Feeling after reading:
I thought of God's words, "Whether marriage itself brings happiness or pain, everyone’s mission in marriage is predestined by the Creator and will not change; everyone must fulfill it. And the individual fate that lies behind every marriage is unchanging; it was determined long in advance by the Creator." "Because people do not recognize God’s orchestrations and God’s sovereignty, they always face fate defiantly, with a rebellious attitude, and always want to cast off God’s authority and sovereignty and the things fate has in store, hoping in vain to change their current circumstances and alter their fate. But they can never succeed; they are thwarted at every turn. This struggle, which takes place deep in one’s soul, is painful; the pain is unforgettable; and all the while one is frittering away one’s life. What is the cause of this pain? Is it because of God’s sovereignty, or because a person was born unlucky? Obviously neither is true. At bottom, it is because of the paths people take, the ways people choose to live their lives. Some people may not have realized these things. But when you truly know, when you truly come to recognize that God has sovereignty over human fate, when you truly understand that everything God has planned for and decided for you is a great benefit, and is a great protection, then you feel your pain gradually lighten, and the whole of you become relaxed, free, liberated."
Yang Zi, China
She had just turned twenty, she had a graceful figure and appeared as pretty as a flower, and there were many suitors pursuing her. But she didn’t pay this any mind until one day when her friend invited her to come out and she by chance met Lin. Lin was almost 6 feet tall, he was tall and handsome, with a dignified bearing. He spoke with humor and with wit, and was able to attract her in an instant. And Lin too was quite interested in her. The two of them started seeing each other very soon, and after a few months they got married. Before long they had a child of their own, and this made her feel very blessed. But good things don’t last forever. Just when she was starting to enjoy everything and long for a beautiful future, she discovered that Lin was not engaging in honest work every day. All day long he was idling about, and he would even go out often and get in fights and gamble. When he returned home, he would pick out faults with her no matter if there was something going on or not. He simply did not care for her or their child. She did not understand why Lin was acting this way. Many times with eyes full of tears she would urge Lin to walk the correct path, but not only did Lin not listen, he would even lash out at her, and one time he even went so far as to nearly choke her to death. She had lost all hope in Lin. Before long, Lin got sentenced to prison for breaking the law, and she had to support herself and their one-and-a-half-year-old child on her own. Her life was full of hardships and dashed hopes. It wasn’t until 2003, when Lin completed his prison sentence and was released, that she was finished with this painful marriage.
After this, she took her son to her parents’ home. Since she didn’t have a job, she and her son had to rely on her relatives to assist them, which made her feel very embarrassed and helpless. When her neighbors saw that she was having difficulty taking care of her child by herself, they made an effort to look for a partner to introduce to her. At first she thought that she just wanted an average man, that as long as he was good to her child then it would be okay, but then she thought to herself: I’m still quite young, although I’ve gotten divorced, I cannot just settle for anyone. To her surprise, her neighbors introduced her to men who were very short, or otherwise they weren’t the least bit handsome, or they didn’t have a dignified bearing, some of them even forsook her for having a child, and none of the men that came by suited her, which made her feel quite disappointed. Later on she met Jun, he was eight years older than her, he was divorced, and he had a daughter. He had a dark complexion and average looks, and he wasn’t very tall. In her heart she didn’t really regard Jun highly, but he was honest and kind-hearted, and he was very kind to her and her son. So, she thought it over, and decided that for the sake of her son she had to compromise and marry him. After they got married, he was just as kind to them as he was before. He took care of them, he was very considerate, and he even did work around the house, cooking food and washing clothes. But she couldn’t get past the pitfall of her vanity, so she still could not completely accept Jun in her heart. She resented him for looking ugly and felt that he was undeserving of her. For this reason, she never wanted to go outside together with her husband. One time when she was out, she saw a dress in the display window of a shop that she really wanted to go try on, but she saw her husband behind her, who was old and dark, she thought if she let him walk beside her then the people working in the shop would certainly point at her and make fun of her behind her back, they would laugh about how she didn’t have a good eye for things. How could her husband be so old? She couldn’t let go of this pride of hers, so she made him wait for her outside in the entryway of the shop. In that moment, she saw a look of disappointment sweep over his eyes, but then he immediately smiled and said: “Go try it on, I’ll wait for you.” When she heard this, she felt somewhat ashamed and uneasy. After this, in order to make her accept him in her heart, Jun took over all household duties, and did them the best he could, but no matter what he did, she wasn’t able to fully accept him.
In 2010 she started doing cosmetics business, and when this started, the clothes and makeup she wore became more and more fashionable and trendy, making her look even younger and more beautiful. When she would stand in front of the mirror next to her husband, he appeared even more like a rural peasant in contrast to her, he didn’t have the looks or the personality. The distance between them had increased, and at this time she felt even worse in her heart. In addition, she was interacting with lots of people and saw that these other people’s husbands were good-looking and outstanding, so whenever she would return home and see her husband, she would feel more dissatisfied, and she could not help but find faults with him. Actually, she felt lost, for she knew that her husband had always worked hard to win her favor, and that she shouldn’t treat him like this, but since she always felt a disequilibrium in her heart, she couldn’t control how she felt. As time passed, Jun was unable to put up with this kind of life, the two of them would often get into quarrels, and they were living in suffering. She thought back to one afternoon when Jun came to the office to pick her up. Actually it would have been a good thing if he did not come because none of her coworkers knew what he looked like. But he came that day to pick her up, and then the next day her coworkers circled around her, asking: “Who was that yesterday who picked you up? He looked so rustic….” She immediately felt like she had lost face. She felt upset because she thought that her husband shouldn’t have come to pick her up. At the same time, she also asked herself how she could have found such a disappointing husband that she didn’t want to be seen with, who was ridiculed and looked down upon by other people. She really had a difficult time living like this. In this moment, she came up with a brazen idea: She would look again for someone of the opposite sex that she liked. As for her marriage with Jun, if it really wasn’t going to work then she’d end it. Thereupon, she accompanied her coworkers whenever they invited her to go sing at KTV, but all she wanted to do was find a person of the opposite sex that she admired. At this time, since Jun was often being avoided and ignored by her, he started to feel a suffering in his heart, and he too started feeling more and more indifferent toward her. It got to the point that he too would sometimes not return home when he got off of work. In this way, the marriage between her and Jun entered into a crisis …
From The Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven
