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Walking the Camino with faith and an insulin pump
Church in the Community - Media Release in the Herald: 17th August 2026
Source: TCN / Liza Troskie
Date Added: 2026-08-17
Category: General News, TCN News, Issues - General,
Date Added: 2026-08-17
Category: General News, TCN News, Issues - General,
My blood sugar was dropping...
I was alone in a forest somewhere between Porto, Portugal, and Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Ahead of me lay kilometres of uphill walking. For a moment, I wondered whether I had made the right decision to embark on this journey.
Portugal was in the grip of a heatwave. I removed my backpack and sat down. With trembling hands, I reached into my bag for another handful of peppermints.
For a moment I felt all alone in the forest. My insulin pump and my thoughts were my only companions – and, at that time, also my greatest challenge.
As I waited for my blood sugar to rise, my mind drifted back over 30 years of living with Type 1 diabetes. It means that every day is carefully planned.
Every meal, every kilometre walked, every change in temperature and every burst of physical exertion can affect blood sugar levels. On the Camino, there is no room for carelessness. Every day required careful planning, frequent monitoring and complete dependence on God.
Sitting in the forest, I realised that the journey had had started about 30 years earlier – the day I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, while I was seven months pregnant with our first child.
The diagnosis felt like a life sentence. I had to decide what I was going to do with it. Would I allow diabetes to define my identity? Would it be the lens through which other looked at me?
That day I made a decision that has guided my life ever since. I have diabetes. Diabetes does not have me.
I decided that diabetes would not steal my dreams or limit God's purpose for my life. Instead, I chose to live life to the fullest, trusting that God could still use me to fulfil the purpose for which He created me.
In January, a friend inspired me to walk the Camino – a nearly 300 kilometre ancient pilgrimage from Porto to Santiago de Compostela that thousands of people undertake every year.
My husband's and my first question was simple: "Can I really do this with Type 1 diabetes and an insulin pump?"
The answer came surprisingly quickly. The very next day I felt a deep conviction that I should go. Philippians 4:13 became my anchor: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."
For the next five months, everything revolved around the Camino. I trained with a fully loaded backpack, adjusted my diet and carefully weighed every item I wanted to take with me.
Only later did I realise that the heaviest weight was the invisible baggage I had carried in my heart for years. As my legs grew stronger, something inside me also became lighter.
Some mornings on the Camino I saw the sun rise over vineyards while church bells echoed through tiny villages. Other days I walked in silence, listening only to my footsteps and the rhythm of my breathing.
It was in that silence that I discovered how clearly God still speaks when we are willing to listen.
I looked again at the colourful peppermints in my hand. They would raise my blood sugar so that I could continue the journey. But while they strengthened my body, I realised that something else had changed.
Somewhere along the Camino, the burdens I had carried for so many years had quietly fallen away. My heart felt lighter. I saw people differently.
I noticed God's goodness in small moments that I might once have overlooked. The Camino had not only carried my feet forward. It had transformed something deep within me.
Sixteen days and almost 300 kilometres after leaving Porto, I finally placed my backpack down in the square in front of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.
In that moment, I realised I had never walked alone. There had always been three of us: God, me... and my insulin pump. Together we were far stronger than I could ever have been on my own.
That day in the forest, a handful of peppermints raised my blood sugar levels. But the greatest healing I experienced on the Camino wasn't in my body – it was in my heart.
If there is one lesson I brought home from the Camino, it is this: the greatest obstacles we face are often not the ones beneath our feet, but the ones we carry in our hearts.
Whether your burden is illness, fear, disappointment or loss, God is able to carry you far beyond what you ever imagined possible.
Sometimes all that is needed is the courage to take the very first step.
Liza Troskie
Victory Family Church Somerset East.
I was alone in a forest somewhere between Porto, Portugal, and Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Ahead of me lay kilometres of uphill walking. For a moment, I wondered whether I had made the right decision to embark on this journey.
Portugal was in the grip of a heatwave. I removed my backpack and sat down. With trembling hands, I reached into my bag for another handful of peppermints.
For a moment I felt all alone in the forest. My insulin pump and my thoughts were my only companions – and, at that time, also my greatest challenge.
As I waited for my blood sugar to rise, my mind drifted back over 30 years of living with Type 1 diabetes. It means that every day is carefully planned.
Every meal, every kilometre walked, every change in temperature and every burst of physical exertion can affect blood sugar levels. On the Camino, there is no room for carelessness. Every day required careful planning, frequent monitoring and complete dependence on God.
Sitting in the forest, I realised that the journey had had started about 30 years earlier – the day I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, while I was seven months pregnant with our first child.
The diagnosis felt like a life sentence. I had to decide what I was going to do with it. Would I allow diabetes to define my identity? Would it be the lens through which other looked at me?
That day I made a decision that has guided my life ever since. I have diabetes. Diabetes does not have me.
I decided that diabetes would not steal my dreams or limit God's purpose for my life. Instead, I chose to live life to the fullest, trusting that God could still use me to fulfil the purpose for which He created me.
In January, a friend inspired me to walk the Camino – a nearly 300 kilometre ancient pilgrimage from Porto to Santiago de Compostela that thousands of people undertake every year.
My husband's and my first question was simple: "Can I really do this with Type 1 diabetes and an insulin pump?"
The answer came surprisingly quickly. The very next day I felt a deep conviction that I should go. Philippians 4:13 became my anchor: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."
For the next five months, everything revolved around the Camino. I trained with a fully loaded backpack, adjusted my diet and carefully weighed every item I wanted to take with me.
Only later did I realise that the heaviest weight was the invisible baggage I had carried in my heart for years. As my legs grew stronger, something inside me also became lighter.
Some mornings on the Camino I saw the sun rise over vineyards while church bells echoed through tiny villages. Other days I walked in silence, listening only to my footsteps and the rhythm of my breathing.
It was in that silence that I discovered how clearly God still speaks when we are willing to listen.
I looked again at the colourful peppermints in my hand. They would raise my blood sugar so that I could continue the journey. But while they strengthened my body, I realised that something else had changed.
Somewhere along the Camino, the burdens I had carried for so many years had quietly fallen away. My heart felt lighter. I saw people differently.
I noticed God's goodness in small moments that I might once have overlooked. The Camino had not only carried my feet forward. It had transformed something deep within me.
Sixteen days and almost 300 kilometres after leaving Porto, I finally placed my backpack down in the square in front of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.
In that moment, I realised I had never walked alone. There had always been three of us: God, me... and my insulin pump. Together we were far stronger than I could ever have been on my own.
That day in the forest, a handful of peppermints raised my blood sugar levels. But the greatest healing I experienced on the Camino wasn't in my body – it was in my heart.
If there is one lesson I brought home from the Camino, it is this: the greatest obstacles we face are often not the ones beneath our feet, but the ones we carry in our hearts.
Whether your burden is illness, fear, disappointment or loss, God is able to carry you far beyond what you ever imagined possible.
Sometimes all that is needed is the courage to take the very first step.
Liza Troskie
Victory Family Church Somerset East.
Source: TCN / Liza Troskie
Date Added: 2026-08-17
Category: General News, TCN News, Issues - General,
Back to News IndexDate Added: 2026-08-17
Category: General News, TCN News, Issues - General,
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