How The Camino Messed Me Up — Debbie Lamb Turner

Insights, Inspirations & Ramblings

To me, the Camino is a snapshot and metaphor for life. It has a beginning, an end, and a journey in between. The Camino journey provides opportunities to experience things with new eyes and it provides lessons to be applied to your life. I’m stunned by the unexpected ‘lessons’ that it gifts if you are open.

I didn’t expect to have the same experience this time in Spain as I did on my last two experiences. I was facilitating a group of ladies, moving their backpacks forward, and preparing their lodging for the night of their arrival. I was not walking daily like they were, so I didn’t expect to be affected in the same way. Boy, was I wrong. I had a lesson that shook me to my core.

On the last day walking day before our short adventure was finished, I arrived into Granon (one of my favorite places ever, by the way). I had hauled the backpacks up the uneven stone steps into the large room where we would all spend the night next to each other on mats on the floor. I had paid the donation for the room and dinner, and gotten a schedule of the events that the albergue offered. There was only one thing left to do – find a bank. Every so often I had to refill my Euros as most places only accepted cash, and today was that day.

I walked across the street from the albergue to a tiny café to ask for directions to the bank. The place was packed with a line of pilgrims extending clear out the door. As I entered, I saw one lone young woman handling things. She was taking orders and ringing up the sales, while another woman was in the room behind cooking and filling the food orders. What could have very easily been chaotic, was not. The young woman, who I later found out was named Irina, was smiling and completely relaxed. There was music playing that the pilgrims were either swaying back and forth to or singing along with. I had to laugh as I entered because the song “Hit the Road, Jack” was playing. How appropriate, I thought.

I inched my way up to the left side of the counter, where Irina would come to drop off the orders and call out, over the music, the person’s name. My plan was to catch her on her next trip over and quickly ask where the bank was. So, I waited.

As she came to drop off an order, she paused to pick up two dirty cups and saucers that were left there by pilgrims. I thought, ‘Now’s my chance’ and quickly blurted out one of the few phrases in Spanish I knew – “Perdon. Donde esta el banco?” (sorry, I don’t know how to put the tilde, the little accent marks over the Spanish words, but you get the gist of it.).

She turned back around, as she had already moved to walk away, sat the cups and saucers down, and purposefully took my left hand and cupped it both of hers. She completely disregarded the long line of hungry pilgrims waiting to be served, and instead paused to look intently into my eyes. Irina then softly said to me, “Buenos dias”. If I could have disappeared, melted into my shoes, whatever, I would have. I felt so embarrassed.

In her kind loving way, she taught me a monumental lesson, ‘Don’t walk in here rudely blurting out your question. It doesn’t matter that I’m busy or that you’re busy. Stop. Look me in the eyes. Greet me first. Then ask.’

Because I was too flustered to muster up any weak form of Spanish, in English I replied, ‘I am so sorry. Buenos dias’. She just smiled, gave my hand a squeeze and replied, ‘Buenos dias’ and proceeded to tell me how to find the bank.

I humbly walked out and headed to the bank hoping I wouldn’t have to see Irina again. I didn’t want her to think, ‘There comes that rude American woman’.

As fate would have it, I DID have to see her again, several times. This was a tiny village and the only place to get anything to eat, and by now I was hungry. So, I checked my pride and walked back in. Of course, she recognized me as I entered. She looked up from her register and gave me a big smile. Over the crowd and from the back of the café, I yelled out to her, ‘Buenos dias’. She greeted me back and we both laughed.

I’ve lovingly thought back several times since then about Irina and the precious lesson she taught me. I realized how many times I rush through life not really noticing the people I pass during my day. The opportunities I miss, and sometimes even avoid, to say hello or give a passing stranger a smile. What am I doing that’s so important? Where am I going that I don’t have five seconds to pause to acknowledge another human being?

I’ve returned home now and yesterday I was hiking our familiar Pinnacle Peak with my husband, Mike. He was ahead and I was going at my own pace as we always do. As I was coming back down, a young man approached me carrying his little boy (maybe a year old) on his backpack. Even though he was still a little way away, I could see this sweet little boy peeking around his daddy’s back waving like crazy at me. I smiled and waved back to him, and we high fived as we passed.

Again, I was reminded what it means to be seen by another person. To be acknowledged and smiled at. I hope I remember that lesson for the rest of my life.

The familiar phrase is, “The Camino provides”. And, yes, it does. But if we’re open, those lessons can also come at home or hiking a mountain by your house.

It all began in September of 2013…

It was my first encounter with by beloved Camino de Santiago, the 500-mile pilgrimage across northern Spain. Since that day, I’ve struggled with words to adequately describe this unique experience, failing miserably each time.

Trying to explain this little blip in time, so outside anything I’d known in my life, both before and since, leaves me stammering and stuttering.

It’s no exaggeration to say that who I am was forever changed – profoundly and to my core. Trying to put that transformation into words that make sense is futile.

Instead of talking about it, the natural next step for me was to bring other women to experience this life-altering phenomenon for themselves. I created groups, providing every method I could imagine for this adventure to be easy and stress-free. My deepest desire was to have others feel like I did.

The lesson with my first group was definitely mine. I learned I had to let go of my attachment to having everyone else experience what I had. It was their Camino. They had their own lessons to learn, and blessings to receive that had nothing to do with me.

Since that first return trip, I’ve accompanied two more groups of women with hopes of several more to come.

Each time I arrive in Spain and make my way to our designated point on this precious trail, I breathe deeply silently rejoicing at being in this place I love. And as I walk through the doorway of our first albergue and am greeted by the loving hospitaleros, I am home. Home to a place that my soul is peaceful and at rest.

The ironic thing about this situation is that at my own home, I don’t feel stressed or unhappy. I am very calm and comfortable there, grateful for my joyful life. There is just something different on the Camino. Something words don’t describe.

I like who I am when I’m there, and I feel that for this short period of time, I step into the fullness of who I was created to be.

So, now, here’s how this centering loving place has messed me up…

For the time I spend in this soulful place, or alternative universe as I like to call it, I feel deeply connected to nature. This is something I was a bit surprised by, not even realizing what I was missing. There is this heart connection that I experience with people that I can only relate to the way I feel with my family or very good friends. Some of these people, I know for less than 24 hours, yet tear up saying good bye to them. The most profound awakening for me was my spiritual connection. I consider myself a woman of faith, but what that meant to me completely shifted from my head to my heart. What I believed as a concept became a very real and personal knowing.

I know this sounds very ‘woo woo’ and maybe even unrealistic, but that is my true experience. Not just the first time – every time.

The struggle is: How do I continue this elevated state of being, once I return home?

I try. When things are rough or if I’m having a hard day, I close my eyes and visualize myself some place on that trail. I smell the forest, I hear the birds, I feel how I felt, and it soothes and comforts me. But that’s temporary. I’ve yet to find a way to have that become a regular way of being in my everyday life.

It leaves me longing for the Camino like a lost child, counting the days until I can be back in its inviting comforting arms again, safely enfolded in its unconditional love and pure beauty.

This is the closest I can imagine to what it will be like to be in the arms of my Heavenly Father again.

So, thank you, Camino, for a glimpse of that joyful precious reunion. I guess you haven’t messed me up after all.

Insights, Inspirations & Ramblings

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