Over the past year I have learned what it means to be filled with joy and peace of the Lord. Then I found joy and peace in who I am with Christ.
This all changed when we landed in Barcelona, Spain a few weeks ago and I could not find joy or peace anywhere. Our first night in our Villa outside Barcelona I laid down to go to sleep and began to cry. I just wanted to be home. I was missing my hometown of Poquoson, VA. I missed my soft shell crabs, water views, marshland, and family (maybe not in that order but I do REALLY love soft shell crabs). I laid there just praying for God to fill me with joy, to fill me with peace, to relax my soul, for Him to just be with me.
He remained silent, I didn’t now it at the time but he was silently holding my hand.
I eventually found joy and peace in Barcelona with my squad and being with all of them. I found when I was alone with God doing intercessory prayer. My joy and peace were finally coming back to me and I was getting excited to walk 130+ miles.
Camino Day 1…Bye Joy and Peace
The first morning I wake up at 4 am to start my 15 mile hike at 4:30 am. I am pumped and excited to walk with my friends. We are going to have deep conversations about God, process the Race and minister to all the people.
4 hours later I realize we are only a little over half way…..I am done.
By this point I am now walking by myself. Every one is ahead of me or way behind me. I try listening to music and podcasts but i am just digging deeper and deeper into a negative mind cycle with each step. It doesn’t help that my feet hurt, my hips hurt, and my whole body just wants to take a nap.
My joy and peace were gone.
Once I make it to the hostel for the night the comparison game begins. A lot of the other people on my squad are happy and smiling. They are super excited to continue the time we have on the Camino. They have stories about all the fun they had and can’t believe how much fun it was to walk 15 miles.
These people are insane….did they walk that giant hill? Are they not in pain? I guess I did something wrong.
Camino Day 2…DONE!
I wake up and again I full of energy and I am ready to crush day 2. We are walking and life is great, someone says we should only have 4 miles left and i get excited because I am feeling great today and I can’t wait to finish on a high note.
Then all the sudden the trail levels out and NEVER ends. Now I am back in the negative mind cycle. I am praying and singing, trying to get back into my good mindset…but nothing seems to be working.
Once I get to the last village just before I reach the village I will be staying in that night. I see a squad mate sitting at a bust stop and I stop to make sure she is okay. She says “the bus is only 2 euro to the next village.” I don’t think I have ever sat down so fast in my life.
So I rode a bus the last probably 3 miles to the next village.
Camino Day 3…I took a bus.
Due to the events of yesterday, I decided it was time to just take a bus for the day.
I took the bus with other women from my squad. We were all in pain and tired and needed a day of rest. We had a morning of laughter and joy….just what I needed.
I am thinking I just won the Camino, and I am very happy with my decision.
That is until the rest of the squad shows up.
I start to feel ashamed of myself because I should be pushing through my pain and tiredness like everyone else but the problem is I have no desire to walk the Camino. So when they get to the bottom of the barrel they have the push of I really want to do this. I reach the bottom of the barrel and i am scraping at any empty barrel.
So the lies of the rest of the squad being disappointed in me begin. So I begin to hide by myself to avoid others.
Camino Day 4…My foot is done.
Today I walked, because I wanted to meet social expectations from those around me.
But I found my people. They loved to take breaks, laugh and joke. Life was a whole lot better with them.
The problem was that my foot was hurting so bad that I was just done walking. My shoes were not the proper size for walking 15 miles a day.
I prayed that night and asked God what I should do. He said “Take care of your foot and rest”. So I took care of my foot and rested by sleeping in till 4:30 the next day.
Camino Day 5…That was a fail.
I thought I have listened to the Lord. I took care of my foot, i slept well. But God had other plans. By the time I was in the first village I had decided that I was just going to take a bus.
I failed.
I couldn’t understand why I just couldn’t make it. But I just started having time with the Lord. It was hard, but exactly what I needed. I prayed and then listened to worship music. It was exactly what I needed.
That night we did squad worship and that was exactly what i needed.
I heard the Lord tell me take a day of rest and fast form food with me.
Camino Day 6…First Time Fast.
Well since I was fasting I took a bus to the next city.
But while fasting I had deep conversations with the Lord about what my Camino should be looking like.
“He said walk with me but in your time”
Camino Day 7…I got knew shoes.
I realized that walking was not fun because of my shoes, so I decided to sstay behind and take a bus.
But as we are leaving we find a squad mates shoes on the rack and grab them to bring to them. But i decided to put them on for the day so that i could just let my foot breathe some…..LIFE CHANGER!
By the end of the day my foot was feeling a whole lot better, because it had room to move.
Camino Day 8…SO MUCH ENERGY!!
The next day I walked with my squad bestie and a lady we met along the trail. There were great conversations had. We laughed a lot. It was my favorite day of the entire Camino.
I had so much energy that by the time we reached our city for the day, we felt so good that we kept walking to the next city. It would help the next day be a little shorter and the city had really cool monasteries built into the side of the mountain.
Camino Day 9…No more buses.
So we wake up and it is super cold. The hostel also has a rule that you can’t get off your little sleeping mat until 6 am. Of course this means that we don’t leave the hostel till almost 8 am.
By the time I got to the second city my squad bestie and I wanted to take a bus so that we could have really focused time with God. But when we get to the city and find the bus stop. We sit down, begin to relax and eat our oranges.
Then a man comes up to us and tells us that the bus is not coming/going to where we want to go…making us miss the bus.
So we begin to walk up the ridiculous super steep hill back towards the Camino trail. Once we got half way up, we thought there has to be another bus. SO we walk walk back down the hill to the bus stop where we see that the next bus would be in 3 hours…well by that point we should be able to just walk to the next city.
Back up the super steep hill we go.
But this hill does not end. This “hill” turns into a MOUNTAIN! I mean it never ends. As we are walking up more and more I keep thinking this mountain never ends. I am bout to walk right into heaven. We walked straight up for probably 2 miles….that is a 2 mile incline. It was crazy and it hurt.
But I began to sing praise songs out loud.
Pretty soon I was filled with energy and joy. I was excited to walk straight up to the pearly gates and see what the hype was all about.
Then it leveled out. Usually you get to the top of a mountain and see an amazing view….this one had no view. But it did have a hippie food stand/bar with hammocks.
The squad bestie and I decided that we would start our decent…to make sure we got beds at the cheap hostel for the night. We start up conversations about rest and what God is teaching us.
Of course if we walk up for miles we have to walk down for miles. But it was very gradual and felt like it would never end. By the time we got to the hostel we were both exhausted and ready to sleep.
But we were still really excited that we had made it and were excited for the evening ahead.
Camino Day 10…we made it to Burgos!
LAST DAY OF WALKING!!!
I wake up super excited because it is the last day of the Camino. I am excited to reach the end of our time on the trail and sleep for two days. I have already told mom that I need a Rascal when I get home…she says our insurance does not cover that (BOO, insurance).
The squad bestie and I begin our walk and we end up running into some more squad mates along the trail. We get to the top of a mountain just in time for sunrise. This is our only incline for the day, it is also our last. So when we get to the top we see a giant cross waiting for us. We begin to worship in whatever way that looks like for us in that moment.
Eventually we continue on and walk some until we reach an ope coffee shop and sit to rest and drink coffee. Once we are refueled we continue our journey onto to Burgos.
Once we made it to Burgos I have not been that happy in a long time and was even more excited after we walked our last 2 hours through the city to find our hostel for the evening.
REST.
Walking the Camino I learned that sometimes in order to have joy and peace in your life you sometimes have to fight for it. The devil is doing to put things in your path to distract you (loneliness, comparison, expectations, pain, negative self-thought). If you want joy and peace then you have to keep focused on the “trail” that God has laid out for you. Keep your eyes on the cross sitting on the top of that final mountain. Joy and peace are there sometimes you have to just fight off the devil in order to stand in it.
P.S. sorry for no pictures to show the things I saw, but my phone decided to die half way through the Camino and I have not taken the time to upload pictures from my camera. But i’ll send out an update once I do get pictures on it.
