The First Step
The first step in any pilgrimage is to recognize that one is, in fact, a pilgrim.
The first step in any pilgrimage is to recognize that one is, in fact, a pilgrim. All of us. Whether we believe it or not, desire it or not, or understand the ultimate aim of our pilgrimage, we are all pilgrims.
To be a pilgrim means to be journeying in foreign lands, a wayfarer.
At some point in my life I began to understand that this world is not my home. I did not understand that from that point I became a wanderer, someone who, like Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress was searching for the Celestial City, and who would be forever discovering along the way the points of Grace that have become my mile markers.
This journal’s title derives from a blog that I kept for about 11 years while I was homeschooling my children called The Accidental Homeschooler. I gave it that title because homeschooling was a thing I said I’d never do, and then I found myself pursuing that lifestyle, seemingly by accident, all the way through from K-12. I always had the sense that I was sort of “dropped” there—that if someone had told me that was going to be my career I would have run like Jonah to Joppa. But that is a story for another day…
I name this journal The Accidental Pilgrim because the place I find myself on the journey in life is someplace I could never have foreseen. The points of grace along the way that brought me to this place feel absolutely inexplicable.
I have no reason to think that anyone would have much interest in reading the story of my pilgrimage of faith and life unless they find themselves on a similar road and have need of the companionship that fellow pilgrims’ stories might bring. Yet, I have a curious need to write it all down. I need to gather the frayed ends of the various threads that have been spun along the way and make some kind of sense of them. I need to set them in order.
So, welcome. For this moment we are companions on the way. I hope your sojourn here is made better by this intersection of our lives.