Feeling Abandoned vs. Being Abandoned: What Psalm 23 Actually Promises

Periodically, I go through a season of silence. Some seasons are long. Some are short. Some are in between. I wish I could tell you that years of walking with God have taught me how to avoid them. They haven’t. Sometimes I still find myself searching for a sense of His presence and wondering why the God I love feels so far away.

I remember standing at my bedroom window on the second floor, looking out over an empty lot beside the highway. I watched the cars traveling in both directions and wondered where everyone was going. Were they heading home? Going to work? Did they know what came next? I wondered where I was going. I could see movement everywhere outside that window, but inside, I felt completely stuck.

God felt absent. Not just quiet. Absent. When I prayed, I didn’t feel anything. When I waited to hear from the Almighty, my mind was so silent I didn’t even hear crickets. It had been months. I still went to church. I still read my Bible. I still prayed. But nothing seemed to come back. I was scared that God wasn’t real. That my salvation wasn’t real. That my faith wasn’t real. Eventually, I began questioning everything I thought I knew about myself and Him.

I don’t know if you have ever stood in that silence. But if you are there now, I want to offer some hope. The Bible gives us room to talk honestly about feeling forgotten. Hannah poured out her anguish while longing for a child. Naomi spoke from the bitterness of losing her husband and sons. Job cried out with questions he could not answer. Their stories are different, but none requires us to pretend that faith makes suffering easy to understand. We are not the first people to love God and still wonder where He is.

Just because a woman feels God has gone silent doesn’t mean she is doing something wrong. A woman can still believe while feeling nothing. She can open her Bible with tired hands and pray without a comforting feeling afterward. In those seasons, it is easy to wonder whether the silence means we are unfaithful—or whether we were ever really His. Those thoughts have crowded my mind, too. But the fear that we have been rejected is not, by itself, evidence that we have.

Here is what I want to offer you: the feeling is real, but it cannot tell you everything that is true. Feeling abandoned and being abandoned are two different things. When I am already struggling with depression, that distinction can be especially difficult to hold on to. I don’t need someone to tell me my pain is imaginary. I need help remembering that my pain is not the whole picture. Being in the fog doesn’t mean the road has disappeared. It means I cannot see very far ahead.

I want to sit with a particular part of Psalm 23. Not its familiar opening, “The Lord is my shepherd,” although that is a beautiful place to begin. Not its closing promise of goodness and mercy, although I have needed those words many times. I want to stop in the part we might prefer to hurry past. The part where the scenery is dark and the path is frightening.

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.”

The first word I notice is through. The valley is part of the journey, and the Shepherd has not stopped leading. But I want to be careful here: that word does not give us a timetable. It doesn’t mean a faithful woman will feel better by next Sunday. Some valleys are painfully long. I once described my own experience as walking into Satan’s camp, stripping off my armor, and saying, “Here I am. Come get me.” That picture expressed how exposed I felt. It did not describe where God had left me.

Then come the words I need most: “Thou art with me.” They belong right there in the valley. David does not wait until the danger is over to speak of God’s presence. He says it while describing the darkest part of the walk. And notice how personal the psalm becomes: he speaks directly to God. There is still a You to address in the darkness. The verse does not say, “I can feel You beside me.” It says, “Thou art with me.” The promise rests on the Shepherd’s faithfulness, even when the sheep is frightened, exhausted, and unable to make sense of the path.

Some of you have felt this silence for so long that you barely remember anything else. I will not ask you to manufacture a feeling to prove that you believe. You can tell God the truth: “I don’t feel You. I’m afraid. I need help.” You can also tell someone you trust. Let a friend, pastor, counselor, or healthcare professional know how hard things have become. Receiving care does not mean you have failed to trust the Shepherd. You do not have to carry this alone.

I cannot tell you when the silence will lift. Reading this post may not change how you feel today, and I don’t want to hand you another reason to blame yourself if it doesn’t. Psalm 23 does not promise a life without valleys. It gives us a Shepherd who is with us in them. For today, perhaps that is what resting in His promise looks like: eating something, answering a friend’s call, whispering one honest prayer, and letting that be enough for this moment.

Hebrews 13:5 gives us this promise: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Jesus says in Matthew 28:20, “I am with you always.” Those are words you can return to when your own words run out. You may still be standing at the window tomorrow, wondering where you are going. I have stood there, too. But you do not have to see the whole road to be accompanied on it. Even here, in the silence, you can pray the words of the valley: “Thou art with me.” And when you cannot say them with confidence, you can say them through tears.

Crushed Olive Ministries