My Camino

I’m training for the Camino, an approximately 65 mile trek across Spain following pilgrim roads and staying in hostels. The stopping point is Santiago, and the Cathedral of St James. I hope to do this as a graduation celebration, in the Spring of ’24. I have a cousin that may join me for the trek, and at least one of my teens serious about preparing for this type of trip. In the meantime, I slowly up my number of steps a day, building endurance for the trek

My life is like a Camino right now. I’ve just started meeting with counseling clients. A wise mentor said it will be 5 years post graduation before I have any idea of what I’m doing in the counseling room- and I believe him. I am full of kindly intention and naivete, but not sure what is next on the path ahead. Parenting has also been an arduous journey. I had a hard time finding a rhythm this semester, getting kids where they need to be, scheduling appointments, and still showing up for all the things I have to show up for. There have been many days where I felt like I was walking uphill, a few tears, and some utter, utter, exhaustion.

And still I train. I learn to use muscles I have not used before, and build up ones that have fallen into disuse. This pace of life is new to me, but it is not impossible. Sometimes, this does not seem sustainable. I remember another time of physical training, when I was half the age that I am now, to climb Pikes peak in Colorado. I was training with about 100 other ministry interns, people I wanted to slap every time they lapped me on the track, shouting encouragements to “beat my body and make it a slave!”. Regardless of my less- than-perky attitude towards training, I made it to the top of that snowy Colorado mountain, just days before the twin towers fell. On the way back from the mountain I wrote in my journal, “this was pointless, I’m tired and my body hurts. Reflecting back on it 20 years later, that trip up the mountain became a marker for me, a place where I could look back to in my life and say “I can do hard things”.

The Camino in ’24 is not a proof that I can do hard things, these several years of schooling/pandemic/childrearing are proof enough of that. This Camino trip is a memorial, marking the end of one journey and the beginning of another. It is a chance to lose myself in Galician forests, and a reason to still tend to my physical body in the midst of life right now. It is so easy to become unbalanced. All I need to do is blink, and I’m spending hours of my days at a desk, surrounded by coffee and carb laden foods, and I’ve gained 15 pounds. It takes intention to moderate my caffeine intake and eating, and make myself move. Emotions are the same way, all it takes is a few days of running on autopilot, and I’ve amassed the emotional equivalent of a pool of toxic sludge, and I wonder, why am I so tired and spent?

So, I move. I breathe and move my body, and choose foods that resemble the living things that they once were. I slow down my pace, allowing the sludge to move through me instead of carrying it around. I soak in sunset clouds, dancing leaves and the antics of baby goats. I forego finishing that last paper for a moment of wonder at the unfolding of my children

This is my Camino