though a couple of years earlier, I was one of those people who constantly read Psalm 23, because the problems that my addiction was causing me were already tremendous.
Above all, I was always fascinated by the part that says, "Even though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me."
And yet, I must admit that I lived in constant terror during these times and the next 28 years of my life.
Just a few years ago, I finally reconciled with God, and now I can say that, although I was genuinely angry with Him for almost three decades, the anger I felt then revealed to me that I had never actually stopped believing in Him.
And I must also admit that those words I used to read when I played at my grandparents' house in my early teens are valid, or at least because I believed them then, for me, they are true:
The LORD answered:
"My son, I love you and will never abandon you, never, ever, during your trials and sufferings.
When you saw only a pair of footprints,
it was then that I carried you."
Poetry by Golden Minotaur
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Written on 2025-09-16 at 08:10
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