Mile 20

It is almost midnight. Margaret just finally fell asleep a few minutes ago in our hotel room while I hid in the bathroom. After 10 weeks, I finally fried an electronic device...the white noise machine.

We are in Gibraltar. Tomorrow we plan to take a cable car to the rock and show our children the same monkeys (or children of monkeys) that harassed us on our backpacking trip over here 11.5 years ago. Mom and Dad are here. Dreams coming true.

24 hours ago we were sitting in a cave in the Sacromonte section of Granada, watching flamenco. Twenty-four  hours before that we were packing for our Southern Spain blitz after joining the students' Halloween masquerade off the Plaza del Sol. Twenty-fours days ago we were again packing clothes and belongings late into the night, preparing to leave Rome for Florence.

It sounds exciting. And it is. And I am deeply grateful for the work that we are doing and that I am doing. My work includes hanging out with some amazing college students, co-directing a project with my love, and reading N.T. Wright while listening to Lowland Hum and rolling though Spain. WHAT. Unlike Margaret, I never have to be bored and singsong "I'm Hongry" so that I'll have something to do. (Latest bored/hongry: the Alhambra).

I have seen so many amazing things: caves in the hills of Andalucia, Venice from the water, the Pantheon after the rain. A student take Margaret and play with her in an airport at 5:30am. An awareness of how to extend hospitality to one another grow and manifest itself in the group. Some truly amazing art, painted and sculpted and played and lived.

And so it seems a little ungrateful to wish to see just one more thing: but I am always doing it. And this week the new desire of my heart is to see the inside of my eyelids. We are all deeply tired. Jesse has likened it to the miles 20-23 of a marathon. Just kind of painful. I know it will be fine, and also that there is something to be gained from coming to the end of myself. I keep thinking I've come to the end, though, and then there's still more to lose.

In his chapter on the way of the wilderness, NT Wright emphasizes that while in the wilderness we must ask the right questions. What: What am I supposed to make of this? What can I do with this? and Who: Who am I? Who is God? Who does God say that I am , and say that he is? These are good things to ponder on extended bus rides.

We are in Gibraltar--a different kind of wilderness. Tomorrow afternoon we make the long journey together back to Madrid. And then a week until our pilgrimages! Amazing.

We are in mile 20. Past halfway, but still with a 10K left to go.



P.S. UPDATE: I hope you can join me in seeing the humor in this--after posting this entry I fell asleep sitting up with my computer on my lap. Wishes and dreams coming true, indeed! ;)