My friend, Tiffany, has been trying to buy a train ticket to her hometown in China for the last two or three weeks. Every time she gets a chance, she gets on the Internet and haggles with thousands of other travelers, all engaged in the same pursuit: attempting to get home for the holidays. I’m not talking about Christmas, but rather the holiday in Asia: Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year. This is one of only two national holidays in the country during which workers get more than three or four days off.

If you’ve ever traveled in America on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, you have had a small taste of what it’s like to travel around Chinese New Year. Just multiply the crowds, delays, lines, and headache by about five, move your mental image from the highway or airport to a train station, and you might have the picture! Literally hundreds of millions of people will be migrating from their place of work (often a big city) to their hometown (often a village or smaller city) to spend the holiday with their parents and extended family.

Tiffany has been my language tutor for the past four years and, every year, I’ve watched her debate whether or not to go home for Chinese New Year to her parents, who live in a small village in the countryside. On one hand, our city gets lonely and deserted, and no one wants to spend the holiday alone. On the other hand, if she goes home, she has to face her parents.

Tiffany deeply loves and respects her parents. But, she recently turned 30 and is not married. From her parents’ traditional perspective, this is a travesty. Every time she goes home, she faces mounting pressure to just marry someone. They will set her up on dates with various single men they know, or, what’s perhaps worse, nag her constantly about getting married. She has been brought up to believe that respecting and submitting to her parents is one of the greatest honors in life, and failure to do so is one of the greatest causes of shame. Yet she is unwilling to sacrifice the rest of her life to a miserable marriage. She has seen all too many of those throughout her life.

Tiffany is not alone in facing this conundrum. Almost any Chinese person older than 24 and still unmarried will bemoan the same situation. In fact, the problem is so widespread that, unsurprisingly in a culture as enterprising as China, it has spawned a new industry: You can literally rent a boyfriend or girlfriend to take home with you for the holidays and thus, at least temporarily, keep your parents off your back. (Sounds like a romantic comedy in the making, don’t you think?)

However, this year, my friend Tiffany will be going home a different person. In the past few months, she has put her faith in the only One who can bestow true honor, and she plans to be baptized soon after the Chinese New Year. She longs to have a good relationship with her parents, and the pain of their disappointment in her cuts deep. However, she is also growing to trust in her Savior to guide her future steps and even to work in her parents’ hearts. I can’t wait to hear her report when she returns about how the Father has provided for her and guided her through the holidays.

Charity lives in Asia with her husband and children.

The people in this story are real, but their names have been changed to protect their privacy.