(Minghui.org) Because my son was a big spender, a year ago he ended up owing 38,000 yuan in online loans that he couldn’t pay back. After we had a talk, he promised that he would stop borrowing money, so I paid off his debt.
My Attachment to Sentimentality
But not even three weeks later, he insisted on going out of town to a car race where only rich people gambled. He hired a partner to go with him and covered all his partner’s expenses. By the time he got back, he owed 6,000 yuan.
Because he failed to keep his promise, I refused to help him pay off his debt this time. On top of that, I scolded him. After dinner, he said, “I’m going to take a walk.”
After 11 p.m., I noticed he was still not home and sent him a text message asking when he would be back. He replied, “I’m not coming back.” Apparently, he’d gone to stay with a close friend, who was also a classmate. Thus, I didn’t take what he said to heart. However, he didn’t come home the next morning and didn’t reply to my text messages. When I called him, he didn’t answer. That made me worry.
Three days later, although I understood that Master also protects Falun Dafa practitioners’ family members, I had to call my younger brother. After my son graduated from school, he had worked at my younger brother’s company for a few years and they got along well. My son didn’t answer when my brother called him either. I became more agitated and lost sleep over it. I ended up twisting and turning in bed, my righteous and bad thoughts at war with each other.
On the fourth day, my son still hadn’t returned home. During the day I was very busy and completely forgot about it. At night, however, my righteous thoughts subsided, and evil thoughts got the upper hand. One of my friend’s children had recently committed suicide by jumping out of the building, and I was afraid that my son would do the same. I tried to dispel such thoughts by reciting the Fa and did calm down.
I asked myself, “If my son were to end his life, would I regret not helping him this time?” Then, it was as if I was watching a movie, and scenes of my son’s life from his childhood to adulthood unfolded before my eyes: When he was young, he was a very likable kid, but the older he got, the more rebellious he became.
Because of that, I really worried about him and did what I was supposed to do as a mother. Although I sometimes lacked kindness and was a bit impatient at times, I never treated him badly. He didn’t keep his word, so I criticized him a few times, and that wasn’t wrong. But why was I still so worried deep down? It all came down to the attachment of sentimentality.
Actually, my son was fairly extroverted. He wasn’t the kind of person who would get upset at a minor slight and consider ending his life. But why didn’t he return home? I couldn’t figure it out. Suddenly, a word came to my mind: “Interference!” Right, it must have been the old forces trying to stop me from helping to rescue fellow practitioners; the old forces were using my feelings for my son to interfere with me.
What I needed to do was to have faith in Master and Dafa and believe that Master would take care of my son and he would be fine. But if he were to really end his life, that would have been used by the old forces to test me. Thus, I shouldn’t be fooled by them again. When I thought about that, I suddenly relaxed and fell asleep.
Solving the Sentimentality Issue
The next day, I went to the airport to pick up the lawyers we’d hired to defend detained practitioners. After we went to the detention center and finished meeting with the practitioners, I took the lawyers back to the airport. Everything went exceptionally well and I was able to get home very early in the afternoon.
That night, my son finally came home. He went to his room and didn’t come out for dinner. I wasn’t excited or upset and saw it as just an ordinary day. After I called him, he came to the table. I asked him where he’d been lately and he said, “I’ve been thinking about talking with so-and-so.” That so-and-so was my friend’s son who’d committed suicide.
When his father heard that, he flew off the handle. He took off one of his slippers, started cursing, and hit our son very hard on the head. My son got agitated and said, “I want to die right now.” He slammed his head down on the coffee table, stood up, and ran to the other side of the room. He hit his head against the wall very hard three times. Then he fell down and lay still. His limbs twitched a few times, then he stopped moving.
It was as if I was watching my husband and son acting in a play. I clearly knew that no matter what kind of tricks the old forces used, they couldn’t use sentimentality to interfere with me, as I wouldn’t be deceived again. A few minutes later, my son got up, went back to his room, and slammed the door.
After that, my son became more and more understanding and eventually returned to cultivating Dafa—he used to practice when he was a child. His girlfriend was a practitioner, and my husband began to practice as well. My family has become a family of cultivators. The two practitioners I helped rescue returned home safely after 37 days of detention.
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Category: Improving Oneself
