MUDDY FOOTPRINTS...

MUDDY FOOTPRINTS

One morning I woke up, and found myself face to face with my Lord.
I had been on a long journey, just trudging along the trail of my life.
The Lord then showed me the entire trail of my life. The good, bad, and the ugly.
For every part of the trail, I noticed two sets of tracks,
One set belonging to me, and one to my Lord.

After re-living it all in an instant, we reached the end of the trail,
and I took another look back, at the trail of my life.
I noticed, that at many places along my trail,
the toughest spots, where the mud felt like quicksand, where I felt I just couldn't make it another step,
there was only one set of footprints.

This kind of bothered me, so I decided to ask the Lord about it.
"Lord, your word says that once I accepted you into my heart,
that you would walk with me, for the entire trail of my life.
Looking back, I noticed that in the most difficult and muddiest parts of the trail,
that there was only one set of footprints.
I don't get it Lord. On the worst stretches of the trail, where I needed your help the most, why didn't you walk with me?"

He chuckled, smiled at me, and said "I love you, and I will never leave you!
I have never left you to walk along the trail alone, not even once."
Then He told me, "Where you see only one set of footprints, those are mine.
Those are the times when you decided not to walk with me, as you can be quite stubborn.
I dragged you along, through the mud, until you chose to walk with me again."

• Robert D Starbard

(Inspired by my walk with the Lord, and the wonderful poem "Footprints in the Sand" -by Mary Stevenson)