Empty Footprints

I like the story about the footprints. Just about everyone may know it. A man dreams that he looked back at his life, and at the most troubled times, there is only one set of footprints in the sand, compared to two sets at other times. When he asks God why this was, he is answered that this is because he was being carried.

I like the idea of this story, but I disagree.

At the very lowest of my low times, I don't think I am being carried. I am feeling every ounce of the pain, and trudging through, inch at a time. If I was being 'carried' in any sense, the pain would never be as intense as at those moments. The disappointment and loss of faith in humanity would not be as complete. The cry to the God above, where are you, why am I forsaken to this extent would not be as passionate, in the honesty of it.

At our lowest, we carry ourselves. Some people carry themselves during this time, hanging on to torn and shambled peices of courage. Some people don't even have the strength for this, and lose their minds in the horror of those moments of pain and the sheer loneliness of the bearing of it.

I do wonder then, is there a God? What use is there of a God, if he does not carry us at such times? But I must either go mad, or hang on to some delusion of some kind of hope to keep myself inching on.

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