(Minghui.org) I was imprisoned by the CCP for many years for practicing Falun Dafa. When I finally was released, my daughter and son-in-law came to pick me up, but their faces didn't show the joy of seeing me. I wondered why my husband didn't come either.
On our way home, my daughter looked irritated, so I didn't dare ask her. When we were almost home, she said, “Dad got in a lawsuit because of you. He is exhausted and in the hospital. We're going there to see him now.” My heart jumped.
They took me to the intensive care unit.
As soon as we stepped in, I was stunned: Four months ago, my husband was still fine. How did he become like this? He was totally out of shape, bony and fragile, just like a dead person. My daughter hollered, “Dad, Mom is back! Open your eyes!” He tried to open his eyes, got a glimpse of me, seemed to smile, then closed them. Tears covered my face.
I no longer recognized my husband, who used to be tall and handsome. Now he was wrapped up and hooked up to many machines. He couldn't breathe on his own and had to rely on a ventilator. He couldn't talk or swallow and had to be fed through his nostrils. I was totally stunned.
The doctor talked to me about my husband's situation, but I couldn't hear clearly, and my mind was blank. As we walked out of the ward, I began wailing. My daughter said, “Dad has been in a coma for more than 20 days now. We've got everything prepared.” I continued howling. What I imagined when stepping out of the prison was so different from what was happening in front of me. I couldn't accept it. Despair, complaints, grievances, resentment, combativeness, and other ill thoughts came up. I even wanted to give up cultivation and stop believing in anything.
When I got home, things around the house made me sad, especially the scene of the police arresting me. My daughter said, “The police blackmailed us and stole more than ten thousand yuan in savings. Dad fainted at home. He fell and had an intracranial hemorrhage and a brain infection. His blood pressure was 40, and his blood sugar reached 38. He had diabetes and a lung infection. We didn’t dare go to provincial or city hospitals for fear of losing him midway. We kept him in our local area and relied on a ventilator to keep him alive. He couldn't swallow, as he had a tracheal incision. His life is at stake.”
My heart sank. I hated myself for not being able to live up to expectations, being irrational, and getting arrested, persecuted, illegally detained, and sentenced. It was hard to imagine how my husband could put up with all these things. Now, he was in intensive care, and I was only allowed to see him for 10 minutes a day. This was no different to being in prison!
At the time, I acted like an ordinary person, like a fool. I was afraid of losing my husband and just couldn't let go of my emotions. I wasn't rational. All I could think of was to find the police officer who arrested and framed me. I wanted to fight with them and tell them, “You won’t let me live. I won't let you live either!” All these years I couldn't read the Fa in the prison, and what I had studied before had all been forgotten. I cried the whole day long.
When local practitioners heard about my situation, everyone came to send righteous thoughts and share their understandings of the Fa with me. They reminded me to be rational and not to let the uncultivated side of me take control. When encountering tribulations, I was encouraged not to avoid them and instead to use righteous thoughts to disintegrate the old forces' persecution, taking the Fa as a guide.
Teacher said,
“But all the same, Master doesn't acknowledge them. And you shouldn't acknowledge them either. Do things well in an upright and dignified way, negate them, and strengthen your righteous thoughts. “I'm Li Hongzhi's disciple, I don't want other arrangements or acknowledge them”--then they won't dare to do that. So it can all be resolved. When you can really do that, not just saying it but putting it into action, Master will definitely stand up for you.” (Fa-Lecture During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference)
“Steadfastly cultivate Dafa, the will unflinchingThe raising of levels is what’s fundamentalIn the face of tests one’s true nature is revealedAchieve Consummation, becoming a Buddha, Dao, or God” (“True Nature Revealed”, Essentials for Further Advancement II)
Practitioners pointed out that my husband's situation was related to the improvement of my character, and if I didn't work on my character, he wouldn't get better. We needed to improve as a whole body so that we could elevate together. Gradually, I regained my righteous thoughts and knew how to do better.
When I was not visiting at the hospital, I used all my time to study the Fa and tried with all my might to push out the thought karma and negative factors in my head by studying the Fa.
Teacher said,
“Someone has asked me: "Teacher, why don’t you eliminate this problem?" Think about it, everyone: If we clear all obstacles in your path of cultivation practice, how will you practice cultivation? It is under the circumstance of demonic interference that you can demonstrate whether you can continue your cultivation, be really enlightened to the Tao, be unaffected by interference, and be sure-footed in this school of practice. The great waves shift the sand, and that is what cultivation practice is all about. What is left in the end will be genuine gold.” (Lecture Six, Zhuan Falun)
“At a certain point in time, you will be made unable to discern clearly whether something is true, whether your gong exists, whether you can practice cultivation and make it, or whether there are Buddhas and if they are real. In the future, these situations will surface again to give you this false impression and make you feel as though they do not exist and are all false—it is to see whether you are determined.” (Lecture Six, Zhuan Falun)
I was stunned by these words. It felt as if I were reading the Fa for the very first time. I knelt in front of Teacher's picture and cried. For more than 21 years, I experienced so many tribulations for clarifying the truth about Dafa. I couldn't have walked out of Masanjia Prison without Teacher's protection.
When I was faced with tribulations and interference again, why did I not show my belief in Teacher and the Fa? That was very dangerous! It was the old forces that set up the interference in order to drag me down and destroy me! I woke up to these facts. I said to Teacher, “I'm very sorry, Teacher. Sorry for making these mistakes. When I'm faced with interference and tribulations, I shouldn't have had the bad thoughts of blaming Teacher for not taking care of me and thinking about quitting cultivation. I must correct myself. Please help strengthen me and eliminate my evil thoughts. I want to break through these tribulations and interference.”
Only Dafa can save my husband. There is only Teacher in this world that can help me.
I asked Teacher not to let my husband leave this world. Overall these years, through our efforts in clarifying the truth, many of our friends, colleagues, neighbors, and relatives learned the truth about Dafa, and quite a number of them also took up cultivation practice. If he were to leave, that would affect many people. I would be calm if I were to lose my husband, but how about the precious sentient beings? I cried nonstop.
I studied the Fa diligently and sent righteous thoughts. Every day, I made use of the limited visiting time to let my husband listen to Teacher's Fa teachings on my MP3 player. I wanted to wake up his main consciousness. A practitioner also made use of the visiting time and recited the Fa teachings for him.
Teacher said,
“But all the same, Master doesn't acknowledge them. And you shouldn't acknowledge them either. Do things well in an upright and dignified way, negate them, and strengthen your righteous thoughts. "I'm Li Hongzhi's disciple, I don't want other arrangements or acknowledge them"--then they won't dare to do that. So it can all be resolved. When you can really do that, not just saying it but putting it into action, Master will definitely stand up for you.” (Fa-Lecture During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference)
The above teaching awakened my husband's main consciousness. Later, after he awakened, he said that at that moment, he knew that he was a Dafa disciple. All the nurses in the ward knew that we were Falun Dafa practitioners.
Practitioners hoped that my husband could leave the intensive care unit soon so that we could strengthen our support. However, my daughter disagreed with us. The doctor also said they used the best medication to cure him and that he would have to use the breathing devices at all times. They thought he could not leave the intensive care unit.
My husband's main consciousness seemed not to be there anymore. He didn't recognize me. Because his trachea was cut, he couldn't talk. He had to communicate through writing when he was slightly conscious. One day, he wrote, “The main consciousness left my body. The hospital staff monitor me like the police and injected lots of doses of insulin and medicine to make me have diarrhea.” He said he saw “the doctors hit someone (meaning me) with a baton cruelly.” Once he wrote, “The memorial service is over. It has been held twice.”
The doctor saw his note and said, “Aren't you still living?” He wrote, “That's what's so magical about it!” Each time when I visited him, he wrote, “The medical staff here injected things into me to make me die. They are monitoring me like the police.” He kept repeating these words. Other practitioners and I felt that evil elements and rotten demons from other dimensions wanted to make him die, and if he continued to be in the intensive care unit, perhaps something bad would happen. It might be better to transfer him to a regular ward. It was hard to do, but I maintained righteous thoughts and insisted on this request.
After fifteen days, my insistence made it happen: The doctor removed the breathing devices, and my husband was transferred to a regular ward. I hired a nurse to help.
Within a week, my husband got a high fever. He coughed all night long and seemed to have a hard time coping. The slight improvement in gaining back his main consciousness seemed to regress. He often wrote things degrading me, such as, “You're ugly, just like a toad.” The nurse held his hand and helped him write things to insult me, saying that I was slow, that I had sluggish eyes, and so on.
I had just left prison and was sensitive to criticism. I was afraid that others would look down on me. I didn't expect my husband to treat me like this. I lost my vanity and self-respect. I felt that I would explode! The sorrow and grief made me unable to calm down. I complained, grieved, pained, stressed, and completely collapsed. I couldn't control my tears. I thought, “Okay. Do whatever you feel like. You're gone, and I don't want to live either.”
As soon as the thought came out, within less than two hours, my husband died. When he was found, his lips had already turned purple, which shocked me. Just one thought made a gap for the evil to sneak in. I shouted, “Teacher, please save my husband! Teacher, I'm wrong. I shouldn't have had that bad thought!” I shouted my husband's name and told him to beg Teacher for help. The doctor and nurses were busy rescuing him. Somehow my husband came back to life before the oxygen was hooked up to him. He was taken to the intensive care unit and connected to the breathing devices again.
In the middle of the night, laying on a bench outside the intensive care unit, I thought of the poem “Tempering the Will” in Hong Yin. I apologized to Teacher in my heart. “I'm so terribly sorry, Teacher. I made a mistake again. I want to cultivate myself better.”
More than ten days later, my husband wrote on a notepad saying he wanted to go home. He repeatedly wrote that the medical staff monitored him like the police and that the medicine made him die, that the memorial services had been held, and so on. But he was still hooked up to catheters and tubes that helped him breathe and nourished him, and so on. How could he go home? If we weren't being careful, he would die. As soon as I realized that I had these bad thoughts, I pushed them out. I asked Teacher to help us. I asked the doctor to remove all the tubes and wanted to take my husband home. The doctor said we had to take responsibility for our own actions.
As my husband's main consciousness gradually came back, conflicts between us came up. My husband used to be thoughtful and docile, but he became impatient and mean. When he was unhappy, he would blame me for this and that. When he couldn't have a bowel movement, he would scold me. When he messed the bed, he would blame it on me. Sometimes he would even hit me. All the humiliation that happened in the hospital came back to haunt me.
I complained to a practitioner. She said, “It's a good thing! This is to help you get rid of the sentimentality between husband and wife.” Her reminder made me think. That was so true. I realized that I was too attached to my husband. I got to know him at age 8. We were engaged when I was 22, then married when I was 24. The love he gave me made up what I missed in my own family. My sentimentality towards him grew from admiring, liking, and loving to depending on him. I was just too afraid of losing him.
Teacher said,
“Those ordeals and the suffering, no matter how great or harsh you find them to be, are good things, because they take place solely on account of your cultivation. A person can eliminate karma and shed human attachments when he goes through ordeals, and through ordeals, he can improve. Whether your motive is to save sentient beings, to validate the Fa, or to make progress in your own cultivation, they are ordeals all the same. They aren't supposed to make way for you just because you think, "I'm doing this for Dafa" or "I'm doing this to save sentient beings."” (“Fa Teaching at the 2008 New York Conference”, Collected Fa Teachings, Vol VIII)
The Fa helped me become open-minded. It was this way that this heartbreaking, unforgettable experience completely awakened me. I recognized the strong attachments that I had not recognized for so many years. They were not easy to remove. Thank you, Teacher, for your compassionate arrangements for me to see where I should improve!
When we left the hospital, a doctor said, “Your husband has already lost his ability to swallow. We've already tried many times for him to regain this ability, and I want to tell you that he can only live on fluids from now on. Just keep the flowing tube and gas tube.” In other words, he wouldn't be able to last long. I wasn't sure how it would go. But we are Dafa practitioners, and we have our Teacher to take care of us, so I only want Teacher's arrangements. My husband almost died four times, but he survived. I believed that we would experience the power of Dafa.
One day after we got home, I was discussing with him if we should remove the gas tube. He nodded in agreement. So I bravely performed the removal, which was supposed to be done by a professional. I don't remember how I did it. I just kept asking Teacher to help us. In about four to five days, the cut where they placed the gas tube had healed. My husband started talking, and our whole family was so happy.
A month passed. One day, my husband asked me to help him sit up. Suddenly, he started singing a song from Hong Yin III:
The long river of history, thousands of wavesThe hundreds of dynasties, each with different cultural relicsHow many were the great ones who stirred the wind and clouds?A mound of earth [left behind], accompanying the heroWhen shall the reincarnation and rebirth end?Why is the vast sky so grand?Human lives passed through many places, to await the FaObtain the Fa and return to the heavens above(“The Purpose of Life” from Hong Yin III)
Tears covered his face. He said he wanted to return home with Teacher. I was choked by tears and felt deep appreciation for Teacher. My husband finally woke up.
I asked him if he remembered what the doctor said what he couldn't do. He didn't let me finish the question. With determination, he said, “Eating is the innate instinct of human beings. I can eat.” I was totally stunned. “Can we remove the flow tube now?” He said, “Sure.” After we removed it, I brought to him a bowl of congee. My husband ate the whole bowl and did not choke. Both of us became emotional, and no words could describe our deep appreciation for Teacher.
I recall the days and nights of the past four months, from the signs of the disappearance of life to gasping by the ventilator; from the main consciousness to the complete awakening; from the intensive care unit to home–everything seemed to have returned to normal. Master said, “Cultivation depends on one's own efforts, while the transformation of gong is done by one's master.” (Lecture One, Zhuan Falun)
We witness the grand mercy of Teacher and the power of Dafa. Without Teacher, how could my husband come back to life? Only when tribulations were broken through did we truly understand the true meaning of “...the wide and far-reaching Buddha's grace.” (Fa-Lecture During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference)
On the day my husband and I went outside for a walk for the first time, our neighbors, colleagues and relatives were shocked. It was amazing! Unbelievable! The doctor also said it was a “medical miracle.” No, it was Dafa's power!
Now, my husband diligently studies and recites the Fa every day. He also tries to help me with clarifying the truth.
Why did I experience such a huge tribulation right after I was released from prison? When I calmed down and thought about it, I remembered that nothing is coincidental! Although there were things that my husband needed to cultivate away, there were issues for which I carried responsibility.
I was exhausted by what had happened while I was imprisoned and when I was ready to be released. I didn't think about how I could seize the time to study the Fa, better cultivate myself, and clarify the truth. Instead, I was looking forward to being settled, living a comfortable life with my husband in the countryside, and owning a house and a piece of land. I wanted to be far away from the city and the evil persecution. These were serious attachments. I felt ashamed for having the title of “Dafa disciple.” I could see clearly how the unrighteous thoughts invited the old forces to sneak in.
I want to thank Teacher for not giving up on me, for taking care of me, and for helping me break through all sorts of tribulations. My face was covered in tears when I thought of all these things. I will continue to study the Fa diligently and cultivate myself better.
I also want to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to those who helped us break through the tribulations. Thank you.