Sharing your dreams

When I was on the Camino I walked for 3 days with a young American woman. She was on her way to one of the biggish towns and had heard that I was going to turn what should be a 2 day trek into a three day trek – which suited her down to the ground and she asked if she would walk with me.

It turned out that she would then bus it from this town to the next city where she was meeting her husband and they would then walk the last 100km or so to Santiago together. Her husband was flying in from the US.

She was nice to be with, very open and not afraid to talk about herself. She had a hugely interesting job and had lived in a number of foreign countries because of it – both her and her husband work for a large Aid organisation in the US. They don’t go in just when the earthquake or disaster has happened; they go in a bit later and begin the task of rebuilding – so at times, they may be in a location for months or even years. For example this organisation is still in Haiti – which has a barrel of problems that seem to be insoluble….

However: I asked her how this affected her marriage. Because sometimes they may be posted to the same place, but other times they are in separate locations, and because the work is pretty stressful, which also takes a toll on their marriage.

What Christina said has stuck with me….she said sure, they have problems, they have to have counselling anyway because of the job but when things had got a bit

hectic with their marriage they immediately went for counselling. She says they have a really good marriage (15 years long) and they love each other and this was something neither of them wanted to give up. They had to work it out. Which they appear to have done! Part of living successfully the way they do is to always be very open with each other – especially about what they want to do. She spoke about how they deal with their dreams, their expectations, and their resolutions. She said they consciously make time to talk about what they want to do. They stick their ideas on the fridge so they know that something is brewing and the dreams/ideas are there as a reminder; then over dinner they talk about them. They talk about what they can do and how they can help each other achieve that dream. The dream becomes a team effort – not losing sight that this is one persons dream and that person is in charge of making the dream happen - but there also is someone on the sidelines encouraging, supporting, making allowances if need be. I guess you could call it a ‘dream team’.

She said The Camino had been her dream for 3 years. She had to save up her leave and also money; and she wanted to do it by herself. She said they both made sacrifices (like no long weekends or short holidays together) but she said the very best thing was, a few weeks before she left for Spain, her husband asked if he could join her for the last week - she knew then that she would be able to complete The Camino….