My daughter and I were walking on Sunday, covering the week. She’s a freshman, and she just had her first Homecoming. The dress, the photos, the whole thing. She had a blast. And in the middle of telling me about it, she stopped and said something that knocked me sideways.
“Mom, you went from BB passing to helping with Granddad while Nana was in the hospital. I heard you laughing updating Aunt Peggy. We had to move on quickly from the BB sadness.”
She said it like an observation. Like she was just reporting what she saw. But what she was really doing was describing the entire week — and she nailed it.
Let me back up.
Last week was a roller coaster. Our beloved 14-year-old border collie, BB, passed away. If you read Get Up Off the Floor, you know what BB meant to our family. That grief was still raw — is still raw — when a friend called. She’s our go-to at the Toyota repair shop — works with my husband mainly. Her daughter was just diagnosed with Triple Negative Breast Cancer. It’s already in her lymph nodes. She is still processing, and Brian connected us to talk about it.
I know what that diagnosis means. I’ve lived it. When she told me, I didn’t have to imagine what her daughter is feeling. I remember it. The pit in your stomach. The way the world keeps spinning while yours just stopped. And I know the steep climb. I am a year in and still undergoing treatment. She is at the starting line.
Then my mother-in-law went to the emergency room for abdominal pain. My husband needed to be at the hospital, and Granddad needed someone at home. So I went.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that — my daughter went to Homecoming. My son scored two goals and his team won 3-2. There was cheering in our house the same week there were tears. There was laughter on the phone with Aunt Peggy the same day I was processing a pet’s death and a scary trip to the emergency room.
My daughter saw all of it. And her fourteen-year-old summary was perfect: We had to move on quickly from the BB sadness.
She wasn’t saying we didn’t care. She was saying she watched us keep walking.
Most people know Psalm 23 from funerals. It’s the scripture you hear when someone is gone. The minister reads it in that slow, reverent voice, and everyone nods along because the words are familiar even if you’ve never opened a Bible.
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters.
That’s the part people remember. Green pastures. Still waters. Comfort. Peace.
But that’s only the first two verses. If you stop there, you miss the whole point.
Because the psalm keeps going. And where it goes is through a valley.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Look at that verb. Walk. Not sit. Not collapse. Not set up camp and live there. Walk. Through.
David doesn’t say “I will avoid the valley.” He doesn’t say “God will lift me over it.” He says I will walk through it. The valley is real. The shadow is real. But you don’t stop in it. You keep putting one foot in front of the other because God is walking with you, and the valley has an other side.
That was my week. BB died and I hit the floor. I wrote a whole sermon about that — about letting yourself grieve and then getting up. But this week taught me the next lesson: sometimes you don’t get to grieve on your schedule. Sometimes the valley has more than one shadow, and they come at you back to back, and while you’re still in the middle of it, your daughter needs you to care about Homecoming and your son needs you in the stands.
And here’s what Psalm 23 says happens next — the part almost no one talks about:
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: my cup runneth over.
A table. An overflowing cup. In the same psalm that walked through the valley of death.
David isn’t writing two different psalms — one for the good week and one for the bad week. He’s writing about the same journey. The green pastures and the death valley and the overflowing cup are all on the same path. You don’t get to the table without going through the valley first.
That is what my week looked like. The valley was BB. The valley was hearing “Triple Negative” and knowing exactly what those words mean. The valley was the emergency room. And the overflowing cup? It was my daughter glowing after her first Homecoming. It was my son’s face after that second goal. It was laughing with Aunt Peggy because even in the hard weeks, family can still make you laugh.
All were real. All happened in the same seven days. And I didn’t get to pick which ones showed up or when.
I think the reason people only remember the first part of Psalm 23 is because it’s easier. Green pastures sound nice. Still waters sound peaceful. We want God to be the shepherd who keeps us in the easy parts. But that’s not what David wrote. David wrote about a God who walks with you through the worst of it — not around it — and brings you out the other side to a table that’s already set.
The whole psalm is six verses. Six. And in those six verses, David covers the full range of human experience. Peace. Fear. Death. Comfort. Abundance. That’s not an accident. That’s life. It all shows up, and sometimes it all shows up in the same week.
My daughter saw it. She watched her mom move from grief to caregiving to laughing on the phone, and she described it in one sentence. We had to move on quickly.
But we didn’t move on from the sadness. We moved on with it. BB is still gone. My friend’s daughter is still facing the fight of her life. Nana is still recovering. The sadness didn’t leave. We just kept walking, because the people who needed us were still here, and God wasn’t done with the week yet.
That’s the difference between moving on and walking through. Moving on means leaving it behind. Walking through means carrying it with you and trusting that the valley has an end.
If you babysat in the 80s, you know the Footprints poem. It was hanging on a wall in every house. You couldn’t microwave a Schwan’s individual pizza without reading it. And when you’re twelve, you think it’s just a nice decoration — something between the wooden duck and the macramé plant holder. I must have read that poem a hundred times. Once the kiddos I was babysitting went to sleep, I read it over and over.
But then you have a week like mine, and that poem hits different.
The whole poem is about a person looking back at their life as footprints in the sand. Two sets of prints — theirs and God’s — walking side by side. But during the hardest seasons, there’s only one set. And the person asks God, “Why did You leave me when I needed You most?” And God says, “That’s when I carried you.”
I think about that poem now and I think about this week. I kept walking. That’s what I told you — that’s what my daughter saw. Mom kept going. But honestly? I don’t know how. I don’t know how you go from holding your kid while she processes that BB is gone to caring for your father-in-law to cheering at a soccer game to trying not to cry when a friend tells you her daughter has what you had. I don’t know how you laugh on the phone with Aunt Peggy when your heart is in four different places.
Unless someone was carrying you.
I look back at this week and I see one set of footprints. Not because God left. Because my legs gave out somewhere around Tuesday and He picked me up and kept going.
That’s Psalm 23 in action. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. A shepherd doesn’t just walk alongside the sheep. When one can’t walk anymore, he carries it.
If you’re in a week like mine — where the hits keep coming and you don’t get a break between them — I want you to read all six verses. Don’t stop at the green pastures. Don’t stop at the valley. Read all the way to the end:
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
All the days. Not just the easy ones. Not just the ones where nothing goes wrong. All of them. The days your pet dies and the days your kid scores two goals. The days you get the worst phone call and the days your daughter comes home glowing from her first dance. Goodness and mercy follow you through every single one.
Your job isn’t to sort the days into good and bad. Your job is to keep walking. Through the valley. Past the shadows. All the way to the table.
It’s already set. And your cup is going to overflow.
My Prayer
Lord, thank You for walking with us through the valleys we didn’t choose — and for carrying us when we couldn’t walk anymore. This week was heavy. You know it was. Help us remember that the valley and the overflowing cup are part of the same journey. And when we look back and wonder how we made it through, help us see what was really happening — that the single set of footprints wasn’t ours. It was Yours. Thank You for the people walking beside us — the daughters who notice, the sons who give us something to cheer about, the family who still makes us laugh when the week is hard. Goodness and mercy are following us. Help us believe it, especially on the days when it’s hard to see. Amen.
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