The Pilgrim Shell

This one looks different, and I want to tell you why.

I had all eighteen days mapped out before I started. A structure. History here, scripture there, the study in its own section.

This morning God laid something else on my heart.

So today's letter is His, not mine. We may go back to the structure tomorrow. That is not up to me either.

There is something beautiful about the scallop shell

You will see it everywhere on the Camino. Painted on trail markers. Hanging off backpacks. Carved into stone above a doorway. Set into the pavement of a city street. Outside cafes.

For more than a thousand years it has been the sign of the pilgrim.

When I bought mine for my backpack, I thought I was just following tradition.

Now I think it is asking me a question.

What am I really thirsty for?

There is a second thing about the shell that most people never notice, and it is the one I cannot stop thinking about.

Every line leads to one center

Look closely at a scallop shell.

Every ridge begins in a different place. Some are long. Some are short. Some start on the left. Some start on the right. Some are barely there at all.

And every single one of them ends at the same point.

We all begin somewhere different.

• Some of us start from grief.
• Some from fear.
• Some from addiction.
• Some from disappointment.
• Some from hope.
• Some just from knowing there has to be something more.

Different stories. Different roads. One destination.

The shell is also traditionally said to have served as a simple drinking vessel, something a pilgrim could use to scoop water from a spring. It holds one mouthful and no more.

So the same object that told them which way to go is also the thing they are said to have drunk from.

A symbol of direction. A vessel for thirst.

That is the part that undid me this week.

The woman at the well

Jesus is sitting by a well in Samaria when a woman comes to draw water. He asks her for a drink.

He tells her that everyone who drinks the water from that well will be thirsty again, but that the water he gives becomes a spring inside a person, welling up to eternal life.

I have read that story many times.

This morning I noticed something in the first lines that I had read past for years.

She came at noon.

That detail is easy to skip. Women commonly collected water together during the cooler parts of the day. Noon would have been an unusually hot and difficult time to carry a heavy jar.

Many readers believe she came then because she expected to be alone.

Scripture does not tell us exactly why she chose that hour. But the possibility stopped me. Perhaps she had arranged her routine around not being seen.

I want to sit with that for a second, because if that is true, she and I look like opposites on the surface.

I managed my loneliness by performing for everyone. She may have managed hers by disappearing.

Same wound. Different strategy. Both of them are routines built to stay safe, and both of them keep you from ever actually being known.

And Jesus goes and sits at her well and waits.

I had been naming my well wrong

I have spent my whole life people pleasing. Each moment took a small piece of my voice.

This morning, after a deeper dive, I realized that was only ever the bucket.

The well I kept lowering it into was loneliness.

The bucket was people pleasing. The well was always loneliness.

I always knew the gap was there. I have known about the loneliness most of my life.

What I did not know, until I sat still long enough this morning, was that it was the thing driving everything else.

And that is the point of a Camino. Of a Bible study. Of a new book, or a hard conversation, or anything at all that pulls you outside of what is comfortable.

You learn something about yourself you did not know.

Learning it builds confidence. Confidence changes your mindset.

And a changed mindset is how you emerge.

Where it started

Looking back, I can see the shape of it in my childhood.

My family was loving. Our dynamics were unique. My dad drove a truck for the first thirteen years of my life, so he was often gone. My mom was living with lupus.

And even as a little girl, I became more than a daughter at times. I became a companion. A helper. Someone who wanted to make her life a little easier.

I do not regret that. It taught me compassion, and I would not trade it.

It also taught me a way of showing up that I never once questioned, because I learned it before I was old enough to know it was a choice.

That way of showing up has changed in the last five or six years. Since I started writing the book. Since I started building boundaries and trying to find my own voice.

Nobody did anything wrong. But when one person changes how they show up, the whole arrangement has to be rebuilt, and that is slow and awkward and neither person has done it before.

We are still in that. We are both still in it. It is work, and it is ongoing, and I have hope for it.

Then came high school.

I was bullied for being different. My hair was naturally curly when everyone else's seemed perfectly straight. I learned early what it felt like to be the girl on the outside looking in.

I do not tell you that for sympathy. I tell you because I finally understand what it did.

Every time I tried harder to be accepted. Every time I gave more, forgave more, needed less. Every time I joined another group, volunteered again, overextended myself for another relationship.

I was not chasing approval.
I was outrunning loneliness.

The water never lasted

I wanted to belong. I wanted to be part of something good. A friendship. A group of women. A church. A ministry. A place where I felt chosen and accepted and seen.

And I believed that if I loved enough, helped enough, gave enough, spent enough, or became useful enough, I would finally feel full.

It worked for a little while. It always does.

Then I was thirsty again, and I went back to the same well.

That is the thing about people pleasing that nobody warns you about. It can make you feel connected for a moment. It cannot heal loneliness. It only teaches you to perform for the next drink.

What the shell is telling me

I have taken a lot of different roads looking for the same thing. Approval. Relationships. Belonging. Church. Ministry. Being needed. Being admired for being strong.

Every one of them promised it would satisfy my heart. None of them could.

And every line on that shell leads to one center.

The shell also reminds me that I need direction, because left to myself I will walk the familiar path straight back to the empty well. I know the way there in the dark.

Jesus does not shame me for wanting connection. He never tells the woman at the well that it was wrong to want to be seen or loved.

He just invites her to bring the thirst to Him first.

If He were sitting beside me today and asked what I am really searching for, I think I would finally answer honestly.

I want to be seen. I want to be loved. I want to know that I belong.

And I think He would gently remind me.

You already are.

Seen completely. Known fully. Loved without performing for it. Chosen without earning it.

The shell is said to have gathered just enough water to keep a pilgrim walking.

Today it reminds me where to take my thirst. Not back to the approval of people. Not back to another relationship I have to overwork to keep. Not back to a role where being needed feels close enough to being known.

To Christ. The one every line has been leading me toward. The one who does not offer another temporary drink.

Camino Challenge

Find a picture of a scallop shell, or draw one in your journal.

On each ridge, write one place you have looked for fulfillment.

• Approval
• Success
• Control
• Relationships
• Achievement
• Recognition
• Belonging
• Loneliness

Then, in the center of the shell, write one name.

Jesus.

Beneath it, write this sentence.

Every road I have walked has been leading me here.
Every road ahead leads me closer to Christ.

What well do you keep returning to? Write me back below. I read every one.