I told you yesterday that today would be the yellow arrows.
It is not.
Yesterday's study exposed something I had not expected. My well was loneliness. I drew a shell, labeled every road I had walked looking for something to fill it, and put Jesus at the center.
Then I woke up this morning and community was sitting on my heart, and I am not going to argue with that two days in a row.
The arrows are tomorrow.
Read First
Ecclesiastes 4:7 through 12
Start at verse seven, not verse nine, and you will see why in a minute.
Camino History
One of the things I have noticed while preparing is how much of the conversation is about walking.
The miles. The pack. The shoes. The training. What you carry and how far you can carry it.
But the more I read, the more I think the Camino has never really been about walking.
It has always been about the people you meet on the way.
For more than a thousand years pilgrims have walked this road together. Some begin alone. Some arrive with friends. Some lose people along the way and find others they did not expect. They share meals, give directions, treat each other's blisters, pray together, and get one another through hard miles.
There is a phrase you will hear constantly out there.
Buen Camino. Good way. Have a good journey.
You hear it from other pilgrims. From cafe owners. From cyclists going the other direction. From a person watering flowers outside their house who has watched pilgrims go by their whole life.
Two words. And what they actually mean is somebody sees you and somebody is for you.
Sometimes the best thing you can give another pilgrim is not advice. It is the reminder that they are not out there by themselves.
A great many of the albergues along the Camino are run by volunteers called hospitaleros.
Most of them are former pilgrims. They walked the road, received hospitality from strangers, went home, and then came back to do it for the next group.
There is a whole formal system for it now, with training and short volunteer stints, run through the Spanish federation of Camino associations.
People who were once helped, returning to be the ones who help. That is the entire structure the road runs on, and it has worked for centuries without anyone in charge of it.
I thought strength meant handling it myself
For a long time I believed that.
If I was struggling, I would figure it out. If I was hurting, I would pray about it quietly. If life got heavy, I would carry it, and I would carry it in a way nobody had to notice.
Looking back, I do not think that was strength.
I think it was fear.
Fear of becoming a burden. And underneath that, years of taking care of everyone else until I genuinely forgot that God most often cares for us through other people.
Last year was the hardest year of my life. I have said that a few times now without saying much about it.
Here is the part I have not said.
I did not get through it on my own. Not even close.
And I can name the people.
Eight roads
I call one of them Sunshine.
She invited me to breakfast at Cracker Barrel. That is the whole thing. She did not send a card or offer to help sometime. She named a place and a morning, in the worst season I have had, and she showed up. She brought a ray of light into my life exactly when I needed it, and the nickname stuck.
There is a man I think of as Dr. Kindness. He showed up and recorded with me when I needed somebody in the room and did not know how to ask.
There is J, who encouraged me with a smile at five in the morning. Five a.m. is not a time anyone is being generous by accident.
There is K, who texted good morning and told me to get my steps in. Every day. A sentence that takes eleven seconds to send.
There are the TikTok chicks. Three women I had never met in person, who lifted me up from a distance for no reason at all. One of them named her chick Lavish, after me. It sounds silly written down. I loved it more than I can explain, because somebody I had never met decided I was real enough to name something after.
There is the friend who got me traveling again, and who introduced me to her friends. One of the women I met on that trip is the person I am meeting in Spain in eleven days. That friendship did not exist two years ago.
There are two women I met right before I moved. They came and walked with me. They texted to check on me. When a package went to my old house, one of them drove across town, picked it up, and mailed it to me.
And then there is the one that has always meant the most.
My husband's ex-wife started texting me. She told me she reads my blogs. She listens to the podcast. She told me the words were encouraging.
I know what that cost her. I know how hard it must have been, and I know she had every reason in the world not to do it.
She did it anyway.
God moved in a situation where nobody was obligated to be kind, and He used the person who had the most cause to stay silent.
Kindness costs us nothing.
Unkindness can cost someone else everything.
Yesterday I drew a shell and put Jesus in the center.
This morning eight people showed up in my journal in exactly the same shape. Different roads, all of them beginning somewhere else, all of them arriving at the same place.
And every single one of them was carrying something to me that did not start with them.
The shell was never the water either. It just held enough to keep a pilgrim walking.
And one stranger
Hundreds of miles from home, a woman I had never met walked up and asked if I was the host of the Just Jelly podcast.
She had heard the episode about friendship.
I do not know her name. I will probably never see her again. And she has no idea what that moment did for me on a day when I was not sure any of the work was landing anywhere.
The work is hard. Starting over is hard. Change does not get easier because you decided to do it.
But your future self will thank you.
And sometimes a stranger walks up in a place you did not expect and tells you it was worth it.
Reset the table
Something has been circling me the entire time I have been writing this.
God will separate us at times so we can hear His voice.
Not because we were meant to live alone.
So we can find the right ones to offer a seat at the table.
I spent a long time reading my own solitude as punishment, or as proof of something wrong with me. Some of it was the wound. I named that yesterday.
But some of it was clearing.
If you have been walking through life with unhealthy relationships, or with boundaries you never got to set, maybe you do not need more people.
Maybe you need to reset the table.
Scripture Study
Ecclesiastes 4:7 through 12
Solomon describes a man who is completely alone. No son, no brother. He works endlessly and his eyes are never satisfied with what he has, and then he stops and asks who he is even toiling for, and why he is depriving himself of enjoyment. Solomon calls it meaningless, a miserable business. Then he says two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work. If one falls down, the other can lift them. Two lying together keep warm. One can be overpowered, but two can defend themselves. And a cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
This is why I asked you to start at verse seven.
Everybody quotes verse nine. Two are better than one. It shows up at weddings and in group chats and on coffee mugs.
Almost nobody reads what it is answering.
Two verses earlier, Solomon is looking at a man with nobody. Working constantly. Never satisfied. And the question that stops him cold is not about money or success.
For whom am I toiling? Why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?
That man is not lazy. He is not a failure. He is productive, and he is alone, and he has no idea who any of it is for.
The most quoted passage about community in scripture is the answer to a portrait of a lonely man who cannot stop working.
I read that this morning, one day after finding out my well was loneliness, and I had to sit down.
Dig Deeper
Watch the progression across those four verses, because it moves.
It starts with work. Two get a better return than one. That is efficiency, and it is the mildest version of the argument.
Then falling. If one goes down, the other lifts them, and pity the one who falls with nobody there.
Then cold. Two lying together stay warm. This is travel language. Solomon is picturing people on a road, sleeping rough, in a world where the night could kill you.
Then attack. One can be overpowered. Two can stand.
Convenience, then injury, then cold, then danger. By the end he is not describing friendship as pleasant. He is describing it as the difference between making it and not.
Then the last line, and it does something strange.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. He has been talking about two the entire time, and then a third appears out of nowhere and he never explains it.
It gets applied to marriage constantly, with God as the third strand, and that reading is beautiful and I do not want to take it from anyone.
But notice what the text actually does. It refuses to name the third. It just says that when there is one more than you were counting on, the thing does not break easily.
I have eight names in my journal this morning.
Not one of them was in my plan.
Reflection
Write honestly or do not write at all. Nobody is reading this but you.
- Who has helped shape the person I am today?
- Who believed in me before I believed in myself?
- Am I letting people support me, or am I still carrying everything and calling it strength?
- Is there someone I need to thank and have never actually thanked?
- Who has God separated me from, and was some of that clearing rather than punishment?
Prayer
Father,
Thank You for never asking me to walk this alone, even in the seasons when I insisted on trying.
Thank You for every person You sent. The ones who stayed, the ones who were only there for a season, and the ones who had every reason not to show up and showed up anyway.
Help me recognize who is walking beside me today.
Give me the humility to receive help, and the courage to be the one who offers it.
And where You have separated me, help me trust that You were making room rather than taking something away.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
Camino Challenge
Think back over the last three or four months. Not your whole life. Just the last hundred days or so.
Who did something small that changed something in you?
Someone who texted something kind on a bad day. Someone who posted a memory that made you smile. Someone who showed up at the exact moment, probably without knowing it was the exact moment.
Write their name down.
Then send one text or one voice memo telling them.
The voice memo is better and it is harder, which is usually how you know. Ten seconds of your actual voice does something a text cannot.
One more step today.
Is somebody you know struggling right now? What is one kind thing you could do this week?
Some days a text, a thought, or an invite is all a person needs.
Mine was breakfast at Cracker Barrel.
Tomorrow We'll Walk…
Tomorrow, finally, the yellow arrows.
They are newer than almost anyone realizes, and the reason they are yellow is not what you would guess. It comes down to one priest, one car, and what was left over in the bucket.
We will talk about why pilgrims trust marks painted by a stranger they will never meet, and about the rule every experienced pilgrim knows for what to do when you have not seen an arrow in a while.
Who has walked with you through something hard? Write me back below. I read every one.
Don't quit in the quiet.
Sharing love,
~ Jenn