Alas, as I neared the end, having lagged behind in a daze, sauntering past the dead, it suddenly dawned on me that I had been clutching the hand of my precious three-year-old, Abigail Joy, the entire time.

"Good Lord," I thought to myself, "what have I just done to this child?" This sweet, innocent girl .... What had I exposed her to? Had I just traumatized this beautiful little girl?

In that flash, I expected to look down and see a sobbing, troubled, confused child, who would need explanations and parental counseling. Instead, I was amazed when she looked up at me, beamed, cocked her head to the side, blushed, and smiled. She was filled with joy over simply being with her dad, holding his hand in a leisurely walk down a path on a pretty day. She hadn't seen a thing on that dark, grim wall.

Abigail had been shielded, protected, with her dad. All she knew, in her universe, was that she was with her father, and all was right with the world. She had walked through the shadow of the valley of death with her father, and feared no evil, because she was with him.

Yes, the Psalm fits. It had also once fit for those same boys on that wall, as they crept through the rice paddies and jungles, as gunfire and grenades and landmines surrounded them, and, most poignantly, as they met their own final moments in their own valley. It fits today, too, for their parents, peering at that wall, reminiscing back to when their children were three-year-olds.

All of them: those troops, their parents, and passersby who happen upon that wall; they all have a Father to lead them, to be with them, who they can hold on to and look up to, as they enter the valley. Sometimes, it takes the vantage of a child to bring the message home.