Every Monday I participate in a weekly Examen group through the online community I belong to called the Light House. It is a lovely community of contemplative woman who gather to help one another share our light more fully in the world and cultivate our contemplative practices (learn more about the Light House here).

In our Examen time we take time to look over the past week for the gifts and graces while also acknowledging the difficulties and challenges we have encountered. Then we listen in to the invitations that might be asking for our attention and we spend time reflecting on how we will tend those invitations in the coming week. It is a rhythm of listening and noticing to our individual lives as well as to the lives of the other woman in the group.

We rotate through the leadership and we all have our own unique way of working through the process. Yesterday the woman leading us asked, in honor of the new moon, to take time to look back over the last month and not just the week. To gaze at it and see what had unfolded. As I was reflecting on I wrote this down “We have traveled lots of miles in the past month, lots of scenery and new things, we are coming into our skin, preparations are being made and each one is bringing us closer to our new life”.

I found myself drawn to the word “preparations” and wrote it down again on its own. It felt like a very welcomed word and I made room for it to come and sit beside me. I was able to discern that it was asking me to embrace it as a way of naming this time that we are in. I have been calling it a time of waiting - a liminal time. But what if I had got it all wrong? What if this period of time is really a time of preparation for what is to come. What if each step we are taking is a necessary task in preparing for that new thing about to happen?

As soon as I wrote the word preparation down in my Examen journal I felt a wide door open up in my heart and I knew that I found a way of embracing this time we are in. A word that had a usefulness to it - a purpose.

All good adventures and journeys require a time of preparation. You don’t go climb Mount Everest without first preparing, sometimes years in advance.

We have always spent a great deal of time before any of our adventures preparing. We spend time reading up about the places we are going, pick up novels that are set in the location. We watch movies and travel shows about the places we will be visiting. We practice learning some of the language that is spoken so we will have some handy phrases when we arrive.

Over the course of months we map out a route, we research places to stay, things we want to eat and see. We pack and repack our backpacks over and over again until they are just right.

To be honest, we relish this part of the process. There have been times when I was sad for the journey to actually begin because it meant the time of preparation was over. No more research, no more imaginings.

I love preparing. I lean into it with gusto.

Last Sunday we decided to sleep in and make a lovely sabbath breakfast. I cut up the strawberries and the bananas. Jason mixed up the waffle batter and made waffles in our teeny tiny waffle maker. I broke out the bacon and cooked a few pieces to go along. The whole process took a good hour to prepare. And then we sat down together and enjoyed what we had made. We took our time. We ate slowly. We talked about the day ahead and what we had planned and what needed to get done. When we had finished our cups of coffee and tea we got up and washed the dishes. Cleaned up the kitchen and the counters. The preparations before and after were as much part of the meal as the food itself.

That same Sunday we visited with a couple across from us in the campground. They had a new RV and were out for their shakedown cruise. They had recently downsized from a huge fifth wheel that had multiple slide outs and was over 34 feet long. They wanted something smaller, and had considered the teardrop trailer that we have, but decided it was a too small. We laughed and said we were getting ready to up size to a 30 foot trailer as we needed more space and that we were waiting for our Airstream to be delivered later next month. Turns out that they had also looked at Airstreams but discovered the waiting list is now well into 2022. They said how lucky we were to have ordered our trailer when we did.

All good things take preparation.

It seems we are right on schedule. Fortunate that our house sold so quickly so we could get our Airstream ordered last spring before the wait list got even longer. Fortunate to have all this time to get things in order since we had no idea we would need so much time - but somehow the universe did.

We are in the final stages of our preparations. Soon it will be time to leave on the journey. I am eager to get going but I am also going to lean into this time. See if I can relish it - knowing that each step we take will ensure that we are fully ready to go in September.