Some roads are difficult because they are wrong. Others are difficult because they are taking us somewhere worth going.
There were four ways to get down from the Mutianyu Great Wall.
Walk.
Not an option for us. 🤪
Cable car.
Probably the safest. Enclosed, comfortable, familiar.
Cableway.
Absolutely terrifying! At least for me. Open air. No enclosure. Feet dangling hundreds of feet above the ground. You could feel the breeze against your face, which I suppose was beautiful… if you could stop imagining yourself falling. 😂
And then there was the toboggan.
A little scary, but definitely the most fun.
That was our plan.
Cable car going up. Toboggan going down.
Simple.
Or so we thought.
The Plan That Didn’t Go According to Plan
We took the cable car up and eventually found ourselves standing on one of the most incredible structures ever built.
The Great Wall.
And because apparently seeing the Great Wall wasn’t enough, we decided we needed to walk it too.
From Tower 15, we made our way toward Tower 6.
They said it would take around 40 minutes.
I don’t know whose 40 minutes that was, because I’m pretty sure ours was closer to an hour. 😂
Up.
Down.
More stairs.
More climbing.
More wondering why we willingly paid money to do this to ourselves.
But somewhere between the exhaustion and the laughter, we kept walking.
One tower at a time.
One step at a time.
Until we got there.
Then came another problem.
We discovered that somehow, perhaps somewhere in the great mystery called lost in translation, we hadn’t actually bought the ticket we needed to take the toboggan down.
We had paid for the cable car.
And the line?
Almost two hours.
Going all the way back to Tower 15 wasn’t exactly an attractive option either.
So there we were.
Four ways down.
None of them perfect.
And suddenly, we had to choose.
We could spend another two hours waiting.
We could make our tired legs suffer even more.
Or…
I could face the option that scared me most.
The open cableway.
Feet dangling.
Wind blowing.
Nothing enclosing me.
Just the mountain below and the long way down.
But as scary as it was for me, I knew it was even harder for my husband.
He has a fear of heights.
So before we did it, we talked.
We looked at each other and confirmed, Are we really doing this?
And we decided that if we were going to do it, we would do it together.
I told him, “I’m here. I’m with you.”
It didn’t suddenly make the height disappear. It didn’t make the cableway less frightening. But somehow, knowing that neither of us had to face it alone made the hard a little easier to choose.
And somehow, we chose it.
Not because it wasn’t scary.
But because at that moment, it was the hard we were willing to choose.
And as we made our way down Mutianyu, I remembered a phrase I had heard somewhere before:
Choose your hard.
Everything Has a Hard
Marriage is hard.
But so is walking away from something that could still be fought for.
Taking care of your health is hard.
But so is living with the consequences of neglecting it.
Saving money is hard.
Building a dream is hard.
Healing is hard.
Forgiving is hard.
Starting over is hard.
Staying when staying requires humility, patience, and change is hard.
Faith is hard when you cannot see where God is leading you.
But living without hope is hard too.
Everything has a hard.
The question is:
Which hard are you willing to choose?
That question became even more meaningful to me because this trip happened as my husband and I are celebrating 11 years of marriage and 16 years together.
Sixteen years.
When I look at our photos, it is easy to see only two people smiling on the Great Wall.
What the photograph cannot show are all the roads we had to walk to still be standing beside each other.
The Part You Don’t See in the Picture
Sixteen years together has not always been beautiful views and smiling photographs.
We have gone through a lot.
We have wrestled with our differences.
We have fought.
We have argued.
We have experienced financial struggles.
We have faced physical challenges.
Mental challenges.
Spiritual challenges.
There were seasons when loving each other felt easy.
And there were seasons when choosing each other required work.
Real work.
The kind nobody sees in anniversary photos.
And yet, somehow, by the grace of God, we kept choosing each other again.
Not perfectly.
Not without wounds.
Not without mistakes.
Not without moments when we wondered how we would get through certain seasons.
But we are still here.
Still walking.
Still learning.
Still becoming.
Still choosing.
And perhaps that is one of the things marriage has taught me:
Love is not only something you feel. Sometimes, love is the hard you choose.
You choose the difficult conversation.
You choose forgiveness.
You choose humility.
You choose to listen when you’d rather defend yourself.
You choose to try again.
You choose to grow individually so you can grow together.
And sometimes you simply choose to say:
We’re not there yet. But let’s keep walking.
You Don’t Always Get to Choose Easy
At Mutianyu, we couldn’t magically create a fifth option.
There was no secret elevator waiting for us.
We had to look at the choices in front of us and decide:
Which hard are we going to take?
Life feels like that sometimes.
We pray for an easier road.
A clearer answer.
A faster breakthrough.
We want God to show us the entire map:
Where is this going?
When will things get better?
When will the hard work finally pay off?
But faith rarely works that way.
Sometimes God gives us enough light for the next step.
And then asks us to walk.
To work faithfully today without knowing exactly what tomorrow will look like.
To keep showing up.
To keep planting.
To keep loving.
To keep learning.
To keep praying.
To keep going.
Because faith is choosing today’s hard while trusting God with tomorrow.
Work Faithfully Today
There is something I have been telling myself lately:
If we work faithfully today, how can God not see it?
Not because God owes us the outcome we want.
He doesn’t.
And faith is not a transaction where we work hard and God gives us exactly what we ask for.
But I believe He sees.
He sees the prayers nobody hears.
The sacrifices nobody applauds.
The quiet decisions to keep going.
The work you do when there is still no evidence that anything is changing.
And over and over again in my life, He has reminded me that He knows far better than I do where the road is leading.
So I keep doing what I can today.
And I leave tomorrow in His hands.
That is what faith looks like sometimes.
Work faithfully today. Trust God with where it leads tomorrow.
There is a line from Catriona Gray that has stayed with me, the beautiful thought that someday, you may look up and realize you are already where you are meant to be.
I love that.
Because becoming doesn’t always happen in one dramatic moment.
It happens while we’re busy walking.
One tower.
One step.
One difficult decision.
One prayer.
One ordinary day at a time.
And then one day, we look up.
And realize how far God has brought us.
Choose Your Hard
So whether you are working on your marriage…
your health…
your relationships…
your finances…
your dreams…
your faith…
or simply yourself…
remember:
Everything has a hard. Choose yours wisely.
Choose the hard that helps you grow.
Choose the hard that requires you to become better.
Choose the hard that protects what matters.
Choose the hard that moves you toward the person God is calling you to become.
And when you cannot see exactly where all this hard work is leading, keep going anyway.
We are all works in progress.
My husband and I certainly are.
Eleven years married.
Sixteen years together.
Still learning.
Still growing.
Still figuring things out.
Still choosing each other.
And still trusting the One who has carried us through every road we thought we couldn’t walk.
At Mutianyu, we eventually made it down.
Not through the route we originally planned.
Not through the route I would have chosen if everything had gone perfectly.
But we made it.
And maybe life is a little like that.
The road may change.
Plans may fail.
You may find yourself taking a path you never thought you’d have the courage to take.
Choose your hard.
Do the work you can do today.
Keep walking.
Keep loving.
Keep believing.
Keep going.
And trust that in His time, when you finally look up, you may be surprised by how far you’ve come, and discover that God has been leading you all along.
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