Day 21: Portomarin - Palas de Rei

Day in one word: loss

Today an old friend of Ana's and Gyeong-Sun's showed up and walked a while with me. Her name is Agnes (Hungary), and the first thing I learned from the others is that she loses something every day. It proved true. We had to turn around for her water bottle twice. :-) I found it super easy to talk to her as we processed a lot together, from her fiancé to our job situations to family to faith. At one point in the conversation, we got into the story of when my parents' house burned down two years ago. Ana, who is a grief counselor, was all ears and asked a ton of questions, and we spent a good chunk of today's camino on the topic of loss.

In honor of Agnes' idiosyncrasy, here are some of the things I've lost so far on the camino:
- 4 clothes pins, not sure if people have stolen them or if I keep forgetting them
- my favorite socks, just this morning too; I'm very sad
- the rubber off the bottom of my walking poles; they're very loud now
- some weight; not sure how much, but I'm in the verge of needing a belt to keep my pants up
- any inhibitions about sleeping/drooling/snoring in front of 50 other people (though I still change in the bathroom)
- the need to check Facebook multiple times a day
- any beauty my feet may have had (not much, but still, it's gone!)

Of course, there are some more meaningful losses I'm contemplating these days, too. It was hard not to think of Jonathan in Pamplona since that was one of this last adventures. Or Aunt Barb who would've been 60 tomorrow. Or Grandpa Chaucer who left us on July 15. Many people walk the camino in order to lose something - uncertainty, timidity, weight, boredom, distance from God. The flip side of that is that we are usually trying to find something to fill that space as well. Some losses are temporary while others can never be replaced, but each loss can be significant and warrants some reflection. No matter its size or importance, I guess my hope is still to find God in the midst of it. Nothing will ever fill as He can.