I was a nurse. When I reached the age of marriage, my parents introduced to me Luo Jie who operated a clinic in my hometown. Because I had been living outside my hometown and had never met him before, I didn’t know him. However, my mother told me that his medical skill was great and he was a person of good character. … Her estimation of him let me have a good impression of him. Soon afterward, I received a letter from Luo Jie, in which he proposed marriage to me. In that letter, he promised: “I will take good care of you and make you live a happy life in the future. If you don’t forsake me, I will be always with you.” I was moved by his sincerity occurring throughout the letter and the promise he made about marriage. I thought to myself: If we start a family, I will live a happy life I have longed for. So, I resolutely gave up my job and returned to my hometown getting married to him.
After marriage, he carried out his promise to me. We ran the clinic in tandem and took on all the housework together. Because I had just started to keep house, I didn’t know how to cook or do housework. At such times, he would teach me patiently. In business, my husband took on the responsibility for seeing patients, including interrogation and prescribing them, while I prepared the medicine for them and gave them fluid infusion. We worked well together. Therefore, people around us all were envious of me, saying that I was so lucky to have found a model husband. Seeing this, I was on cloud nine and firmly believed that the happy life I had longed for all along was finally achieved. Thus, I was very satisfied.
However, good things never last. Afterward, my husband often went out with his friends drinking, playing cards and going to all manner of places of amusement, and he even neglected the business of the clinic. Thereby, the affairs of the clinic all fell to me. I persuaded him to stay in the clinic and focus more on the business, yet he didn’t listen to me and still went his own way. He always stayed out during the daytime and sometimes, he even didn’t go home for days. I’m just a woman, yet not only did I need to take care of my child, I also needed to run the business. I was almost loaded down with these things.
One night, it was already past 9, but my husband hadn’t returned home yet. When I was nursing my child after business, I found that he got thrush. In panic, I hurriedly called my husband. But I never thought after knowing our child’s illness, he just answered me perfunctorily and soon hung up. Seeing my child wailing and crying, I was really worried that there would be something wrong with him. So once again I called my husband, only to find that he had turned off his phone. Therefore, I had to feed my child medicine by myself, but I couldn’t deal with it at all on my own. I hated my husband’s getting so heartless and irresponsible that he was only preoccupied with hedonism and showed no concern for our child’s illness. Thus, I locked the door from the inside in a fit of wrath. It was past 3 the next morning, my drunken husband smashed the door open. Before I could speak, he, with his finger pointing at my nose, tore into me with glaring eyes, “Having such a wife as you is really unlucky. Your phone call caused me to gamble away all my money I had carried today. You are such a hoodoo. It’s all your fault!” I felt so wronged and said loudly and defiantly: “Our child is so seriously ill; yet you don’t care about him at all. Now, you even blamed me for your losing money at cards. Aren’t you unreasonable?” At my words, he actually landed me a hard blow on my head. In an instant, diminutive lights burst in front of my eyes and I felt a stuffy pain. Before I could react, he shouted, “Go back to your parents’ house! …” When I saw him actually treat me like this, tears of bitterness and grievance welled out of my eyes. I felt terrible stabbing pains in my chest and I felt like leaving him at once with my child. But then when I thought that if we got divorced, my child would suffer the misery of being separated from one of his parents, my heart softened and I wiped out my thought of leaving this home. I was up all that night. From then on, the relations between my husband and I became even worse. At home, he would speak some hurtful words to me from time to time; what’s more, he had an affair. In the face of the unhappy marriage, I passed days as if they were years. Afterward, I suffered from insomnia and never slept well at night.
One time, my younger brother came to see me. When we were dining together, because the dishes I prepared were not to my husband’s taste, he dashed the dishes on the ground. My brother couldn’t bear to look at it and thereby said something critical about my husband. Upon hearing it, he lost his temper on the spot, asking my brother and me to leave. Facing such a scene, I felt like a knife was twisting in my heart. I thought: All along, I depend for my life of happiness on my husband; yet all my efforts for the family are repaid with such a result in the end. Shame and anger tore at my heart, making me almost fall apart. Ultimately, I couldn’t bear it anymore and thus, in great misery, I held my child and went back to my parents’ home in tears.
In deep and quiet night, the scene that my husband’s promise to me and that he beat and scolded me would always appear alternately in my mind. Especially, the scene of his throwing me out hurt me deeply. The shadow of these things handed over me like ghosts, torturing me to the point of losing sleep all night and having no appetite for food. As a result, I lost more than 5kg of weight within two months. Thinking of my husband’s turning his back on my child and me, I felt depressed. I couldn’t bear such a heavy blow anymore and completely lost the courage to live; hence I took half a box of sleeping pills at one time. As it turned out, on account of the effects of the pills having gone off, I awoke after more than ten hours of sleep. After that, not only did my husband not feel guilty about it, he even disdained me because I was a sick person. Moreover, he said he wanted to divorce me and would leave me with nothing. At that moment, I got utterly desperate. I couldn’t help but sign: Oh Go! Please save me!
Several days later, my auntie came to see me when I was convalescing in my parents’ house. Seeing I was so miserable and upset, she passed on the gospel of God’s kingdom to me, and read me a passage of God’s words, “Blessed are those who have read My word and believe that it will be fulfilled—I will not mistreat you, but will have what you believe be fulfilled in you. This is My blessing coming upon you. My word strikes the secrets hidden in every person. Everyone has mortal wounds, and I am the good physician who heals them—simply come into My presence. Why did I say that in the future there will be no more sorrow and no more tears? It is because of this.” After reading God’s words, she said to me, “Dandan, they are the utterances of the Creator Himself. God’s words can break all our shackles and resolve all our problems. As long as we have faith in God’s words, willing to rely on Him, all our worries and anxieties will be dispelled easily.” Hearing these words, I felt a warm feeling rushed into my heart and my heart found much peace. She went on to say, “Your present situation reminds me of my past experiences. In the past, your uncle gambled at cards all day and didn’t help with the housework at all. I persuaded him with good words many times, yet he never listened to me and even quarreled with me. For the harmony of our family, I had no choice but to bury my anger in my heart and there was no one who I could turn to tell my grievance. Just as I was feeling worried and helpless, my friend spread the gospel of God to me. Only by reading the words of God did I come to know all that we have suffered is because of Satan’s affliction. It uses all sorts of evil trends to tempt and corrupt people so that people all pursue the eating, drinking, and pleasure-seeking, and indulge in their fleshly desires. Your uncle was also influenced by the evil social trends and thereby fell into gambling and didn’t take care of the family. Through reading the words of God, I came to have some understanding of the methods and ways that Satan corrupts man, and I also saw God’s salvation for me, so that I was capable of seeing through Satan’s various schemes, and no longer being shackled by hatred and pain.” Listening to her experiences and seeing that she, who was sad all day in the past, now had become so relaxed and her mental outlook had changed completely, I felt the words of God are truly powerful. I thought: I was abandoned by my husband and have suffered a lot from illness, and have fallen into despair; yet this God can cure the wounds of people’s souls. If I come before Him and rely on Him with a true heart, then I will no longer live in such pain. With this in mind, I renewed my hope for life and was happy to accept the gospel of God’s kingdom.
In the days to come, I hungrily read God’s words and listened to the hymns of God’s words, and my heart was completely occupied by His words. Because of the guidance of His words in my life, those troublesome matters passed unwittingly out of my mind. Over a month later, the insomnia that tortured me all along went away miraculously. Moreover, I got to know many brothers and sisters in the Church. Although we met each other for the first time, I felt as though we were of the same family. Whenever I encountered problems and had no idea how to deal with them, they would sincerely fellowship to me about God’s will contained within and share their experiences. This moved me a lot. I felt that this kind of life was just what I had long yearned for, and thought: If only I had come into God’s presence earlier. I felt incomparably happy, like a long-lost child returning to his parents’ side.
After a while, my husband sent me a divorce decreed in my absence. On receiving it, I felt the flames of fury raging in my heart, itching to rush at him and reason with him: I have given so much to the family, but why do you treat me in such a way? Resentment and hatred bound me tightly like an invisible tie, causing me to be mentally tortured. As a result, once again I lost sleep all night. I had no choice but to come before God praying constantly.
Subsequently, I read the following passages of God’s words, “Born into such a filthy land, man has been severely blighted by society, he has been influenced by feudal ethics, and he has been taught at ‘institutes of higher learning.’ The backward thinking, corrupt morality, mean view on life, despicable philosophy, utterly worthless existence, and depraved lifestyle and customs—all of these things have severely intruded upon man’s heart, and severely undermined and attacked his conscience. As a result, man is ever more distant from God….” From God’s words, I came to understand that after we men were corrupted by Satan, what we accept are erroneous ways of thinking and rules of living instilled by Satan. Thus, we become ever more corrupted and lose our original conscience and ability for sensible thought. Take my husband and me, for example. Affected by the thought “Seize the day for pleasure, for life is short,” he indulged in a life of pleasure, selfishly and despicably living for himself. He didn’t care about his work or the child, and did not show any love for me, getting ever colder and more decadent. As for me, I blindly adored perfect marriage, believing that “Love is above all” and “Love is priceless.” Driven by these thoughts, I regarded love as the only goal in my pursuit of the happy life. I tried my utmost to save my marriage regardless of the suffering. I would rather be fooled and trampled by Satan than give up the broken marriage. It was like an invisible net controlling my body and mind, causing a great deal of pain in my heart; as a result, I chose to commit suicide by taking sleeping pills. Was all of this not caused by being fooled by Satan’s rules of living? It was because I did not understand truth and failed to see through the methods and ways that Satan corrupts and afflicts man that I was reduced to a sacrificial object for evil trends. Under the guidance of God’s words, I was finally able to see through Satan’s schemes, and not to be fooled by it anymore. And gradually, I removed my hatred of my husband from my heart.
Not long after that, I learned from my acquaintance that my ex-husband was not happy at all after his second marriage. His second wife squandered money freely and often quarreled with him and threatened to divorce him. He had not reached forty, yet his temples had turned grey. Every day, he could only drown his sorrows in drink. It could be seen that living by Satan’s poisons, he could only enjoy momentary sinful pleasures but what he gained was endless suffering. By contrast, although I had a failed marriage, it was lucky for me to come into God’s presence and gain His care and protection. Thinking of it, my heart was full of gratitude toward God and I sincerely thanked God for saving me.
Afterward, in order to repay God’s love, I threw myself into the preaching of the gospel. Later on, I returned to my hometown. When people there saw that I had a renewed mental outlook and became much more cheerful, they asked me with curiosity, “Since I last saw you several years ago, you have changed a lot. You are now in ruddy health and look much younger than before, as if you were a different person. What changed you?” At these words, I smiled and then testified to them of God’s work and told them my personal experiences. After hearing these, they happily accepted the gospel.
Thinking back to the way I have walked, I truly feel it is God’s words that have changed me and allow my heart to find release and freedom that I have never tasted before. Within God’s family, I have found the truly happy life. Thank God! All the glory be to God!
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