During my adolescence, I had a lot of fantasies about marriage that I would love my beloved, live together till old and grey, and go through my whole life happily. After I graduated from high school, I fell in love with one of my classmates. His word and deed, act and move, and whatever he did attracted my heart. My mind was occupied by him. Even in my dreams, I dreamt of him and the good time when we studied together. Then, I started to write letters to him. As I was conservative, I was too shy to speak my mind to him. Maybe because he had some misgiving, or because he was also a conservative man, neither did he. But I felt that he also liked me very much. Just like that, we kept in touch with each other by letters for two years. Because I couldn’t endure such a fruitless association anymore, I wrote my mind to him in an implicit way. After the letter was sent out, I waited for his reply nervously and uneasily as if days felt like years, but the letter was like a stone dropped into the sea, without any response. At that time I was painful to the extreme. My sweet dream for marriage was broken in that way. I didn’t know how to face my future life. When I sank into the worst state, my colleague’s older brother (my husband now) made a proposal to me. I didn’t like him at that time at all. But for fear of embarrassing my colleague, I could hardly refuse. Under his vigorous courting, my heart was moved a little. I thought that since I couldn’t marry my beloved, it was okay for me to marry a person who loved me. Directed by this thought, I was engaged with him soon.
Half a year later, my classmate replied to me. He said he just came back from another place and once he saw my letter, he hurriedly replied. He said he didn’t understand the purpose of my letter and asked what I meant. After I received his letter, joys and sorrows filled my heart. Before, I had thought he didn’t love me, so he didn’t reply to my letter. In fact, it was because he had gone to another place and missed my letter. But then, I was already engaged, so I replied against my will, saying that I didn’t have any other intention, and asking him not to think too much and to bless me because I had been engaged.
The days living with my husband were full of wars. Because I didn’t like him, I always vented my anger on him and thought I lost my dream marriage with my classmate due to his appearance. So, my husband’s everything was disagreeable to me. I always quarreled with him, and often threatened him with divorce. Our marriage was terribly painful. Not only were both of us exhausted mentally and physically heartbroken, but also our growing child was affected. When my marriage was close to breaking down, the love of God came upon me. My colleague preached the gospel of God’s kingdom to me. She read some of God’s word for me, “Marriage is a key event in any person’s life; it is the time when one starts truly to assume various kinds of responsibilities, and gradually to complete various kinds of missions. People harbor many illusions about marriage before they experience it themselves, and all these illusions are quite beautiful. Women imagine that their other halves will be Prince Charming, and men imagine that they will marry Snow White. These fantasies go to show that every person has certain requirements for marriage, their own set of demands and standards. Though in this evil age people are constantly bombarded with distorted messages about marriage, which create even more additional requirements and give people all sorts of baggage and strange attitudes, any person who has experienced marriage knows that no matter how one understands it, no matter what one’s attitude toward it is, marriage is not a matter of individual choice.“
“One encounters many people in one’s life, but no one knows who will become one’s partner in marriage. Though everyone has their own ideas and personal stances on the subject of marriage, no one can foresee who will truly, finally become their other half, and one’s own ideas on the matter count for little. After meeting someone you like, you can pursue that person; but whether they are interested in you, whether they are able to become your partner—that is not yours to decide. The object of your affections is not necessarily the person with whom you will be able to share your life; and meanwhile, someone you never expected may quietly enter your life and become your partner, the most important element in your fate, your other half, to whom your fate is inextricably bound.”
“When one becomes independent, one begins one’s own journey in life, which leads one, step by step, toward the people, events, and things that have a connection to one’s marriage. At the same time, the other person who will be in that marriage is approaching, step by step, toward those same people, events, and things. Under the Creator’s sovereignty, two unrelated people with related fates gradually enter into a single marriage and become, miraculously, a family: ‘two locusts clinging to the same rope.’ So, when one enters into a marriage, one’s journey in life will influence and touch upon one’s other half, and likewise one’s partner’s journey in life will influence and touch upon one’s own fate in life. In other words, human fates are interconnected, and no one can complete one’s mission in life or perform one’s role in complete independence from others. One’s birth has a bearing on a huge chain of relationships; growing up also involves a complex chain of relationships; and similarly, a marriage inevitably exists and is maintained within a vast and complex web of human connections, involving every member of that web and influencing the fate of everyone who is a part of it. A marriage is not the product of both members’ families, the circumstances in which they grew up, their appearances, their ages, their qualities, their talents, or any other factors; rather, it arises from a shared mission and a related fate. This is the origin of marriage, a product of human fate orchestrated and arranged by the Creator” (“God Himself, the Unique III”).
God’s word made me understand that man’s marriage isn’t controlled by himself but by God, not up to ourselves; it is our destiny. Although I loved my classmate, I was not fated to be together with him this life. Even if my husband hadn’t appeared, I couldn’t possibly be together with my classmate, because it had been predestined by God. If I stubbornly fought with destiny, it could only bring endless sorrow to myself and bring hurt to the people around me. If it caused all my family to live in misery because of me, I was too selfish. When I realized all this was intelligently orchestrated and arranged by God, and it was not that my husband’s appearance broke my marriage dream, but it is through his appearance that God helped me walk out of the whirlpool of my love failure and out of the emotion torment. I made no more complaints and would like to obey God’s orchestration and arrangement. Later, our family is full of cheerful chat and laughter instead of wars. Thank God for His salvation!
