One hundred | Day 100 of my 2023 Journal

This is journal entry number one hundred.

I have loved to share our story and journey over the first 100 days of the year, and I am happy to continue writing. My wonderful husband just recovered my old websites; now, I can collect and share everything I have written about parenting, traveling, and life over the last ten years.

This morning I walked to the local organic shop, thinking about life. We are completely exhausted, all five of us, after nine days in Rome. My body is shouting at me; my children need sleep, stories, soup, and silence (as do the parents).

At the same time, I want to up my game. Not that I want more. I want to focus clearly. We visited Saint Pete’s Cathedral on our last day in Rome, and finally, we got to enter probably the largest Christian Church in the whole wide world.

It is, of course, very beautiful. And we did appreciate the area for prayer. Mass tourism is, in many ways, a beautiful thing, and we come to the church with a double purpose. We come to see the wonder of the building itself. And more importantly, we come to pray in one of the three main pilgrimage destinations within Christianity.

This year we might visit all three, as Santiago del Compostella is planned for September and Jerusalem is planned for November.

In the silent chapel, one message came clearly to me: Let peace fall upon you. In my life, it was my grandmother's words, and now God did a replay for me, reminding me of peace. I always pray for clarity, for help to find my way through life, and the message was to let peace enter.

So this is the challenge, let’s say, for the next 100 days. To let peace fall upon me.

A significant challenge as the plan for the next 100 days is to drive to Paris to see a friend, live for a month with other travelers in Normandie, visit Amsterdam shortly, move to Denmark to reconnect, spend two weeks in Sweden (my second home country), drive back to Normandie to attend a party before launching the adventure in England.

Let peace enter this plan. Somehow.

Love and light

Cecilie Conrad

# 100 of my 2023 writing challenge - Read them all here