What to do when dreams come true

Dreams that are far in the future are safer.  It is when dreams begin to take shape, and shimmer into reality that they can become terrifying. 

My dream of walking El Camino was born four and a half years ago.  I was working as a volunteer with the Iona Community in Scotland, when two other "vollies," a couple from New Zealand, casually mentioned that they had just walked El Camino de Santiago.  I had never heard of it before.  They told me that El Camino  is historically one of Western Christianity’s three primary pilgrimage sites (along with Rome and Jerusalem).  While there are a number of routes to Santiago, traditionally held to be the burial site of St. James the Apostle, they had walked the most popular, El Camino Francés , which stretches 500 miles through northern Spain. As they told me about their trek down the ancient pilgrimage route, I immediately felt called to walk it. I knew almost immediately that this was something I must do.  

         

Now as you know if you have spent more than 5 minutes with me, this irrational (a-rational?) decision that I MUST walk El Camino is totally contrary to my usual way of being.  I make decisions rationally and thoughtfully, not instinctively or emotionally.  I am the queen of the "TJ" crowd on Myers-Briggs. I like to BE IN CHARGE! But this has been a God-thing from the beginning.  I am not in charge. I have to go.

Even more weird is that walking El Camino involves the possibility of considerable physical discomfort.  It isn't just walking 500 miles, intimidating as that sounds in and of itself.  It is sleeping at night in pilgrim refugios with 25 or 50 other pilgrims (peregrinos, or if you're females peregrinas), as they talk, snore, fart, or groan through the night.  I've done a lot of reading since I first heard of El Camino--I've read about blisters the size of bagels (!), bad food, torrential rainstorms, stress fractures, and unbelievably dirty showers (Joyce Rupp's book goes into some detail on this point--reading her description made me distinctively queasy,)  Since my idea of roughing it is staying somewhere that doesn't have room service, all of this should have dissuaded me, but it hasn't.  I still feel called to go.  (Though I do wonder why didn't God call me to cruise the Greek Islands.)

Now the dream is on the verge of becoming a reality.  My sabbatical is this year.  Thanks in part to the generosity of my church, I have the money in the bank.  I leave May 2.  No excuses. No reason not to go--except that fearful little voice that wonders if I can really do it.