When my daughter was 5, she visited the barn where I work. She watched in awe as the horses walked around the ring, and asked me question after question about each horse. Then the gate to the ring opened, and the horses passed us. She got a good look at the riders, and then started to cry.

“Those kids are small like me! I can ride! When is it my turn to ride?”

This question came up several times over the years. When I would tell the kids I was going to work, or to the barn, my little girl would pipe up, “When is it my turn to ride?”

As anybody who has spent half a second in the horse world knows, horses are expensive. We aren’t a family who can just go out and buy a horse, and my daughter isn’t allowed to ride where I work. When she first starting talking about riding, lessons were definitely out of our price range. But right before she turned 7, my husband got a raise, we looked at the budget, and decided we could afford horseback riding lessons. On her 7th birthday, I told her we were going somewhere special, and surprised her by pulling up to a horse barn close to our house for a birthday riding lesson. She was ecstatic, and chirped happily as the instructor taught her how to put the saddle and bridle on her horse. And then she got to ride! Happy day! Glorious fun! Of course she wants to do it again! Who wouldn’t!

Then the fun wore off, and reality sat in.

Riding a horse is hard work.

She’s been riding now for over a year, and there have been a lot more tears than there have been days of jubilation. She would come home and tell me that her instructor wouldn’t let her dismount until she did her figure 8 correctly, or she had to trot around the ring longer than the other girl because her form wasn’t correct, or she had to kick the horse extra hard because he wasn’t behaving that day. Her instructor is constantly pushing her, and horses aren’t gentler to little girls just because they have cute voices. For the first time in her life, my daughter is being forced to slog through something that is hard, and where being cute doesn’t get you extra points.

But then, she came home one day and said, “I got to canter and jump!” She finally had the light back that she had the first day she rode a horse. It has been her dream to jump, and she finally got to do it. I congratulated her, and reminded her that her success is a direct result of her hard work. She sighed and said, “I know. It is just SO HARD.”

I often ask her if she wants to quit. After all, this is not a cheap hobby, and it’s too expensive for her not to love it. And just because I love it doesn’t mean that she has to. I want her to enjoy it, not dread it. But she insists she wants to keep with it, though, despite the tears. And so we trudge to the barn every week, rain or shine (or snow).

Tonight was a particularly hard night that started with the horse stepping on her foot. The tears came quickly and she was obviously so miserable I was surprised she stayed on the horse for the whole lesson. It occurred to me tonight, a year and a half from her very first ride, that this whole thing must look very different to her than when she started. She wanted to learn how to jump a horse, but I’m not sure she knew how hard it would be to get there.

She came home tonight soggy and cold and sore and I sent her to take a hot shower. I heard her quietly sniffling, the tears finally ebbing, as she warmed up under the water. As we ate dinner I asked her, “This riding thing is much different than you thought, huh.” She vigorously nodded and said, “YES! I just didn’t know it would be so hard.”

I wonder how often that happens to the rest of us. We have a dream, or a goal, something we want to accomplish, something that looks fun and exciting and thrilling. Then we dive in and reality hits us. We just didn’t know it would be so hard.

I remember a friend holding a wailing baby, and looking at me helplessly saying, “I just didn’t know it would be this hard!”

I remember my husband pulling all nighters through law school, killing himself with studying and saying, “I just didn’t know it would be this hard.”

I finished a training program last year that seriously kicked my trash. I just didn’t know it was going to be that hard.

When have you been surprised at the difficulty of obtaining a goal? How have you gotten from wanting to having? How do you continue to move forward in the face of difficulty?