I booked a flight to Spain.

Just like that, the Camino de Santiago is no longer a name on my Bucket List, it’s an event on my summer calendar, written in black felt ink!! The Way of St. James has already begun as I leap out into the great unknown and dare to walk toward an adventure that has been calling my name for years.

“So you just decided one day that you were going to walk The Way?” they ask, usually with a chuckle.

Yep. I just decided it was time to go. Time to stop talking about my dreams and start doing them. Time to live beyond the daily surviving and keep on thriving.

The Camino has been on my Bucket List for many years now. I can’t quite remember if I first heard about it from a friend or Martin Sheen. 🙂 But the idea of walking through Spain on the same path taken by pilgrims since the Middle Ages (prayerfully passing through the same homeland ruled by some of my favorite Spanish kings and queens!) never left my adventurous heart. In fact, my desire to go has only increased with time and research. (Oh, and they have WINE FOUNTAINS. There’s that, too…)

The Bucket List itself began as more of a jar – a collection of hopes, dreams, challenges, and goals I began to set for myself as a teenager, all directed toward following God’s will in my adult life. It was helpful to have something to go “back” to when the questions of “where am I going?” and “who am I?” surfaced throughout my late teens and early twenties. It helped me to dig back into my heart when I wasn’t sure what to do next. It also gave me hope for a future of happy moments to come and adventures still yet to be discovered.

Friends might remember the day I was challenged to write down 100 goals for my future.  A rather lengthy list of practical and not-so-practical goals ensued, with hopes for my spiritual life, professional life, family life, etc. The Bucket List was filling up, and fast! (Authoring a blog may or may not have been on that list. . . I’ll let you decide. :))

The Camino de Santiago sure was on that list – somewhere between “attend Financial Peace University” and “see the Swiss Alps.”

Over the years, I’ve limited this dream with my own expectations. “I can’t go until I have time to do the whole thing,” I would tell myself. “I’ll go sometime in the future when I’m in-between jobs” or “I’ll go someday with my future husband.”  The idea of going on the Camino was always in the distant future.

And then, the reality of time hit me like a ton of bricks. Time truly is fleeting and does not contain the events we expect them to contain. Trying to match our dreams to our own expectations for the future are unrealistic and, in the end, adventures can often be missed for lack of the bigger things (health, finances,, etc.). As a friend of mine wisely advised, “Do things like this while you have the health and time.” 

So I looked to the Bucket List and decided it was time to take it off the shelf. To my surprise, I was able to cross off a few items – dreams I had experienced just by living my life. I also added a few new goals while I was at it.

Friends, I don’t know about you, but I do NOT want to live a life of looking at, building, and creating my Bucket List. I want to take that bucket off the shelf and dive into it’s contents! I want to touch, smell, and taste them, watching the guidebooks come to life. I want to make the mistakes, learn the lessons, pick myself up and try again.

And then, I want to go out and USE the bucket to learn more about God and the world He created around (and in) me. I’ll use it as a raft, a receptacle, a reservoir – in whatever way He permits me to nurture the experiences that make the life I’m living to be just that: alive.

I don’t want to just survive and strive to succeed each day in life, I want to live them out with joy and gratitude – everything from walking the Camino to learning how to play basketball.

Let’s not put off to tomorrow what we can do today. If you have yet to create a bucket list, I encourage you to do so, pronto! It’s never too late. If you have one, take it off the shelf and look inside. Have you already explored life through living? What adventure or goal do you want to take out for the todays that God is giving you to live? Let’s go out there and return our bucket to God with lessons learned, love grown, and joys multiplied!

Buen Camino!

*Some of you have asked that I document my Camino experience. Plans of posts, journaling, and even vloging are under consideration. 😉  In some ways, I think we could call this the first step of my Camino? Will you join me on the journey?*