Day 18: The Iron Cross, or Cruz de Ferro

PW: Today, in early morning light, we walked to the Cruz de Ferro. Tradition has it that pilgrims bring a symbolic stone from their place of origin that represents a burden that they want relief from.

There were alot of memories left by pilgrims of significant people who’d passed. Trying to let go. It was a quietly emotional place to be.

My stone was something different. When our first house was destroyed by the February 2011 earthquake, many people came to help us get our possessions out of the house in the first few days, between aftershocks. One such person was 12 year old Joseph Hardman, talented son of Stephen and Clare Hardman. He found this stone in the destroyed house, with Hope written in it, and said to Libby, “I think you’ll be needing a lot of this now…”

Libby has kept the stone. I said given what she has been through this year and the possibility of an unknown future, I would like to place the stone at the Cross to amplify Hope in our lives. Even though Libby is doing everything possible to manage her diagnosis, as a family we still require a lot of Hope for a positive outcome and to always have Libby in our lives.

I placed the stone on the pile, said a prayer for her continued recovery and good health, and left in silence. I must say that I felt considerably lightened the rest of the day after dropping off the Hope stone at the Cruz de Ferro.Read more