Make Frustration a Tool, Not an Obstacle – “Walking the Camino” Returns to Spain

This is the fourth blog of a series of posts that I’ll be writing, reflecting on my Spain ventures to bring Walking the Camino even closer to home – Santiago de Compostela.

 

Yesterday, I started writing a blog post about what an important day December 19th is for me this year. I was writing about how on December 19th, 2013, I went skiing with extended family and on the third run of the day, I fell heard my right knee “pop” mid-air, and tore three ligaments in my right knee (my ACL, MCL and Lateral Meniscus). I was writing about how I had to have surgery in February and physical therapy intensively on both sides, foregoing the cross-country theatrical tour the documentary went on in the US & Canada this February-November.

 

I was starting to write about the lessons I learned from my journey this past year, lessons that have been inseparable from those I learned on my own Camino and lessons that would’ve been much more difficult to learn had I not been working for a documentary about it and had the support of a boss whose first comment was “do what you need to do to take care of YOU.”

 

Me and my extremely supportive boss, Lydia, after she pushed me up the ramp from the house boat to the parking lot in my little transport chair with my knee injury pre-surgery – January 2013

 

Then, yesterday, December 19th, 2014 proved to be a rather unfortunate date on the calendar for me once again.

 

I had to go to a meeting mid-blog, so I closed my computer and put it aside until after my meeting. I went for a walk, a 4 minute, 400 meter walk, from the Terra Nova Pilgrim House Welcome Center to the Hotel Dos Reis Católicos right next to the Cathedral:

 

 

And there, almost right in front of the Cathedral, where I had gone to the 12 noon Pilgrim’s Mass earlier that day, I fell. And I heard the same “pop” in my right ankle that I heard my right knee make when I was tumbling mid-air down the ski slopes last year on December 19.

 

 

After my meeting, I walked into the Pilgrim House Welcome Center, tears streaming down my face. The team instantly came to my aid, elevating my foot, getting me ice, water – my true home away from home and a community of people who I felt comfortable being vulnerable with. After calling my mom and I went to the clinic with Pilgrim House Social Media + Events Director/Christmas Decorator Extraordinaire Gale Sherry to get an x-ray. End result?

 

A hairline fracture. Funky arm-crutches and a boot – no weight for fifteen days. Doctor’s appointment with my orthopedist back in Portland on December 31st.

 

Yesterday during the entire time we were at the hospital, I just kept laughing about how comical the entire situation was. Because it was! One of those situations were you say, “But, really? Like, REALLY though??” Yes, really, Maggie Jane! The year to the date!

 

But behind that silly face and laughing at the humor of the situation is a pain inside of me, and frustration, and sadness. On its own, the pain in my knee, which isn’t 100% on its own, is a daily pain I’ve learned to live with. I’m just trying to stay out of the dark place where I found myself so often this past year with progress taking place little by little.

 

My leg in a machine that made it bend after surgery in February 2013 – but no more than 90 degrees for 6 weeks…!

 

I will need to likely get an MRI when I go home, so I don’t know what the whole outcome is yet. I don’t know if I have anything wrong with my ligaments, although it sure does feel like it. I can’t help but feeling like I’ve missed something, like this happened to confirm that I haven’t healed myself correctly at the core this past year through my knee injury, that there is still more I need to learn that I didn’t the first time around. I’ve learned to be at peace with uncertainty past year and trust the process, but maybe I haven’t really learned that as much as I am supposed to.

 

Now all I can do is take the lessons I’ve learned from this past year of brokenness, pain, recovery and healing and be still. And try and pray, knowing that everything is going to unfold as it’s supposed to and as it should. Easier said than done, though!

 

 

Yesterday, I was writing the following to everyone out of my own darkness that I’ve experienced this past year, something that would’ve been so much darker had it not been thanks to the constant support of the pilgrim community I was in touch with almost constantly:

I hope you know that whatever you are going through, you are strong, and brave, and courageous, and you will arrive at the mountaintop. You are also not alone – that I guarantee you.

 

Now I must apply this line to myself. I think of the saying in the documentary from the doctor who says “when we do the Camino too fast, when we are going against ourselves, when we aren’t in harmony with ourselves, that is when the Camino tells us to go more slowly.” My Camino taught me that it is okay to go slowly, that I need to go at my own pace. And because I didn’t want to go slowly when I returned home from my Camino, I understood my knee injury as a lesson in going slowly.

 

My life has been telling me to go slowly, and it was clear that was a big lesson I needed to continue to learn this past year. I don’t know what I need to learn right now. I do know that I must go within to discover what it is that I need to learn, and what I need to give myself in order to truly heal.

 

But for now, since I don’t know what I must learn, and I’m not quite sure what else to say, I must encourage myself to make frustration a tool and not an obstacle. And tell myself “Ultreia” – to keep moving forward with courage.