By Nuanxin, Singapore
My Choice
When I was young, my mother and aunt told me to find a husband who is well off and capable of making money. But I preferred to live an ordinary life with the one I loved. So I finally chose an honest country man as my husband. Only after I got married did it dawn on me that life was actually not nearly as easy as I imagined at all. There were so many expenses in life, such as our daily necessities, our child’s needs, dealing with others, the medicine my mother took every day for her diabetes. At that time, I truly appreciated the meaning of the saying “Money isn’t everything, but without it, you can do nothing.”
What surprised me more was that some of my relatives and friends, after learning that I was married into a poor family in the country, laughed at my mother when seeing her. They said, “How could your daughter marry a man in such a poor place? Without money, they can do nothing these days.” Their words really embarrassed my mother, so every time I went to her home she would scold me, saying: “Don’t come back unless you buy your own house.” My mother’s words deeply stung me. I thought: It’s nothing much for others to belittle me. But why does she––my own mother––also belittle me? I felt miserable and told myself secretly: “I must strive to make money. When I’m rich, I will never have these troubles anymore and no one will look down upon me.”
Losing My Family
In order to make money, I left my son, who was less than one year old, in my mother’s care and went to work for a medical device factory, which exported medical devices. My job involved some figure work, which was pretty difficult for me, who was not highly educated. But in order to make money as soon as possible, I kept learning about it day and night for half a year, and finally mastered that which was supposed to be learned in three years. Afterward, I was put in charge of operating a medical gauze making machine as well as the whole packing process, including the packing, the counting, data checking and the wrapping. Every day, I had to carry one or two hundred bales of gauze, each of which weighed about 20kg, up to two-meter high shelves. As time went by, I began to have a sore back and my arms hurt so bad that I couldn’t raise them up. Even so, I still gritted my teeth and struggled on, for the sake of making more money.
However, what pained me most was not the physical exhaustion but the mental stress. As our products were for export, the quality requirements were high. If a single product was not up to the standard, then the whole batch would be returned. In that case, I would not only face a fine, but also be severely rebuked by all the department leaders in the factory meeting, and even face the danger of being fired. Sometimes, during my sleep, I was still bothering about whether I had done my work well and whether I had overlooked some deficient products. The strain under which I was living every day caused me, who was then only 30, to have white hairs, and become more wrinkled. Besides, I often lost sleep, and thus seeing doctors and taking medicine also became common occurrences in my life.
Many times, I asked myself: Is it worthwhile to work so hard for money? However, at the thought of the embarrassment of having no money, and the attitude of my relatives and friends toward me, I was unable to stop myself from working on wearily.
Later, thinking that I could make more money quickly by doing business, I rent a shop in a mall and started selling clothes and shoes. However, after some time, owing to the growing number of online stores, my business became ever slacker, causing me to be short-tempered, and apt to get angry with my husband. Gradually, there was less and less communication between us. Sometimes, I tried to have a talk with him about my business, only to find that he simply had no interest in it. When I spoke too much about it, he would get angry, saying: “You decided to do the business, so handle it for yourself.” At such times, I would criticize him: “As a man, you can’t make money and support the family; what can you be good for?” And he would retort, in a huff: “That’s the way I am. Never count on me to give you a wealthy life.” After that, there would follow a violent quarrel between us, during which I always blamed him for being shiftless and not striving for money, while he said I seemed to have turned into a different person who cared about nothing but money. Every time after our quarrel, I would run out alone to the seashore and shed silent tears of regret, thinking that if I had listened to my parents’ words and found a well-off partner, then my life now wouldn’t have been so hard. A year later, I was no longer able to tolerate my husband’s shiftlessness and finally decided to break up with him.
Coming Abroad to Work
After my divorce, I concentrated all my energies on how to make more money, and later through a friend’s introduction, I came to work in Singapore.
When arriving at the workplace, I was stunned at the sight of the working condition: The weather was so hot yet there was actually no air conditioning. Seeing the workers were laboring in a sweat, I really wanted to go back. But when I thought of the agent fee I had paid to get here and that my parents and child were waiting for me to bring home money, I told myself that I must go on no matter the environment. Then I started to occupy myself with heavy work. Every day, I must wash three big baskets of vegetables, cut them, and cook four big buckets of rice before noon. At first, I was not used to the weather here. Every day I felt tired and hot that I was only able to eat a little food, which led to me losing almost 15kg of weight in just two months. Despite this, I still worked my fingers to the bone. At night, when I lay in bed alone, watching the ceiling, with no family by my side, I felt desolate and empty.
In a blink of an eye, four years passed. I had bought two houses in China and my savings account was still growing, but I didn’t feel the least bit happy. I originally thought that money could resolve all my problems, but never imagined that when I made the money and had my own houses, my heart became extremely empty. Suddenly, I felt as if I had lost my way, but I didn’t know what I should pursue if I stopped making money.
Encountering God’s Salvation
In 2017, by chance, a friend of mine testified to Almighty God’s kingdom gospel to me. But I had been busy with my work, so I just chatted with sisters now and then.
One day, I opened the app on my phone and saw a hymn video of life experience “If I Were Not Saved by God”: “If I were not saved by God, I would still be drifting in this world, struggling hard and painfully in sin; every day gets bleak and hopeless. …” When I saw in the video a sister, after having a fight with her husband, sat by the sea with a heavy face, I could not stop my tears as I called to mind how in the past I frequently had fights with my husband due to the great pressure of earning money, and that after every quarrel, not knowing what to do, I would quietly sit by the sea in a trance. Later, I saw the sister in the video led a peaceful life after believing in God. Her happy and relaxed smiles really filled me with envy. Knowing that it was God who had saved her, I wondered: If I believe in God, will I also be able to smile from the bottom of my heart like her?
Thereupon, I decided to accept God’s salvation so I contacted brothers and sisters, offering to gather with them.
The Root of My Misery
During a gathering, I read the following words of God: “‘Money makes the world go round’ is the philosophy of Satan and it prevails among the whole of mankind, among every human society. You could say that it is a trend because it has been imparted to everyone and is now affixed in their heart. People went from not accepting this saying to growing used to it so that when they came into contact with real life, they gradually gave tacit approval to it, acknowledged its existence and finally, they gave it their own seal of approval. Isn’t this process that of Satan corrupting man? … So after Satan uses this trend to corrupt people, how is it manifested in them? Don’t you feel that you couldn’t survive in this world without any money, that even one day would just be impossible? (Yes.) People’s status is based on how much money they have as is their respectability. The backs of the poor are bent in shame, while the rich enjoy their high status. They stand tall and proud, speaking loudly and living arrogantly. What does this saying and trend bring to people? Don’t many people see getting money as being worth any cost? … That is to say, this saying already controls your behavior and your thoughts, and you would rather have your fate controlled by this saying than give it all up. People do this, they are controlled by this saying and manipulated by it. Isn’t this the effect of Satan corrupting man?”
What God revealed was my real situation. At first, I did not view money as important, but later after I got married, the difficulties in life and the attitude of my relatives and friends toward me made me feel that one could do nothing in this society without money, that people’s status depended on how much money they had, and that the rich could stand tall and proud, while the poor would be looked down upon by others, even by their own family. In face of the cruel reality, I gradually approved of Satan’s viewpoints of “Money is first,” “Money is everything,” and “Money makes the world go round.” Hence, I left my son with my mother and worked overtime to make money like crazy in spite of tiredness. Later, feeling my wages were too low, I set up my own store, and worked day and night. Yet my husband didn’t exert himself to make money but was happy with the status quo. Seeing that, I often started arguments with him, and even divorced him in the end. Later on, to make more money I came to work in Singapore alone. Although I made some money and bought my own houses at last, I felt empty and painful, and tormented both mentally and physically. Now, I finally understood that all my suffering was caused by my being poisoned by Satan’s view of “Money makes the world go round.” I had been living by it and it had become my life, turned me into a slave to money, and made me live in emptiness and suffering. Understanding this, I was full of gratitude to God and no longer willing to live for money. I then resolved to focus on reading God’s words and to live by His words.
My Mother’s Death
On New Year’s Eve of 2017, after I had just finished my lunch, I received a call from my sister telling me that my mother had passed out when undergoing dialysis and asking me to return to China quickly. Soon, I bought a plane ticket and flew home. On the third morning after I got home, my mother died. Sitting by her side, and stroking her ice-cold hand and face, I would rather believe that she was sleeping, but her cold body told me that she had gone forever.
Then, I looked back to the entire life of my mother. In order to save up for a house and my brother’s marriage, she scrimped and saved all along: Ordinarily, she was unwilling to eat any decent food but often ate poor and cheap food; when her health broke down, she was still unwilling to spend money to have her illness cured. And now, when she had money, houses and grandchildren, she was gone forever. All that she had struggled for had nothing to do with her now.
At that time, I thought of God’s words: “One exhausts a lifetime’s worth of energy fighting against fate, spends all of one’s time bustling about trying to feed one’s family and shuttling back and forth between wealth and status. The things that people treasure are family, money, and fame; they view these as the most valuable things in life. All people complain about their fates, yet still they push to the back of their minds the questions that it is most imperative to examine and understand: why man is alive, how man should live, what the value and meaning of life is. All of their lives, however many years that may be, they just rush about seeking fame and fortune, until their youth has fled, until they become gray and wrinkled; until they see that fame and fortune cannot stop one’s slide toward senility, that money cannot fill the emptiness of the heart; until they understand that no one is exempt from the law of birth, aging, sickness, and death, that no one can escape what fate has in store. Only when they are forced to confront life’s final juncture do they truly grasp that even if one owns millions in property, even if one is privileged and of high rank, no one can escape death, every person will return to his or her original position: a solitary soul, with nothing to its name. … The Creator treats everyone fairly, giving everyone a lifetime’s worth of opportunities to experience and know His sovereignty, yet it is only when death draws near, when the specter of death hangs over one, that one begins to see the light—and then it is too late.”
My mother’s death allowed me to truly see that although everything that we spend our life bustling about for brings us material enjoyments, it cannot buy us peace or life, and even makes us miss the chance of knowing the Creator and experiencing human life. Only when we face death, do we see that all that we pursue in our life is temporary and empty. I then thought about how I saw money as the most important thing in my life, believing that money could resolve any problems; even when I split with my husband, I thought I could get along just fine as long as I had money. However, later, although I earned some money, I nonetheless felt helpless, lost, and empty. All this as well as my mother’s death really made me come to realize that money is not everything. Understanding this, I felt much calmer. I thank God for giving me the opportunity to choose my way in life once again. I’m willing to spend the rest of my life seeking truth earnestly and experiencing God’s sovereignty, so that I can be worthy of the breath God has given me.
After my mother’s funeral, I returned to Singapore. Since then, I attended the gatherings very actively: I would put aside whatever I was doing when it was time to have gatherings.
My New Life
In the following days, my work was still busy and tiring, but I felt joyful and peaceful. I no longer racked my brains trying to make more money, but put more of my time into attending gatherings and pondering God’s words. And I often quieted myself before God and sought His will in everything, allowing God’s words to point me in the direction of life. Little by little, I learned to use God’s words to deal with the difficulties I faced in my life and work. I gradually became cheerful, and no longer pulled a long face before others. Besides the insomnia and headache I had suffered from got much better. My colleagues all said that it seemed as if I had become another person. I knew all of this was God’s salvation of me and I was very grateful to God. Once, at a gathering, I read a passage of God’s words: “When one has no God, when one cannot see Him, when one cannot clearly recognize God’s sovereignty, every day is meaningless, worthless, miserable. Wherever one is, whatever one’s job is, one’s means of living and the pursuit of one’s goals bring one nothing but endless heartbreak and irrelievable suffering, such that one cannot bear to look back. Only when one accepts the Creator’s sovereignty, submits to His orchestrations and arrangements, and seeks true human life, will one gradually break free from all heartbreak and suffering, shake off all the emptiness of life.” Only after all this experience did I truly appreciate the profound significance of these words of God.
“If I were not saved by God, I would still be drifting in this world, struggling hard and painfully in sin; every day gets bleak and hopeless. …” Now when I once again heard the hymn “If I were not saved by God”, I was deeply touched. Thank God for helping me out of the bitter life of struggling for money, and giving me true life. I truly experienced that God’s words are truth and can resolve all of man’s suffering. I’m determined that from now on, I will bring before God people who was perplexed and distressed in life like me, so that they can receive God’s salvation.
