Dearest Friends + Family, 

I hope this note finds each of you well, and enjoying the beauty + new life that Spring beckons us toward. 

As most of you know, I have been on a winding, at times bumpy, and beautiful journey the last year. I closed my Denver chapter in June, took a sabbatical in California over the summer, and then embarked on a new adventure in Grand Rapids. My Michigan chapter ended up being short, but deeply meaningful, and in many ways it felt like it was supposed to be a quiet, reflective, fallow season -- a season for letting the soil of my heart rest; preparing for future seasons of planting and harvesting. This fallow season has been marked by waves of intense anxiety and surrendering to the stripping away of all that my identity has been rooted in for the last several years. It has been painful yet purpose-filled, and I feel grounded in the hope that I will emerge from this season as a more whole + true version of myself. 

I share all of that to provide some context for the next venture I'm embarking on -- a pilgrimage on El Camino de Santiago. I have dreamed, read, researched, and longed to walk the Camino for almost a decade. The idea of a pilgrimage -- "a transformative journey into a sacred center full of hardships, darkness, and peril" -- has called to the deepest parts of me. But life always seems too full, and there have always been too many things competing for my time and attention, to carve out a month to walk 500 miles across Spain... :) 

Rather than fighting against the unknown, unsettled season I've found myself in, I have felt a profound invitation to embrace this unique moment in my life. A Selah moment --  the Hebrew word for a voluntary and intentional pause for reflection. 

I am entering into this pilgrimage with a deep sense of expectancy and curiosity. For the last year, Jeremiah 6:16 has been an anchor in my sea of uncertainty -- 

Stand at the crossroads and look;
Ask for the ancient paths,
Ask where the Good Way is, 
And walk in it,
And you will find rest for your souls. 

And, so, I will walk the ancient paths; the Good Way... and I will pray... and listen... and walk some more :) ... and I'm believing I will find rest for my soul in unexpected ways.  

Even though I am embarking on this journey alone, I will be carrying all of you with me. You have shaped and influenced my life in such profound ways, and I wouldn't be at this point in my journey without the guidance, wisdom, love, encouragement, and belief each of you have invested in me. 

And now I would be honored to have you join me -- in spirit, or in person if anyone is up for an adventure ;) -- on this next leg of my journey. I will be starting my walk in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France one month from today on May 10th, and I will wrap up my 33-day journey on June 11th (if all goes according to plan) in Santiago de Compostela. 

If you would like to support my pilgrimage financially, I've created this GoFundMe page to cover my hostel + pilgrim's meal expenses along the Camino. And I'll think of you as I enjoy a meal or lay down to rest in some small Spanish village after a long day of walking :)

I'm hoping to send a few email updates along my journey, as WiFi access allows. I won't have my cell service turned on, so I'll be reliant on emails and iMessages to keep in touch. 

For now, I'll leave you with this poem that a dear friend shared with me -- another grounding anchor in this season. 

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin


Love you all dearly.
Daisy