Lynda Rozell never imagined a life on the road. For most of her adult life, she practiced law in both the private sector and for the federal government. She received three degrees from the University of Virginia. She married and had two daughters. Northern Virginia and the U.S. East Coast were home. 

Today, Rozell’s home is an Airstream camper van — named “Alvie” in honor of Blessed Álvaro del Portillo, past prelate of Opus Dei (1982-1994) — traveling across the United States as the “Tin Can Pilgrim,” sharing the Gospel to those she meets, while visiting campgrounds, Catholic parishes, shrines and other religious sites. 

This week, the road led her to the National Eucharistic Congress, joining tens of thousands of pilgrims in celebrating the joys and mysteries of the Blessed Sacrament.

“I am home wherever I go because I can go to Mass and the Mass of Jesus is the same everywhere, right?” Rozell told the Register. “That’s really the beauty, the mystery and the awesome power of the Eucharist. [Jesus] is literally everywhere in a Catholic church.”

When not writing her blog or books, giving talks or volunteering in charitable events, Rozell enjoys spending time in front of tabernacles. Once a fine arts major before switching to law, she started noticing several artistic themes — nourishment, sacrifice, Jesus Christ, spirit, the Church and mission — that invited her toward deeper contemplation and trust in the Real Presence. This devotion is explored in her latest book, Return to Me: Visits to the Tabernacle, that presents a history of tabernacles, spiritual reflections and images — many of which she photographed years prior to her writing the book — to “help guide the reader’s prayer and meditation,” according to the book’s synopsis. 

In the book’s forward, George Weigel — a biographer of St. John Paul II, political analyst and distinguished senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. — writes that the late Pontiff “would have been fascinated” by Rozell’s evangelization work. Meanwhile, Bishop Andrew Cozzens of the Diocese of Crookston, Minnesota, and chair of the National Eucharistic Congress that gets underway this week, praised Return to Me, saying, “These lessons and meditations will be helpful for anyone who would like to encounter Jesus in a deeper way in the Blessed Sacrament.” 

Return to Me was released in June to coincide with the National Eucharistic Revival: a grassroots movement to re-catechize U.S. Catholics on the Real Presence. Its culmination will take place at the 10th National Eucharistic Congress — the first in more than 80 years — at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, July 17-21. 

Indeed, Rozell had been drafting another book prior to Return to Me. However, after witnessing a Eucharistic procession last summer at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland, Maine, she “felt very strongly that the Holy Spirit was calling me in some way to contribute to the Eucharistic Revival.”

“I prayed about it and realized that I had photographs of beautiful tabernacles from all over the country because I travel everywhere,” she told the Register. “Things fell very naturally into six different chapters and themes.” 

 

Hitting the Road

While she now feels home in front of the Blessed Sacrament, as a younger woman, the Church was an afterthought. Her life was “busy and I just wasn’t that interested” in practicing the faith, she told the Register. However, when a colleague died in a tragic mountain-climbing accident while on vacation in Argentina, Rozell did something she hadn’t done in years: prayed. 

“I just sat there and raged at God. I was praying for the first time in years. Although, I didn’t know that’s what I was doing,” Rozell said. “I really felt a still, quiet voice in my heart that said go to church and pray for him. So, I literally got up, got the yellow pages and went to St. Stephen Martyr Catholic Church in Georgetown.”

The moment was a turning point, as the tragedy “had some positive fruit because I did start going to Mass and I even worked up the courage to go to confession,” Rozell added. She had not gone in 18 years. When the confessor heard this, he told her, “Hallelujah. Welcome home.”

Afterward, she felt on fire with the Holy Spirit, diving more into learning about the Catholic faith. Yet it wasn’t always easy — in fact, Rozell had her own dark nights of the soul, especially when her marriage ended (and was later annulled) and bouts with depression. But she kept turning to the Lord and eventually found solace while working for Tepeyac OB/GYN, a pro-life, faith-based obstetrics and gynecology practice in the D.C. metro area.

However, this wouldn’t be Rozell’s final destination, but the catalyst to her vocation. In 2018, while on a business trip for Tepeyac to Richmond, a “shiny” object captured Rozell’s attention — a recreational vehicle (RV) at a dealership. At the time, she had been praying to do God’s will, and “everything kept being the message of just stay close to God, trust him and try to listen,” Rozell told the Register. 

Initially, Rozell felt dismissive of RVs; nevertheless, she stopped by. To her surprise, she was blown away, particularly how the vehicle radiated the sunlight and its “gorgeous” cabinetry. 

“It was like a tiny, little luxury apartment,” Rozell told the Register. “I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I could live in one of these things and I could go anywhere. I don’t even have to know where I'm going’ — and it just hit me that maybe what God wanted me to do was just trust him so much that I wouldn’t plan anything.”

She felt called to be a nomad, which she admits “sound[ed] kind of crazy.” While her daughters supported the drastic lifestyle change, others derided it as a midlife crisis. Even Rozell had reservations and “obstacles” that held her back, between work, selling her home and staying close to family. But over the course of four months, one-by-one her affairs were settled with surprising ease. She then bought a green truck and camper — dubbed Bruce and Veronica, respectively, as an homage to the Incredible Hulk — and, with a newfound purpose, set off in her “tin can” for the road. 

 

Trusting in God

Buying a camper and traveling around the country is one thing; ingratiating oneself into a completely different community with intentions to evangelize is another, but Rozell has since done so from Florida, Middle America, the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and elsewhere to Windham, Maine, her latest stay. Becoming a nomad, however, was the “total opposite of everything I did my entire life,” she told the Register. Yet she prayed — and still prays — every morning for God to place her where she is needed for that day. 

“It was just putting everything in his hands and not worrying about any results,” Rozell continued. “[And to be] willing to try my best each day to listen to him, which I still do.”

But she did not fear, even during her first stay at an Alabaman campground, socializing with fellow RVers and quickly gaining friends with other Airstream owners.  

“It was a very easy transition into the nomadic life,” Rozell told the Register. “I immediately had community from Airstreams, but I also immediately had community because everywhere I go: I would go to church, and as soon as you show up to daily Mass for a couple of days, everybody wants to know who you are.”

All in all, the various communities she interacted with “made me welcome,” so “it really wasn’t difficult to fit into things,” she added. The journey has also been a time of recultivating prior passions like writing. Since 2018, when she became a nomad, Rozell has imparted tales from the road on her blog “Tin Can Pilgrim” and books Journeys with a Tin Can Pilgrim: From Corporate Lawer to Airstream Nomad, Finding Joy in Everyday Life (2021) and In Plan Sight Hidden: Poems from a Tin Can Pilgrim. 

Still, life on the road has presented its challenges, such as learning to drive the truck-and-van combination and humorously locking herself in the camper on the first day. Less amusing but expected were interactions with nonbelievers and navigating  questions, particularly on creation. Another more terrifying ordeal was hiding from a tornado in a concrete bathhouse with a Baptist community in Ohio. 

However, the most alarming incident came 13 months into the nomadic life, when Rozell’s truck and van were totaled due to high winds in New Mexico. 

“Being from the East Coast, I did not have a good understanding of what the wind was like in the West,” she recounted to the Register. “My trailer started to sway. I couldn’t get the sway under control. I’d been going north, and I ended up facing south, rolled up an embankment, and rolled down.”

Thankfully, Rozell was not hurt; but “Bruce” and “Veronica” were severely damaged beyond the point of repair that she could afford. The accident nearly forced the end of her vocation. Dismayed, she contemplated returning to Virginia, back to her previous life. 

“I walked to Mass, to a little mission church, and I had prayed after I called my daughters and my friends and let them know I was okay,” she said. “I basically prayed to God and said, ‘Lord, are you sure you want me to do this? I just broke the Airstream and the truck that you gave me.’” 

God, seemingly, had other plans. The following morning, at Mass, Rozell received some assurance to not be discouraged, but to continue the mission. It came in the form of a song, The Summons, during post-Communion prayer. 

“By this time, I’m just sitting there crying, thinking, ‘Alright, Lord, I got the message to still do this. I will,’” she told the Register. “Within less than a month, I was back on the road.”

Rozell has been on the road ever since. While the vans may change as she upgrades and learns more tricks of the on-the-go lifestyle, the mission remains the same: to share her faith journey and the Gospel with souls she encounters along the earthly pilgrimage toward heaven, whether on her blog or in blogs, on a hike, a fireside conversation, over coffee and even a game of cards. The latest book, Return to Me, is another opportunity to testify to Christ’s Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Eucharist. 

Even after all these years and miles traveled, Rozell has kept her humble outlook almost the same as when she first made the leap of faith: “I still don’t know what I’m doing half the time. I just trust in God.”