The First Step
In 2015, I quit my job. Not because I had another position lined up. I didn’t. In fact, I had no idea what was next for me. I just knew it was time to leave state government, where I’d worked in various capacities as an attorney for the last 15 years.
I trusted that I would know the direction to take when the time came.
A Second Step
A week after my last day at work, two friends and I boarded a plane for Europe, where we spent a month walking the Camino de Santiago, a path in Northern Spain traversed by pilgrims for centuries. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people follow the route leading to the shrine of the apostle Saint James in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. While some see the Camino as a physical challenge or an adventure, many people make it a spiritual journey, traveling inward as they go.
The idea had come up two years earlier in a casual conversation. A friend and I realized we both dreamed of a pilgrimage on the Camino. We’d watched the movie “The Way” and read books by others who’d walked the path. For us, it would be an opportunity to leave behind the weight of our everyday lives and to tend to our souls. Eating, sleeping, and walking would be our daily focus. This paring down would create space for quiet reflection as we journeyed.
When time opened up to make the dream a reality, we asked another friend to join us. The trip wasn’t necessarily on her “bucket list,” but she said “yes” because she wanted to be on this adventure with the two of us.
We spent months planning. We read guidebooks, researched the best (and lightest) equipment (backpacks, trekking poles, sleeping bags), made and revised our packing lists.
An Unexpected Step
About six weeks before our scheduled departure, I started having pain in my left foot. It gradually morphed from a dull ache on the inside ankle to a constant throbbing.
Don’t panic, I told myself. Remember this has happened before.
Fear and anxiety had shown up prior to other hiking trips through heightened back or shoulder pain. But it had always gone away once I got out on the trail.
I’d learned to trust my body to take me where I wanted to go.
This time, though, the pain made it hard to walk for one mile, let alone the 10 or 12 miles we planned to walk each day. Training with my backpack, to get used to the weight of it, was out of the question. And the Camino was a month-long commitment—not a one-week trip to the mountains with short day hikes.
“I’m leaving in a few weeks,” I told my chiropractor through tears. “I’ve got to be able to walk.” He recommended new orthotics and scheduled me for several adjustments.
An appointment with a podiatrist resulted in a cortisone shot in my foot, which only increased the pain.
I bought three pair of hiking boots. Like Goldilocks, I was looking for the “just right” shoes for the trip. I hauled them all to the gym to try them out on the indoor track. I pulled on my wool hiking socks and laced up the boots. Three times, after only a few minutes of walking, I rejected each one—too tight across the top of my foot, too loose on my heel, too heavy. I returned all of them, choosing instead to stick with the pair I’d worn on previous trips to the mountains.
Besides my physical uncertainties, the other unknowns of the journey creeped up and settled in. Would we have a place to stay each night? Would we have enough food and water each day? Would there be bathrooms when we needed them? What if one of us got sick, or hurt? Would we be safe?
Two weeks before our planned departure, my friends and I gathered to talk about the trip, openly sharing our concerns.
We cried together.
I wondered aloud if I should go.
“What if I get there and I can’t walk at all? I don’t want to slow you down. And I’m terrified of being left on my own.”
After listening to my deepest fears, both of them said, “You have to come.” They assured me we didn’t have to cover every mile of the route and that we’d adjust our plans if I couldn’t.
We would take it all one step at a time.
I trusted my friends’ love, compassion, and grace. I trusted myself and my longing to take this trip.
Stepping Into Trust
Our first day, we hiked five miles up the Pyrenees mountains. It could easily have been twenty. A storm blew up and a powerful wind impaled rain drops like needles into my face for the last mile or two. I was sure I’d be blown off the mountain. I was certain we’d never get to our stopping point. When my friend’s backpack went soaring over a ridge, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry—so I did both. (Luckily, another pilgrim retrieved it for her.)
And my foot still hurt, although the weather temporarily took my mind off the discomfort. Just when I was ready to quit, I rounded a corner and there it was—the albergue (hostel) where we would stay that night. Like an oasis in the desert, it appeared before us. We’d made it.
As the days passed, I learned to trust that I would have what I needed. There would be a place to stop and rest when we got tired. We would find lodging each night with a bed to sleep in. There would be enough food. There would be a bathroom—with or without soap or paper towels for washing our hands—when we needed one.
Most of all, trust in my physical body deepened as we journeyed.
My feet carried me over 100 miles of the Camino de Santiago—and that didn’t include all the wandering around towns we did in the evenings, after we reached our destination for the day. I don’t necessarily believe in miracles, but it’s really the only way to describe it—the foot pain that nearly kept me from going on the trip miraculously disappeared.
When anxiety and fear threaten to overtake me, I travel back in my mind to the Camino. I tap into trust and remember that I have what I need to get through anything, one step at a time.
What life experiences do you recall when you need to tap into self-trust? Comment below or connect with me on social media.
