By Li Meng
“I walk on the way to glory, and lower my head to think carefully.
For so many years I went through wind and rain; the hypocritical world broke my heart.
As a stranger, I wandered in a distant land, with no light in my life.
It was You who delivered me from the abyss of misery, so I’m growing up in Your words.”
Hearing this song, I couldn’t help but recall the experience of years of my struggling overseas …
The year I was 26 years old and my child was only two and a half years old, my husband and I saw a 140-square-meter house in the county town which just cost 70 thousand yuan. But at that time we didn’t have enough money, nor could we succeed in borrowing money, so we had no way to realize the dream of buying a house. I thought: Now we are still young. As long as we work hard, we will certainly earn enough money and buy a house. Then I set a resolution: to build a beautiful homeland with my own hands, to have my own house in the county town in the future and give my child a good environment to let him live a happy life. Afterward, I learned that if I went abroad to work, I would earn much money. So I chose to leave my husband and child and went abroad to chase my dream of buying a house.
In August of 2005, I arrived in Singapore and worked in an electronics factory. I was very happy that the factory had a sound economic efficiency and often required the workers to work overtime. I thought: The more I work overtime, the earlier my desire to buy a house will be achieved. So I worked almost 16 hours every day and slept for 4 or 5 hours. As time passed, I couldn’t get much sleep. Every day, I was like a sack rat so that I always dozed off when I was working, eating or commuting in the factory bus.
Sometimes, I snoozed as I worked, and when I really couldn’t bear it anymore, I would go to the bathroom and sit on the toilet to have a nap for ten or so minutes. One time, I fainted in the workplace. The doctor said it was caused by overwork and that I needed to rest. Overwork exhausted me and I really wanted to have a good rest. But in order to have a stable home earlier, I felt the pain and exhaustion I suffered seemed worth it. After that I still worked overtime.
Two years later I earned over one hundred thousand yuan and with a heart full of joy, I thought that the time had finally come for me to buy a house. But contrary to expectations, house prices had become amazingly expensive within two years. The price of the house, which was tens of thousands yuan before, rose to over 300,000 yuan.
In order to more quickly realize the dream, I asked my husband to quit his job back home, leave our child in my mother’s care and come to Singapore to make a living with me together. He agreed with me. Filled with joy, I planned in my heart: After several years of struggle, we will certainly buy a house. But the ways of the world are unpredictable. The agents, who proceeded to go abroad for my husband, were liars. My husband failed to contact them after he arrived in Singapore. We had no choice but to suffer in silence. In this way, we were cheated out of the money I painstakingly earned by working overtime. I had mixed feelings of sorrow, anxiety and anger in my heart. But complaining couldn’t solve any problem, I needed to find ways to keep my husband in Singapore. And then I paid the agent fee of 30 thousand yuan or so to find a job for my husband. In this way, the money I earned went down the drain bit by bit and my dream of buying a house came to nothing.
One year later, because it was strenuous for my mother to take care of my child, I returned home. After I busied myself for a year, I went back to where I started. My heart was unspeakably painful.
One day, my mother got a sister to spread the gospel of the kingdom to me. A hymn of experience we sang at that time deeply touched my heart: “For so many years I went through wind and rain; the hypocritical world broke my heart. As a stranger, I wandered in a distant land, with no light in my life. It was You who delivered me from the abyss of misery, so I’m growing up in Your words.” The lyrics of this hymn gave voice to my own thoughts of my years of wandering overseas. I was moved to tears. Thinking that in order to realize my dream of buying a house, I left my young child and went abroad to work to earn money and worked overtime day and night. When I made some money, however, house prices rose and my husband was deceived, which made me feel exhausted physically and mentally. At last I still had nothing, unable to afford a house. I told my several years of overseas experiences to the sister. She fellowshiped to me: “The source of the pain and difficulties in our lives is because of Satan’s harm. Since we were young, Satan has instilled the principles of living into us such as ‘Man’s fate is controlled by his own hands’ and ‘Building a beautiful homeland with your own two hands,’ letting us cast off God’s rule and arrangements. In fact, whether we are happy or not is not directly related to what kind of house we live in. Moreover, what God bestows upon us was enough, but we were always not content. We felt painful because our desires and ambitions are not satisfied….” I felt what the sister fellowshiped made a lot of sense. After that, I began to attend gatherings and fellowshiped about God’s words with brothers and sisters. My heart was particularly peaceful and at ease.
Not long after that, I received a call from my husband and he said he wanted our child to study in Singapore, and thus we two could earn money while also take care of our child. Consequently, I brought my child and went abroad. I began to make plans again: We should earn more money to buy our own house when we are still young, and thus we are able to live a better life. Therefore, I was busy with work all day long. Neither did I read God’s words, nor do I pray to God. My heart became further and further from Him.
One day a year later, my husband suddenly received a call from his classmate. He wanted my husband to invest in his loach- farm, saying that they would earn much money after a year. My husband was moved and discussed this thing with me. He said that other classmates also would participate and each of them would invest 100 thousand yuan, and thus we could recoup the previous losses very quickly. Hearing my husband’s words, I thought: If things are really like what his classmate said, we’ll buy a house within two years. And we will not need to live in my mother’s house every time we return to China. So I agreed with him.
As the saying goes, “Storms gather without warning and misfortune befalls men overnight.” Within one year, the loach-farm went bankrupt, so our money went down the drain once again. Not only did we not recover our capital, but we went heavily into debt. It felt like a knife had been twisted into my heart. I didn’t understand why I repeatedly failed to make money. Then I thought: In these years, in order to realize my dream of buying a house, I busily rushed about and worked frantically all day long. However, in the end, I’m left with nothing. I couldn’t help but ask myself, “Why do we humans come into this world? Could it be that we continuously make money as a mortgage slave in our whole life?” I really felt very painful and tired. I wanted to break away from the pain, but I had no choice. In order to pay the debts, all I could do was getting my husband to go abroad to work and make money again.
Just when I felt despair and pain, unable to extricate myself from, God’s salvation came to me once again. My mother got my husband to bring me the contact details of Singapore branch of The Church of Almighty God. Later on, I connected with the church and lived a church life, as if a lost child went back to his parents’ side again. Through reading God’s words and fellowshiping with brothers and sisters, I finally understood the reason for my pain. Just as the words of God say, “Because people do not recognize God’s orchestrations and God’s sovereignty, they always face fate defiantly and with a rebellious attitude, and they 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 and are thwarted at every turn. This struggle, which takes place deep in one’s soul, brings profound pain of the sort that carves itself into one’s bones, as one fritters away their life all the while. 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 caused by the paths people take, the ways they choose to live their lives.”
“The tragedy of man is not that he seeks a happy life, not that he pursues fame and fortune or struggles against his own fate through the fog, but that after he has seen the Creator’s existence, after he has learned the fact that the Creator has sovereignty over human fate, he still cannot mend his ways, cannot pull his feet out of the mire, but hardens his heart and persists in his errors. He would rather keep thrashing in the mud, vying obstinately against the Creator’s sovereignty, resisting it until the bitter end, all without the slightest shred of contrition. It is only when he lies broken and bleeding that he at last decides to give up and turn back. This is true human sorrow.”
God’s words say clearly about the source of our pain. It is not caused by God’s sovereignty, nor is it because we are born unlucky. Rather, it is because of the way we are going and the means of living we choose. When we were little, Satan contaminated us with the poisonous heresy: to build a beautiful homeland with our own two hands. We have been living our lives based on Satan’s rules. Even though we have seen the Creator’s existence and known that the Creator presides over the fate of man, we still cannot find our ways back from going astray, but remain unrepentant and resist God to the end. This is precisely the root of our pain. Looking back on the past is unbearable! Poisoned and influenced by satanic poisons, in order to buy a house and live a city life, I went abroad alone to work to make a living. As a result, I was exhausted physically and mentally and my body grew increasingly frail. With the remorseless rise in house prices, no matter how I struggled to make money, I still couldn’t afford a house. In order to earn money, I thought up every possible method to let my husband go abroad to work. Who would have known that we would meet frauds. But we were unwilling to give up so easily, and then we borrowed money to invest in a loach-farm. In the end, we ran into debt. After my dream of buying a house was shattered, I complained to my husband, which made him live in self-blame all day long. In order to make money to buy a house, we left our child at home, letting him lose the care and education of parents from an early age. Weren’t the pain and consequences caused by the rules of living instilled in man by Satan? Harmed by Satan, I regarded buying a house as my only goal and rushed about pursuing it all day long. Our family also lived in pain. At the time, although I had heard God’s gospel, I still persisted in my mistaken beliefs and chose to walk my own way, struggling in the mud. Only when I lied broken and bleeding did I turn back. I really was being so obstinate, rebellious and foolish! I was grateful for God’s grace and mercy. When I had nowhere else to go, through my mother giving me the website address of The Church of Almighty God, I returned to God’s family and obtained the nourishment of God’s words. Man’s end really is God’s beginning.
Later on, I saw it said in God’s words: “But there is an exceedingly simple way to free oneself from this state, which is to bid farewell to one’s former way of living; to say goodbye to one’s previous goals in life; to summarize and analyze one’s previous lifestyle, view of life, pursuits, desires, and ideals; and then to compare them with God’s will and demands for man, and see whether any of them is consistent with God’s will and demands, whether any of them delivers the right values of life, leads one to a greater understanding of the truth, and allows one to live with humanity and the likeness of a human being. When you repeatedly investigate and carefully dissect the various goals that people pursue in life and their myriad ways of living, you will find not one of them conforms to the Creator’s original intention with which He created humanity. All of them draw people away from the Creator’s sovereignty and care; they are all traps which cause people to become depraved, and which lead them to hell. After you recognize this, your task is to lay aside your old view of life, stay far from various traps, let God take charge of your life and make arrangements for you; it is to try only to submit to God’s orchestrations and guidance, to live without individual choice, and to become a person who worships God.” Through reading God’s words, I had the path of practice. I should give the rest of my life to God’s hands, let God take charge of my life and make arrangements for me, and I would no longer struggle painfully for the pursuit of buying a house. Although I have ever defied God and gone astray, God has never given up on my salvation. He still used all kinds of ways to awake my heart and spirit, told me the answer and led me to walk out of the sea of suffering. It was God who let me know that man should pursue the truth, obey God’s orchestrations and live in God’s presence, and only then can he have true happiness. I was willing to repent, change my previous incorrect life perspective and begin my new life according to God’s words, with a positive attitude.
Afterward, I preached God’s gospel to my husband. Through reading God’s words, he also understood whether we have a house or not is dictated by God’s hands, while whether we are happy or not is not decided by whether we have a house.
Now we are no longer hell-bent on working overtime to make money as we did in the past. Instead, we work and live normally, spending more time and energy pursuing the truth. Acting this way made me experience much more love and blessing of God, and see what God arranges for us is the best. Now I just work 3 to 4 hours a day, but I earn more money than before. Whenever I have spare time, I will gather together with brothers and sisters and perform my duty. Each day is abundant and I also feel relaxed. Unconsciously, we have paid all the debts. Although we live in a rented house, yet we live under the guidance of God’s words. My husband and I read God’s words and fulfill our duties together. Meanwhile, we have brought our child before God, letting him live and grow under God’s leadership. We no longer rack our brains and rush around to buy a house, but rather we learn to obey God’s rule and arrangements. We feel relaxed and happy and our hearts are very peaceful and at ease.
