I’ll start by saying I was in a village 20km from anyone on my Squad, when my phone breaks, and later that day I wake up in the middle of the night in pain, with a knee so swollen that I couldn’t move my foot.
I stare up at the bunk on top of me and ask God, what now?
Around me are people from different nations, and people from my country. I’m sharing a room with Mexicans, Germans, Americans, Brazilians and Italians, friends I’ve made along the Camino and others I talked to for the first time that evening.
What am I going to do? God, where the heck did you lead me?
I close my eyes and pray for the day that’s soon to come, that I can see it as an adventure and blessing, that I can embrace it and trust the Lord that goes before me. Soon I’m able to ignore the pain and fall asleep. On the Camino the lights turn on any time between 5-7 am, so it doesn’t take long for the day to start.
My walking sticks turns into a cane as I hobble down to breakfast. It’s first blessing of the day because most Albergues (hostel) don’t serve breakfast, however this one did. At breakfast, that’s when I notice that I am not alone, like I thought. A friend tells me to sit down and she will serve me breakfast. The volunteer of the albergue tells me that he will ask the post office guy to take me to the next village to catch the bus when he comes to drop off the bags, because closest bus station is 5km away.
It gets close to the time the bus is supposed to come but it hasn’t shown up yet. He says he won’t let me miss the bus, I remind him of his daughter and if she was on the camino he hoped others would take care of her if she got injured. He said he would close the albergue and take me on his bike. I thought he meant his motorcycle, but he actually meant a regular bicycle!
As we start our way out of the village, we run into the post office van, and I jump off the bike and into the van. I think both him and I couldn’t have been more happy to see that van, haha.
From there on, every time I started to worry if I’d actually be able to hold it together, someone would show up to help me.
Someone to tell me the bus hours had changed but it would be there shortly.
Someone to tell me what bus stop to get off at.
Someone to tell me what hospital I should go to, and to take me to catch the right bus there, since it was on the outskirts of town.
Someone offering to pay for my bus ticket, since I couldn’t find change in the moment.
Someone to come hold their umbrella over me as I hobble into the hospital in the rain.
Or a bed in an Albergue right beside my squadmates, that I didn’t even know were in town.
That day I cried, I felt upset, I got sad and frustrated, but I always felt taken care of, loved upon by new friends and by strangers.
After I found out that to fix my phone it would cost almost as much as a new one, so now a week and a half later, I’m walking with a cane some days pain free and others with quite a bit of pain, and no phone. But I count it as a blessing, for I don’t have books and movies to entertain myself with. I have to depend on my squadmates to talk to my family or to do anything I need, at times to carry my bag for me, and sometimes to give me a piggy back ride.
I’ve learned what it means to be ok doing nothing, or better said, I am learning what that means. I’ve definitely learned what it means to slow down, take it a day at a time.
PS. Injury update: I prayed that I’d be cane-less when I arrived back in Spain, and I’ve been without it for the past 2 days. I still fell some pain every once in a while, so I’ll be looking for a specialist and talking to medical insurance next week. So please keep me and my knee in your prayers.
PPS. This year my family has multiplied. I went from Sister to Aunt x3!!! The twins (Peter and Paul) were born healthy and cute!
