It is said that the greatest love in the world is maternal love. However, in my life, the person who is the most heartless to me, that is, the person who hurt me the most, is my mother.
If it had not been for my faith in Jesus and God's teaching of respecting my parents, I think I would never want to meet my parents ever again. If I had not believed the word of Jesus, I would never even talk to my father and mother, who gave me birth and raised me.
Because of God's love, I can still love my parents. I still call them often and send them money every month. All the years I have been a believer in Jesus, and I have been active in preaching the Gospel to them whenever I can.
I was born in a rural family in Deng County, Nanyang, Henan Province, on August 23, 1984. There are four siblings in my family. My older sister is two years older than me. My older brother and I are twins, and there is a younger brother.
When I was little, I often heard my mother say that before I was born, she said that if I was born a girl, she would abandon me. To my mother's surprise, not long after I was born that day, my twin brother was also born. The elderly in the village exhorted my mother that twins had better not be separated. They said that if one was taken away, the other would not live long, so I was kept.
I still remember vividly that when I was very young, I once heard my mother tell my father that she would go to my aunt's home in Nanyang Oilfield next month. At that time, I had never been to my aunt's house. My mother agreed to take me there. But in the end, my mother did not let me go, while she traveled with my twin brother.
I am six years older than my little brother. After my mother gave birth to my little brother, I was the one who often took care of him, and my mother seldom cared for him.
Later, when my twin brother and I were old enough to go to school, my mother only let my twin brother go to school, and commanded me to help take care of my younger brother at home. My father saw that I cried every day and wanted to go to school, so he talked with my mother. Later, my mother agreed, but she didn't buy me any books. Instead, she let me sit next to my twin brother and let me read the same set of books with him.
Once, my father told my mother that I had been wearing the same pair of pants every day without changing them, and asked her to go out and buy me a pair of new pants. But later, my mom only bought a pair of new pants for my sister. My father was very angry. In the end, my father paid a female neighbor of ours to take me shopping to buy a pair of pants.
I remember that when I was in school, in order to make my mother happy, I would skip lunch and save the money for food. Then I would give it to my mother. She would laugh and take the money happily. To my disappointment, she never cared much about me skipping my lunches.
At the beginning of the second grade of junior school, my father gave me money to pay my tuition, but my mother refused to let me go to school. She sent me to work in a woolen yarn factory in Hebei with girls from our neighborhood who also stopped going to school. After working for half a year, I came back home during the Spring Festival. I gave them all the money I had saved by living a simple life. My uncle was a retired eye doctor, and at that time he wanted to start an eye clinic. So my mother told me to work for my uncle to learn some skills.
Starting around August 2001, I was only paid 100 yuan per month, and 300 yuan per month in the following year. I gave it all to my mother except for buying a few clothes for myself. What annoyed me the most was that at the start of the third year, my uncle said to me that he would give me a salary of 500 yuan every month, but my mother had taken away my whole year’s salary in advance.
But during that period of time, I learned all the skills that a hospital nurse can do. I would clean all three floors of the clinic every day, and I learned how to administer injections and prepare for patients before surgery skilfully. I could even sterilize surgical instruments with a pressure cooker, and do optometry. In the second and third years of working for my uncle, I did most of this work by myself. After working for my uncle for three years, my uncle fell ill. He had lung cancer. Then his eye clinic was also closed, and I immediately went to the railway station to buy a train ticket from Nanyang to Zhengzhou.
I stayed in Zhengzhou for a year and tried several jobs. I barely survived and sometimes I couldn't even get enough to eat. So I bought a train ticket to Beijing. The next day I found a job of washing dishes in a restaurant for 600 yuan a month. Then I got a job in sales. About two or three months later, when I earned my first paycheque of 5,500 yuan, I felt so excited that I called my parents to share my happiness. The next day, my twin brother called and asked me for a loan. He asked for exactly $5,500, and I refuse to lend it to him. In the end, I listened to my father and sent all the money to my brother. But my brother still hasn't paid me back. Later, I went home again. When I was about to leave, I gave them all the money they owe others before I left.
On the day I left, my mother rode with me to the county and found a bank ATM. I withdrew more than five thousand yuan for my mother. My mother took the money from my hands and carefully counted it. After counting the money, she put the money in her pocket and said, "I'm leaving." Then, she turned around and walked away. I didn't even have money for food except for a return train ticket.
After working in Beijing for more than a year, I bought a car and sold it for more than 20,000 yuan. I thought I didn't need the money at that time, so I gave all the money to my mother. Later, because I wanted to buy a house, I called my mother and asked her to transfer it to me so that I could use it, and promised that I would send the money to her after I got paid. My mother said on the phone at that time, "Consider this sum of money as your thanks that we raised you. We should never contact again. Bye."
Throughout the years I have believed in Jesus, God has been healing and repairing the wounds in my heart. Thanks to God's love, I am now able to forgive my parents for the harm they have done to me so that I no longer hate my parents.
I went back to visit my parents in May this year. This time, when I saw my parents are already very old, I no longer care about what they had done to me. Before I left home, in addition to leaving them thousands of yuan, I bought new appliances so as to replace their old ones which were bought more than ten years ago.
I thank God for having had mercy on my parents so that on June 6 of this year they truly repented and were baptized. I've been preaching to my parents for years, and my parents are finally willing to believe in Jesus. But they went many years without being baptized. Thanks to His grace, God moved my pastor and fellow workers who were from Nanyang Nanzhao, my hometown. They drove more than 140 kilometers to reach my home and preach to my parents for two days, and led my parents to do repentance prayer, then baptized them to the Lord. Praise the Lord! God granted my wish.
(The author of this article, is the instructor of the Smart Parents Camp and the founder of the Home-School Smart Parents Camp.)
- Translated by Nicolas Cao
