I've never been good with directions. Before GPS came along, I struggled. It's a wonder I've never gotten lost on the way to my mailbox.
Most of today I walked alone. So you've probably already guessed how it went. I got turned around more than once.
The Camino is well marked, and the Francés more than any of it. Yellow arrows on walls, on curbs, on the back of a road sign. You don't have to work at finding them. But I'd get caught up in a thought, or in the middle of a prayer, and walk right past one. It never took long to be corrected. A local would point me back without my asking, and sometimes before I knew I was wrong. Or I'd stop, pull out my phone, and let the app turn me around.
Then something struck me, and I haven't been able to shake it.
On the days I walk with other people, I never take a wrong turn. Not once. Whether it's just two of us or a group of eight, it makes no difference. Nobody strays.
It isn't that the markers change. I do.
That's my life, laid out on a road of El Camino. When I carry a burden by myself and I don't ask for help, I tend to make bad decisions. When I'm not walking beside Laura, I drift. Not all at once, but a few degrees at a time, which is all it takes.
We aren't meant to do life alone. A cross is meant to be shared. And we're meant to keep watch over each other, so that the moment one of us walks past the arrow, someone is there to say so.
I reached my destination of Nájera today. But I didn't get there by myself.
