Showing posts with label hymns. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hymns. Show all posts

Saturday, November 24, 2018

Returning to Life From the Brink of Death

read God’s words, fellowship truths
By Yang Mei, China
In 2007 I suddenly fell ill with chronic renal failure. On being told the news, my Christian mother and sister-in-law, and some Catholic friends all came to visit me to preach the gospel to me. They all told me that I only had to go to God and my illness would be cured. But I didn’t believe in God at all. I thought that illness could only be cured through scientific medical treatment, and that any disease that couldn’t be cured by science was incurable. After all, was there any power on earth greater than the power of science? Faith in God was just a form of psychological crutch, and I was an upstanding state school teacher, a person who was educated and cultured, so there was no way I’d start believing in God. So I turned them down and started looking around for medical treatment. Within a few years I’d been to virtually every large hospital in my home county and throughout the province, but my condition didn’t improve. In fact, it was getting worse, but I stubbornly clung to my own way of looking at the situation and insisted that science could change anything and that curing illness was just a question of finding the right process.

Thursday, November 15, 2018

What Allows Me to Regain a Happy Life?


Xiaoping
This is an age when people care very much about physical attractiveness and a good looking body. With a beautiful face and a slim figure, I turned heads no matter what kind of clothes I wore. People around me often praised me and envied that I had both a great figure and a great face, and my husband was also very kind to me. Because of this, I was especially confident. No matter where I went, I walked with my head held high and my back straight. I displayed myself to receive praise from others. In my heart I believed: As long as a woman has a graceful figure and a pretty face, she could rewrite her own life.
However, unexpectedly, after having a child, I began to put on weight. Gradually, my husband began to dislike me, and he said I had a chubby stomach and fat legs. Some people also joked sarcastically at me, saying that I even put on weight when I drank water, and that I was so fat that I was out of shape. Listening to these words, I felt especially awful. My face burned as if I was slapped. When I had used to go out, people praised my beauty, but now they all ridiculed me. It was as if I fell from heaven to hell. The drastic contrast seriously damaged my pride, and I felt so painful inside. One time, I went shopping with my husband, and I was buying trousers for him in a department store. Two shop assistants quietly whispered behind me, “This guy is so young and handsome. How is he with this big fat woman?” When I heard their critiques, I was so angry that I threw the pants onto the counter, and then turned and left. I couldn’t stop my tears from flowing. I thought: These days, people only value a good face and a nice figure. If a woman doesn’t have a beautiful face and a slim figure, then there’s no way for her to stand in society. So, I made up my mind: When I stop breastfeeding my child, I’ll try to lose weight. I’ll make those people who laughed at me envious and jealous! Later, a friend of mine said to me, “Look at how chubby you’ve become. So many men have a young mistress these days. If you keep getting fatter and don’t try to lose weight, what will you do if one day your husband becomes unfaithful and finds a mistress?” When I heard things like this, I became more miserable inside, and I felt a strong sense of danger. I thought: When my figure hadn’t changed, my husband obeyed everything I said. After I put on weight, my husband started to dislike me. If things go according to what my friend said, this would be awful. I can’t allow something like this to happen. I felt very anxious. In those days, even in my dreams I dreamed that my husband ran off with some other woman. This made me feel even more that losing weight is of utmost importance. After my child was weaned, I looked for effective short-term ways of losing weight through acquaintances and the Internet. I even consulted experts in weight loss, who said to me, “If you want a slim figure, you have to pay the price. A married woman like you especially needs to look after her weight. You’re still young. It’s too late if you want to lose weight when you’re older. Your figure is your confidence. Only when your figure is better can you grasp your husband’s heart.” The expert was right! Only when a woman has a perfect figure can she have total confidence and restore her image in others’ minds. So, I started to implement my own weight loss plans without hesitation, looking for “secret recipes” for losing weight.