by Patrick Gray
For months, the cane Patrick made for me and a pair of orthotic leg braces had provided enough support to keep me on my feet and mobile. But as I labored to get my legs underneath me on the walkway, I wasn’t sure I could even get up again.
Struggling to my feet and using my cane for balance, I managed to take a few more steps before I fell again—this time even harder. Twice now, in less than six feet, my body had hit the ground, and my legs felt weaker than ever.
Gathering my wits one more time and mustering all my strength, I slowly rose to my knees. Pulling on my cane for some semblance of leverage, I was able to get myself vertical again.
You can do this, I whispered under my breath, but I wasn’t convinced by my words.
One more step and down I went again. Tears of anger, frustration, and pain welled up in my eyes and dampened my cheeks.
Fighting back the lump in my throat, I reached out, one arm at a time, and pushed up against the cool concrete beneath me, dragging myself the remaining twenty feet to the front porch.
Looking up at the weathered gray gate, I reached my arm around the corner of one of the pillars framing the entrance and heaved my body onto the stoop. Catching my breath, I looked out into the silent, dark night and tried to make sense of things.
This can’t be happening. Not yet. I’m not ready for this.
Never had I felt more angry, broken, and alone.
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— PATRICK —
With constant traffic speeding past us and everyone on high alert, Ted and I are second-guessing our decision to take the N-120 route. Even the slightest drift toward the roadway threatens Justin with severe injury—or worse. But with everyone working together, we proceed with caution, and several hours after what has proved to be one of the worst decisions of the trip, we arrive in the town of Santo Domingo de la Calzada.
With the dirt of the trail now under our feet, I am filled with relief, and my pulse slows as the stress of the day gradually recedes.
We stop at the first albergue we reach, but find the only beds available are on the second floor and there’s no elevator. Though frustrating, this isn’t something we can’t overcome. We ask the woman behind the counter whether there are any albergues in town with beds on the first floor.
She shakes her head but directs us to one nearby that has an elevator. Rank with days of sweat, our clothes need laundering, and we’re hungry after our long, stressful day. Justin opts for a nap, so I transfer him onto his bed for some shut-eye, while Ted and I hatch a plan to launder clothes and prepare dinner.
Because our albergue, like most, has a kitchen for pilgrims to use, we decide to cook tonight. While I find a small laundromat, Ted heads to the local supermercado to buy some food. When we return to our room, Justin is awake and ready for dinner. Dropping off our clean clothes, we load him into his chair and head to the kitchen.
As we join thirty pilgrims—including Carl and Deborah—from ten countries, the excitement is palpable. While Ted and I cook a simple dinner of spaghetti and sausage, Justin meets a multitude of new people. Stories and jokes are shared in multiple languages—with punch lines in English, Spanish, Italian, German, and Japanese. Bottles of wine are passed from pilgrim to pilgrim, the food is communal, and laughter is abundant. Seeing so many different cultures and so many walks of life represented, I can’t help but smile.
I lean back in my seat and watch as people embrace the evening with joy and laughter. No one is left out, and everyone here is part of something bigger than themselves.
With bellies full and eyes heavy, we clean up our dishes and prepare to head back to our room. Justin wants to take a shower, but getting him into one is often difficult because of the size of his chair and the fact that he can’t stand up. In Los Arcos, we borrowed a bistro chair, which we then used to carry Justin into the narrow shower stall. In Bayonne, we used a desk chair to get Justin into the bathroom, and I transferred him onto the toilet while I repositioned the chair inside the shower so that Justin would have something to sit on. Then I lifted him from the toilet onto the chair. We followed the same procedure in Estella, but there we had no choice but to use a leather chair. Our room tonight has a large enough shower, but nothing to sit on.
As we look for another chair to abuse, Justin says, “I would love to have just one shower where you didn’t have to put me in a chair and drag me into the bathroom.”
Carl overhears us discussing our game plan and says, “Hey guys, Deborah and I have an accessible room, and you’re more than welcome to use the shower.”
Justin looks at Carl and says, “Seriously?”
Carl just smiles and nods his head.
“That would be amazing!” Justin says.
Equipped with our tiny travel towels, soap, and a change of clothes, we make our way to the only accessible room we have seen in an albergue—and for the first time on our trip, a shower that has a place for Justin to sit. After I transfer him to a seat far more comfortable than a bistro chair, Justin asks if I can let him soak for a bit before washing him up. He makes the most of this opportunity and enjoys the warm, clean water.
Now showered and in bed, Justin is close to asleep, Ted is already snoring, and I begin getting ready for the morning. Every night, I set out clothes for Justin to make the morning routine more efficient, check the wheelchair for any loose nuts and bolts, shower Justin when we have the opportunity, and take my own shower as well. Before the sun rises tomorrow, I’ll be up first to get dressed and fill our water bottles and the reservoir in Justin’s backpack. After brushing my teeth and making sure our bags are packed, I’ll wake Justin, help him use his urinal, get him dressed—while enduring whatever song he has for me—transfer him from the bed to his chair, and brush his teeth, and we’ll be off.
All this, in addition to each day’s walking and pushing, is making me a kind of tired I didn’t know existed. But tonight feels different. I have a sense of gratitude I haven’t felt before. The challenge of the day with so much traffic, the fact of Ted leaving us tomorrow, and the communal dinner we experienced tonight have me thinking about what it means to face the challenges of life alone, to take on the unexpected in isolation. I wasn’t designed for a solitary existence. Though I am so very tired, there is an underlying energy in my bones, an energy that comes from the presence and help of others.
The unexpected is just that—unexpected! We can’t plan for it . . . we can’t predict it . . . we can’t be ready for it in any way. Often the unforeseen events in life come with few answers or no clear way out. Deborah’s MS offers no way out, and Justin’s disease will eventually take his life. But just like the highway, these unexpected challenges can be faced and life can be lived, despite the darkness. We just have to make sure we don’t face them alone.
Ted has helped us get this far. Christie, Lynda, and John have offered to help in the coming days. The many pilgrims sitting, breaking bread, and enjoying wine tonight remind me of what the church is supposed to mean, what it is supposed to represent. We are a community—or at least we should be—where all are welcome, all are loved, and the unexpected challenges of life are faced with others at our side.
13THE LIES WE TELL OURSELVES
— JUSTIN —
TODAY IS AN EMOTIONAL DAY. As Patrick and I head toward Belorado, accompanied by our new friends Christie, John, and Lynda, Team Ted is getting ready to return to Idaho—and just in time. Over the past forty-eight hours, his limp has increased, and he is visibly in pain. Even so, Patrick and I are reluctant to see him go. Ted has been instrumental to our journey in so many ways. With his impending departure, we realize how much he has sacrificed to help us when we needed it most.
The past ten days have been filled with so many memories—the mud and false summits in the Pyrenees, the broken wheel in Pamplona, Patrick checking out a man in a dress, traversing poppy fields, running with bulls, eating dinner with the other pilgrims. Ted helped create each of these memories. Starting today, every Camino story will be one t
hat Ted isn’t a part of. This is tough to swallow. But though he may not be with us from here until the end, the days up until now have made every day in the future possible. I suppose life is this way. The events of our past and the relationships that have gone before make new things possible, good or bad.
Ted starts the day walking with us for one last stretch of the Camino, but after a few hours, his part of the journey has officially come to an end. When Robin finds an access point where he can get his car close to the trail, we all stop for a round of good-byes.
Patrick locks the brakes to my chair, unclips from the harness behind me, and gives Ted a bear hug filled with more gratitude than any words could ever express.
“Thank you! Thank you so much for everything you’ve done.”
Releasing Patrick, Ted smiles. “You bet!”
He then comes over to me and bends down to wrap his arms around my shoulders. I often miss being able to return hugs, but never more than I do right now.
“Love you, brother,” I whisper to him.
As he walks toward the car, he turns to face us. “Love you guys. Thanks for letting me be a part of this.”
With one last wave to everyone in the group, Ted crawls into Robin’s car with his backpack and is on his way to the airport.
The dynamic of our group has suddenly shifted. One of the most familiar faces in our lives is gone, and we’re now accompanied by three people we hardly know. But there is a certain mystery to the Camino, one that often turns complete strangers into friends by the end of the day.
The combination of being completely unplugged from the stresses of work, computers, and phones causes some kind of mental reboot. With no meetings, no projects, and no commitments, people tend to open up and provide details of their lives you wouldn’t normally expect to hear after just meeting. Eight hours of walking together provides ample time for sharing.
In addition to the abundance of quality time and minimal distractions, people on the Camino tend to be seekers of openness and honesty. They embrace a community in which relationships are treasured. This is an environment where pilgrims feel safe. For some reason, Christie has found that safe place with me.
“So, Christie, tell me about yourself,” I say as she begins pushing me down the trail.
“Umm . . . uh . . . I don’t know where to start,” she stammers.
After a moment of thought, she decides to start at the beginning, zeroing in on the darkest and most painful moments of her childhood. This soon leads to stories of self-destructive tendencies. As a young girl, she struggled with crippling fears and insecurities and developed an eating disorder. She suffered temptations toward self-harm and became suicidal. Over time, Christie allowed her identity to be swallowed by the darkest experiences of her childhood. She could only see herself through the lenses of her depression, fears, and insecurities. She believed so many lies about who she was and who she is that she couldn’t see through them to recognize the amazing God-breathed creation she was meant to be.
“For the first time, I am beginning to see there is more to me than my past,” she says as she continues to push me. “I think I’m here to let go of a lot of my darkness.
“For years, I have locked away the pain; but here on the Camino I’m learning to tell a different story. These horrible things may have happened to me, but they will not define me!”
As Christie continues to push me at a steady rate, I tell her, “You’re right! The past doesn’t have to define us, but we can’t face it alone.”
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— PATRICK —
Listening to Christie’s openness and honesty with Justin, I am flooded with memories of my own self-destructive tendencies.
I had a very privileged childhood. We were never wealthy—in fact, we were quite poor—but my sister and brothers and I were always loved, taken care of, and never went hungry. Justin and his brother and sister grew up in similar circumstances—our homes were safe places and our parents set a good example for us. Unfortunately, this didn’t mean I was immune to the world’s destructive forces.
Every child is bound to have a brush with some form of pain, whether initiated by an outside force, such as abuse or neglect, or by some other unhealthy choice. We all, at some point, have made decisions that negatively impact us. For me, this started very young.
The first time I saw a picture of a naked woman, I was seven years old. I was playing in the backyard at a friend’s house when we heard the sound of his dad’s car pulling out of the garage. As his dad drove away, my friend asked me if he could show me a secret. Intrigued, I followed him inside. We walked up the stairs to his parents’ room, and he slid open a closet door. Inside, we found his dad’s collection of Playboy and Penthouse magazines. There were stacks of literally hundreds of them, many dating back to the 1970s.
Eyes wide with curiosity, I began to thumb through the images. Not knowing what to expect, my curiosity soon became insatiable. A sense of guilt washed over me, but that was quickly stifled by a more powerful draw—what comes next?
Over the next several months, my friend and I kept track of which magazines we had looked through so we could get to the ones we had yet to see. This exploration of the female anatomy continued off and on over the next several years. By the time I was nine, some of the images in the newer magazines depicted explicit sex. Nothing was left to the imagination.
My initial curiosity wasn’t sexual in nature—after all, I was only seven—but by the time I was in middle school, I thought about pornography constantly. My ideas of what a man and a woman should be to one another, how they should treat each other, had been heavily influenced by the love and respect my parents showed each other, but a dark and deceptive voice was growing louder.
When I was thirteen, I smoked marijuana and drank alcohol for the first time. I enjoyed the way they both made me feel. My mind felt free and boundless each time I got high. Often when I wasn’t with Justin, I would go for walks to smoke a joint or I would seek out parties or gatherings where weed and booze were likely to be available. Sometimes these parties included pornographic movies. By the time I was in high school, I had a few adult films on VHS stashed away in my bedroom under my mattress or at the back of one of my drawers. They often sat next to a bag of green buds waiting to be rolled into joints or stuffed into a bong. I found ways to get high as often as I could, and eventually I struck a deal with a few guys in town to deliver weed for them in exchange for a free supply for myself. I experimented with other drugs, but marijuana was always my first choice.
Throughout high school, I often had some weed in my possession, and though Justin knew about my drug use, I rarely did anything around him. Not because he looked down on me, but he was just never particularly drawn to it himself. Pornography, however, was another story.
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— JUSTIN —
Second grade should be a time when kids learn how to write stories and master addition and subtraction, rather than being exposed to pornography. I was a smart kid and had no problem with second grade math or writing, but my mind was often filled with images of naked women. A boy in my class had stolen a magazine from his dad’s collection, and our curiosity about the female body drove us to peruse the images with some frequency.
Though it seemed innocuous at first, and my understanding of what I was seeing was limited, a quiet longing to see more was growing in my mind. With the turn of each page, I became more thoroughly intoxicated by the airbrushed beauty depicted there. By the time I turned twelve, I had a pocket calendar of topless women hidden in my room. But that wasn’t enough. I felt a growing desire to see more—a hunger that was hard to explain and even harder to satisfy.
By early high school, what I was seeing in those explicit magazines was undermining what my parents had taught me about how women should be treated and respected. Every picture and every lustful thought polluted my view of my female friends, fellow students, and later, my coworkers. I explained away my compulsive desire, telling myself
, It’s okay; it’s human nature to be attracted. But in convincing myself that what I was experiencing was normal, I was giving the secret I carried more weight and more control.
Every time I sought to satisfy my “need,” I could feel the grip of pornography tightening. The tighter the grip, the darker the secret; the darker the secret, the more power my addiction had over me, and the greater my need. For years, both Patrick and I struggled with this addiction independently.
We were in college before we knew about each other’s struggle, and it would be several more years before we reached the level of honesty and vulnerability we are experiencing here on the Camino. Christie’s struggles may differ—the lies she’s believed are not the same ones I’ve believed—but I see a common thread. Christie, Patrick, and I have all exchanged truth for lies. Christie is walking into this realization afresh.
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— PATRICK —
With the sun high above us, I am now pushing Justin, and Christie is walking alongside. We continue our conversation, exploring questions of self-worth and our thoughts on overcoming the struggles of life. We all agree that we must embrace the truth that no matter what we have done or what has been done to us, we all have value and can choose to be a part of creating a community that offers safety and love.
Turning to Justin, Christie asks, “Do you think there’s a difference between this kind of community and church?”
Justin mulls over her question before answering.
“Community like this is what church was meant to be, what it should be,” Justin says. “But unfortunately, it is often not what the church is.”