Linked in Marriage on the Wall

We step off the plane. No idea what was coming.

Would we crash hard from jet lag? Or find a child at an orphanage that we simply had to have? 

One thing is for sure…transformation was coming.

I had gone twice before.

But this time, my husband’s hand of twenty-three years was linked in mine…like an extension of my own.

This adventure together, both of us ready to take hold of.

This journey showing us…Long awaited dreams actually do come true…if we wait and pray hard enough.

Maybe you too have wondered in your waiting, if your thoughts were His purposes, your dreams were self-made, or if somehow you might have drifted from your call?

We seem un-wavered by the ten hour flight.  Sleep well. Then, wake rejuvenated by the thought of The Great Wall winding around the mountain…

Our feet fully prepared to climb it’s glorious scales.

We take the subway. Make our way as I trust my husband to lead us in a country he has never been to.

And when we follow as wives, we learn things we never knew about the one created. Man, before the woman. We learn our men are strong and capable, able and willing….

And it is in this breathe-giving life I trust him completely.

We navigate Bejing to meet the girl we’d never met before, Jennifer. She would be our tour-guide.

Jennifer, thirty-three, fittingly wearing a bright red coat in a sea of black and grey. She smiles and I instantly love, and somehow seem to know her in my spirit.

My heart intertwines with this quick forming sister and my heart grows increasingly eager to know more about His purposes here.

We twist and turn around the mountain as I ache for the reason that we came, to China.

And there, it scales. Vast. Wide. A wall so large it seems to reach inside and grab the pieces that have been growing alongside the questions in us all.

The story. The life behind that wall.

I ask. Inquire about the reason why the wall was built at all.

But then I find…

The enemy lying on the other side never came. Never penetrated. The threat perceived was only visualized, but never something truly experienced.

And I wonder if we alike can sometimes build walls inside us thinking, perceiving threats. Trying to separate the truth and lies, never knowing where it all begins and ends…

So we build and keep on building. Dream and imagine…yet never really need the stones we place for protection between us and those who threaten us.

Still, I marvel at the beauty of the wall.

The work, the time, the diligence those who build this fortress must have intrinsically taken to place stone surfaces as far as ones eyes can see.

I step up. It’s all almost seems surreal.

Steps stacked, unpredictable; one high, the next low.

Sometimes a straight up ramp we crawl up almost….often without a rail.

And I wonder at the strategies in their building.

Did the builders think maybe the enemy couldn’t reach them if the way up was windy, narrow, stagnant, and unpredictable?

And maybe we too are trying to get somewhere beautiful; yet the path is twisted, stacked un-unexpectedly in ways we might not perceive as making it easy to get to the top.

Will we reach the top anyway? 

“Put your hand on the highest wall. We have to take a picture,” Jennifer tells us the rules the Chinese live by, and how tradition says we must reach the top and touch it.

And how do many of us say achievement is everything?  Far too many keep going, keep doing…trying to plow forward, yet somehow miss the beauty in the journey?

And what if our purposes are less about high points and more about the twistings and turnings, perseverance, and keeping our feet on the road, finding beauty and goodness on the other side of the wall?

What if the glory is in the looking and seeing, not about the photos we present so cheerfully to strangers on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter?

They say it was a miracle…

The way the clouds parted the day we ventured to the Great Wall.

They even say that we are lucky.

The way it just snowed, and pockets of earth were tucked almost intentionally with snow.

Beauty found in the crevasses of the rocks, the low point of the valleys.

They say that it was a blessing.

The way not many people crowded the wall we were walking.

And yet why is it, snow always reminds me of grace?

And maybe that’s the way it is in life too? We find grace in the wild and the wilderness, in the low pockets of life, in the crevasses of our difficulties. Will we stop to see it’s beauty, hesitate and give Him praise?

Finally, we take the little known toboggan down. All that climbing up, just to race down the hill in seconds.

And isn’t life just like that? The higher we climb, the easier it is to fall? How easy it is to slip from that High Call? Yet, will we keep making steps towards victory?

He still grips my hand and finally kisses me, gently. The one who we both had once placed walls unnecessarily between us…

Finding the beauty in the open, in the mountains and valleys tucked with snow….

Like grace in a season where The Stone effortlessly is our pathway.

This journey becoming our calling.

This great adventure. The Great Wall, an unnecessary fortress.  Thinking of all God has for us….

In the days to come. In China.