It is always a challenge to travel, there is always the element of insecurity, and the fantastic thing about it is how it allows us to learn essential life lessons and how it blows us right into the here and now.
When I was at the Friday market in El Vendrell for the last time before we left, I soaked all of the joy of Spain into my heart.
The people,
The highly vibrating market
The little café where I get the freshly roasted coffee
The farmers and their fantastic produce
The small conversations with the merchants.
I walk with gratitude and love. It truly is a beautiful base we have in Catalunia, and I miss it every time we go.
But we have to go.
We are nomads with two home countries.
Denmark with our language, culture, friends, and family.
Catalunia with our new friends, sunshine, new language, and the life we deliberately created based on a red bus.
So we went.
Working with fear
During these times, it is confronting to travel.
We - especially I - get to learn important lessons on faith.
I made the mistake of informing myself of the actual restrictions on traveling and almost had a nervous breakdown. It made me very afraid of traveling, and I had to work with fear again. We sometimes do in this life.
Fear is not a friend.
Fear does not belong in my life.
But living a courageous life does not mean we never feel fear. Sometimes we do.
To me, living a courageous life means choosing not to act based on fear.
I sometimes feel fear, and I take it seriously, inviting the lesson it offers, but I do not act or plan based on fear.
This time I was afraid of crossing borders. I have a thing with this based on an experience from when I was young. In 1988 we went to Russia, and some guerilla stopped us in no man's land, and then the real border police a little later. Both groups had machine guns and were very intimidating. I was a teenager, and it scared the shit out of me.
Border police still makes me very uncomfortable. Anyway. I am working on letting go of this, but it did put me totally off this time.
It was confronting to drive through Europe with faith, as the worldly vibration is strong, and I fall easily into the fear. I had to pull myself out of it many, many times during the trip.
Do you have faith?
And God told me, he was testing me. I rarely get answers in the form of words, but this time I did. I asked in my meditation: What is going on? Why do I keep doing this, falling into the worry and finding my way back into the light? And I got the clear answer: I am testing you.
So I decided to pass the test.
And I realized, every time I felt the snatch of worry crawl back into my mind, I would look out the window and see amazing birds of all sorts.
They would remind me.
I need not worry; I only need trust.
How amazing this life is; when we start believing in it, I am very often blown away by how clear the answers are, when I ask the questions, how much light there is on the road in front of us, if I look for it.
Driving through Europe
So we drove. We drove out of Spain and into France. Found a hotel midway and had a good night's sleep and a shower, enjoyed the sunlight outside in the morning making coffee and breakfast and moved on to drive through the rest of France to Luxembourg and into Germany.
In Germany, we visited some truly outstanding and inspiring friends, stayed two nights to enjoy some sun and the light of friendship. Then we got up and drove to Denmark.
We have been driving this route many times now, and the fantastic thing is: it felt so much shorter as we were focused only on borders, just grateful every time we passed one, eager to get to the next. 2.200 kilometers on the road, and we did have a good time. Plus, we got to learn this again and again: Have no fear, have faith.
Have no fear, have faith.
We get to learn it over and over. From a religious point of view, it is powerful, and even from a pragmatic point of view, it is useful: There is nothing earned from being afraid.
We need to figure out:
What do we want to do?
What is the right thing to do?
What did we come here to do?
What does God intend with us?
And then do it.
Fear will be a good signal, an alarm bell, we can listen to and ask: what do I need to learn here? But as long as it sounds, the alarm bell of fear, we stop.
We do not walk, decide, act in any way.
We stop to figure out what is on the plate.
Does fear has anything to tell us?
Most often, it does not.
Most often, it comes from some wrong directions or discourses, from another worldview, another "reality," and we can learn over and over that we need to stay with our truth.
We need to stay in our own direction and keep walking without fear, with faith.
With Love
Cecilie Conrad
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