Footprints in the Sand
Two sets of footprints become one at the hardest stretch. Several authors have claimed it — which claim holds? Where did you first read or hear it?
Summary
A dreamer looks back over life and sees two sets of footprints along the shore — except at the worst passages, where only one set remains. The Lord answers that where there is one set of prints, he was carrying the dreamer.
Full anecdote
In the dream a life unrolled like a shoreline, and along it ran two sets of footprints — the dreamer's, and the Lord's. But at the darkest stretches only one set remained.
'You said you would walk with me always. Why, when I needed you most, did you leave me?'
'My child, I never left you. Where you see one set of footprints, I carried you.'
The poem is among the most reproduced devotional texts in English, and its authorship has been disputed for decades — claimed variously by Mary Stevenson, Margaret Fishback Powers, and Carolyn Joyce Carty, with earlier antecedents in 19th-century sermon imagery. Contributors are invited to document the earliest printed appearance rather than the earliest claim.
Known variants
- Mary Stevenson (claimed 1936)
Family maintains an early manuscript; independent dating of the manuscript is the open question.
- Margaret Fishback Powers (claimed 1964)
Published as 'Footprints' in 1993 with an account of a 1964 composition.
- 19th-century sermon imagery
Preachers used 'carried through the deep water' imagery long before the poem's fixed wording.
References checked
- Powers, Footprints (1993)Published text with authorial account; does not settle earlier printings.
- Newspaper and church-bulletin reprints, 1960s–1970sMost reprints carry no byline. Earliest dated appearance still being traced.
First-hearing on record
No first-hearing attribution on file.
This anecdote entered the archive without a named teller, place, or date of hearing. The only certainty we can record is when it was entered here.
- Entered
- Seed entry
- Teller
- Unrecorded
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