By Li Mei
Unexpected Happiness Comes
I was old enough to look for a partner in life, and I had my criteria for my future husband: I didn’t care whether or not he was wealthy or powerful; it would be fine as long as he was considerate and caring toward me, shared my ideals, and could live in harmony with me for a life time. I later met Wang Wei through an introduction. He was sincere and honest, worked hard and could endure hardships. He asked for my advice in all matters, and often surprised me with gifts. He was a caring man, and his sincerity gradually moved my heart.
One day, I got a provincial government’s document saying that every city and county was going to recruit doctors and nurses on the basis of exam grades. To get this job, I got up early and stayed up late every day to prepare for the exam. Seeing this, Wang Wei said, “Don’t overwork yourself. It pains me to see you like this. It doesn’t matter if you fail to be admitted. I’ll support you.” After the exam, he then said, “If you are taken on, we can break up. I’m uneducated, not good enough for you.” Hearing this warmed my heart and tears welled up in my eyes. At that time, I was immersed in the happiness of being loved, and I felt that I had found a man who sincerely cared for me. To reassure him, I wasted no time in preparing for our marriage. The second day after the wedding, I received my admission letter, but I gave up the opportunity for the sake of my husband, and applied to work in a local hospital. Whenever I was on duty, my husband was with me; he always sent me to and picked me up from work. He treated me tenderly and took care of me in every way. I was happy and joyous to have such a marriage.
Happy Days Pass
One time, when I returned home from work, I saw my daughter playing alone with a toy airplane. So I asked her who had bought it for her. “An aunt. Dad stayed with her in the room, and let me play outside alone. I asked Dad to play with me, but he didn’t open the door. So I cried on the floor. Then Dad and the aunt went away.” At her words, my entire body became limp and weak and I felt like a knife was being twisted in my heart. I screamed in my heart, “God, how could this happen?” Tears started welling up and fell without being even aware of it. Seeing this, my daughter wiped the tears for me with her little hands. I held my daughter in my arms, and couldn’t help but cry out, weeping bitterly. I recalled how, when proposing he swore, “Though my family isn’t well off and I don’t deserve you, I will work hard to earn money to support you. I’ll make you live happily.” But now the beautiful, moving vow became a lie. My heart was shattered. After that, I brought up divorce. But my husband voluntarily admitted his mistake, was willing to repent and swore that this would never happen again. Seeing his honest attitude, and thinking of my six-year-old daughter and those happy days together, I thought, “If we really get divorced, my young daughter won’t be happy losing her father’s love. Additionally, everyone inevitably makes mistakes. Giving him a chance is giving myself a chance. I don’t want our years of marriage I’ve put so much hard work into to come to nothing.” This was how our marriage was more or less maintained.
After that, however, my husband didn’t shape up at all. He often didn’t come home with the excuse that he had to entertain others; on top of that, he became very cold toward our child and me. His betrayal was a huge blow for me. At work in the daytime, I forced myself to smile before others; at night, I couldn’t help thinking of that painful thing and felt deeply tormented, and I always wept secretly under my quilt. During that time, I was in a trance all day, unable to eat or sleep. Later, I began to suffer from insomnia and could only sleep for a while at two or three a.m., and even sleeping pill wasn’t working. At my most painful time, I thought of death, but I dispensed with the idea as I saw my sleeping daughter, who was so innocent and lovable, and thought, “If I die, who will take care of my poor child?” All I could do was endure so that her young heart wouldn’t get hurt and she could have an intact family. In the following days, I just turned a blind eye to what my husband did.
Afterward, my husband started to take on the contracts for construction projects. One day, he said to me, “Of the several leaders I have contact with, which one doesn’t have a mistress? In today’s society, the popular saying is ‘The red flag at home does not fall, the colored flags outside flutter in the breeze.’ This is not unusual. This is how men are. If one doesn’t follow the trend, others will say that he’s incapable, a loser and not a real man.” Hearing him say this so shamelessly, I asked angrily, “What do you mean? You are also keeping a mistress?” He flatly denied it and kept saying that he wasn’t that kind of man. However, my husband often wouldn’t come back all night since then. I later discovered that he had bought a house where he lived with his mistress, and I was so enraged that I felt like my head was about to burst.
One day after he came home, I argued with him about that woman, but he obstinately refused to acknowledge his having an affair with her and shockingly, he actually raised a hand against me. Resisting the pain, I said to him, crying, “I’ve painstakingly raised our child and kept house for these years, but you’ve never cared about these things, and are always out carousing, playing around. Do you still have a conscience? Lest our child feel wronged, I’ve swallowed my anger and been patient with you for so many years, but have you ever cared about my feelings?” I was becoming tearful, but he was leisurely playing with his phone, indifferent. Until then, I lost all hope for our marriage. Therefore, I stopped fighting with him, took a minute to cool off and said, “Since you don’t want to stay together, let’s get a divorce.” After that, I filed for a divorce, but he didn’t appear in court after having been arraigned several times, and tried to get the judge to dissuade me from divorcing him. Out of desperation, I had to go to the mistress and said, “I’ve come to help you get an official status. Persuade him into divorcing me, and then you’ll be able to get married.” However, never did I think she would unhesitatingly say, “That’s impossible! I won’t marry him, but nor leave him.” I was so angry that my hands were trembling. After returning home, I was in turmoil, feeling I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown; I just wanted to be alone, not wanting to see anybody. I really was unwilling to continue our marriage whereby we shared the same bed but dreamed different dreams.
One year later, he had a boy with his mistress and then lived together with them. Never could I have imagined that our marriage would end this way that I had made compromises to maintain for 15 years. It felt like a thousand arrows were piercing my heart and I wept all day. It was agony! I couldn’t help but ask myself: Where can I find happiness? Who can give me true happiness?
God’s Salvation Shines a Light for Me
Just when I was at my most pained and helpless, God’s salvation came upon me. One day, I went to a friend’s and poured out to her all the depression I was feeling in my heart. She read a passage of God’s words for me, “In the beginning, I created mankind; that is, I created mankind’s ancestor, Adam. He was endowed with form and image, brimming with vigor, brimming with vitality, and was, furthermore, in the company of My glory. That was the glorious day when I created man. After that, Eve was produced from the body of Adam, and she too was the ancestor of man, and so the people that I created were filled with My breath and brimming with My glory. … However, the evil one trampled and took captive the progeny of mankind’s ancestors, plunging the human world into complete darkness, and making it so that the progeny no longer believe in My existence. Even more abominable is that, even as the evil one corrupts people and tramples all over them, it is cruelly wresting away My glory, My testimony, the vitality I bestowed on them, the breath and the life I blew into them, all My glory in the human world, and all the heart’s blood I have expended on mankind.”
Hearing God’s words and my friend’s fellowship made me realize that man was created by God, and that the breath of life was given to us by God. Man originally possessed both heart and spirit, and was made to manifest God’s glory. But because Adam and Eve didn’t listen to God’s words and were tempted by the serpent to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, mankind from then on began to live under Satan’s influence, and lost God’s blessings. Our hearts have gotten further and further away from God and we have been corrupted and trampled upon by Satan until today so that we are living in more and more pain. Plainly speaking, this is the result of being corrupted by Satan. Satan is the culprit! These words felt great to me. Seeing that I liked reading God’s words, the friend gave me a book of God’s words to take home and read.
After I got back home, I read God’s words avidly. The more I read, the more I felt that God’s words describe our actual state and troubles in our lives. Since being betrayed by my ex-husband, I had felt that life was without any hope and incredibly painful. However, God’s words of mercy touched the bottom of my heart and comforted my heart; I was enjoying the care of God’s love, and felt as though I was an orphan lost for years who had finally returned to his mother’s embrace. Quickly, I began taking part in the life of the church—attending gatherings with my brothers and sisters, having fellowship on God’s words and singing hymns. I experienced a joy I had never felt before.
The Fog Is Dispelled and I Find True Happiness
The haze of my ex-husband’s betrayal had shrouded my heart until I saw God’s words, “Pernicious influences that thousands of years of ‘the lofty spirit of nationalism’ have left deep in the human heart, as well as the feudal thinking by which people are bound and chained, without an iota of freedom, with no will to aspire or persevere, no desire to make progress, remaining instead passive and regressive, entrenched in a slave mentality, and so on—these objective factors have imparted an indelibly filthy and ugly cast to the ideological outlook, ideals, morality, and disposition of humanity. Humans, it would seem, are living in a dark world of terrorism, which none among them seeks to transcend, and none among them thinks of moving on to an ideal world; rather, they are content with their lot in life, to spend their days bearing and raising children, striving, sweating, going about their chores, dreaming of a comfortable and happy family, and dreaming of conjugal affection, of filial children, of joy in their twilight years as they peacefully live out their lives…. For tens, thousands, tens of thousands of years until now, people have been squandering their time in this way, with no one creating a perfect life, all intent only on mutual slaughter in this dark world, on the race for fame and fortune, and on intriguing against one another. Who has ever sought after God’s will? Has anyone ever heeded the work of God?”
Through contemplating these words of God, I came to understand why I had suffered so much in my marriage. It was because I was deeply influenced and spurred on by traditional culture and feudal thinking, so that I had always sought out marital harmony, and dreamed of a comfortable, happy family as well as a peaceful and harmonious life, and I believed this kind of life to be a happy life. I thought back to the past years. At first, I gave up the chance to improve myself for the sake of my ex-husband and chose to work in the local small hospital. Also, in order to relieve his concerns, I worked to make money and also took care of everything in the home without complaint. Furthermore, after learning about his unfaithfulness, I set aside my dignity and forgave him, and tried to hold on to our family that existed in name only even though I made all sorts of compromises. I was silently suffering the anguish and pain caused by his betrayal. Only through the revelation of God’s words did I understand that because I lacked the truth and couldn’t distinguish good from evil, and right from wrong, I could only be foolishly constrained and bound by feudal thinking, helpless to resist, and lived the slavish life. It’s so pathetic, so sad. Because of Satan’s corruption, people tend to do away the old and seek out the new, wicked and depraved; there is no real love between people, only trading or exchange. Will there then be possibly any happiness to speak of?
I later saw another passage of God’s words, “Satan uses these social trends to lure people one step at a time into a nest of devils, so that people caught up in social trends unknowingly advocate money and material desires, wickedness and violence. Once these things have entered the heart of man, what then does man become? Man becomes the devil, Satan! Why? Because, what psychological inclination exists in the heart of man? What does man revere? Man begins to take pleasure in wickedness and violence, showing no love for beauty or goodness, much less peace. People are not willing to live the simple life of normal humanity, but instead wish to enjoy high status and great wealth, to revel in the pleasures of the flesh, sparing no effort to satisfy their own flesh, with no restrictions, no bonds to hold them back; in other words, doing whatever they desire. … Thus, man becomes more and more evil, arrogant, condescending, selfish and malicious. There is no longer any affection between people, no longer any love between family members, no longer any understanding among relatives and friends; human relations have become characterized by violence. Each and every person seeks to use violent methods to live among their fellow man; they seize their daily bread using violence; they win their positions and obtain their profits using violence, and they use violent and evil ways to do anything they want. Is this humanity not horrifying?”
I understood from God’s words that Satan uses social trends to corrupt people, and lure them one step at a time into the abyss of evil, causing them to admire evil and become more and more depraved. I thought of how at first my husband was considerate and tried to care for me and our family. But later, he was in and out of lots of entertainment venues with his friends and colleagues. Under the influence of the surrounding environment, he began to follow such evil trends as “The red flag at home does not fall, the colored flags outside flutter in the breeze,” and “Without a mistress, a man has no zest for life.” And so, in this way, he got caught up in the evil trends, indulging his carnal desires and finding a mistress, going so far as to believe that those who kept another woman or had a mistress were capable, true men. So that he could satisfy his fleshly desires, he paid no attention to how our child and I felt. He was so loving toward me in the beginning but even beat me later, without consideration of our conjugal relationship. I then thought of his mistress, who was 16 years younger than him. For the sake of money and a moment’s fleshly enjoyment, she entirely lost the conscience and reason of normal humanity and shamelessly became the other woman who destroyed my family. She didn’t consider my feelings at all, and even said brazenly, “I won’t marry him, but nor leave him.” All of this is the result of Satan’s afflictions. After Satan uses evils trends to inculcate people with various evil views, people become increasingly selfish, despicable and greedy, and increasingly indulge fleshy desires and covet sinful pleasures, without any conscience or sense of normal humanity whatsoever. I knew from God’s words that people having become like this originates from Satan’s corruption and that people are all being fooled and harmed by Satan. Without the truth, corrupt people are simply unable to withstand the inroads these evil trends are making. My ex-husband and his mistress were also the victims of Satan. Under the guidance of God’s words, I gradually emerged from the haze of the marital betrayal and my sorrow disappeared bit by bit, as if the clouds were parted and clear skies were revealed.
Later on, I heard my daughter say that my ex-husband and that woman were not happy together, frequently arguing. Hearing this, I felt totally calm and harbored no hatred, only feeling that they, toyed with by Satan, were pitiful. I knew that I felt a great sense of relief entirely because of the guidance of God’s words. Just as God’s words say, “Because the essence of God is holy, that means that only through God can you walk through life on the righteous path of light; only through God can you know the meaning of life; only through God can you live out real humanity and both possess and know the truth. Only through God can you obtain life from the truth. Only God Himself can help you shun evil and deliver you from the harm and control of Satan. Besides God, no one and nothing can save you from the sea of suffering so that you suffer no longer. This is determined by the essence of God.”
As I pondered God’s words, I thought back to what I had experienced. When I lost the hope for my life and lived in pain due to the breakup of my marriage, God arranged for my friend to tell me about the gospel. From God’s words, I came to understand the source of my pain and saw clearly how Satan uses evil trends to corrupt us, so I’m no longer pained by my ex-husband’s betrayal. I’ve truly felt that only living before God and in His love is true happiness and contentment. Only God can save us from Satan’s harm, and lead us to embark on the correct path in life and achieve a happy life. Now, I’m living in the big family, filled with God’s love. I preach and testify to God’s gospel with my brothers and sisters and do my duty to the best of my ability. No matter whether it is in life or spiritual life, my brothers and sisters do their utmost to help me. Every day is very abundant, and I’m released and happy. Thanks be to God!