Over the past week I was finally able to catch my breath.  Running non-stop from one errand to another -- preparing for this trip, looking for a new job, wrapping up my old job, and transitioning my work at church -- made it difficult to inhale fully. And it feels like full lungs are what I need to stand the air of the open road in a foreign country, almost fully alone. And I realized that it's the loneliness, more than anything else, which scares me about this trip. 

Whether my life is in transition or not, I throw myself into so many activities and obligations that my busyness thumps a steady beat, which drowns out anxiety.  I'm treading in shallow water as if there are snakes at the bottom. When I do slow enough to be still, there at the center of me is a deep loneliness, and a fear that loneliness will swallow me up.  "What will I do on this trip after the novelty wears off and I am alone in a foreign country?"  "What if this new job is not all it's cracked up to be?"  "What if I don't have the wherewithal to move and make a new community...again?"

Rather than continue treading, last night I resolved to sit with the anxiety long enough to feel its raw energy give way to prayer. I wondered what it would be like to trust God that in the midst of this fear, there is indeed love.  After all, one of the goals of this trip is to face the fears in my life as if God exists and cares for me, regardless of whether that eliminates any difficulties or not.  As a friend recently put it, "Won't it be cool to be on your own and feel yourself in the care of God?"

For me, pilgrimage is a physical way to place my life in the hands of God, to learn who and whose I am apart from all the obligations and attachments of my routine life. On the road in a foreign country, I am vulnerable and dependent on the hospitality of strangers and on providence. Uprooted from all that is familiar, I am given the choice of either seeking comfort at all cost or throwing myself into the wide open mercy of God to care for me, speak to me, mold me, and guide me -- not just to my destination but to a greater place of trust and surrender.

"What will it cost you," my priest asked me several weeks ago, "to let yourself be more fully claimed by God?"  That haunting yet exhilarating question is what makes this pilgrimage worth facing and feeling the fear that would otherwise keep me at home.