By Masako
Born and raised in a family of a military cadre, I had been very self-confident from childhood. Ever since elementary school, I had been an honors student, and naturally, I went to a selective junior middle school and high school. Also, certificates of merit were stacked in piles in my home. After graduating with honors from high school, I was admitted to a military academy of higher learning with the male-female ratio 20 to 1, and received a high-level education and strict military training there. With these successes, I confidently believed that my destiny was in my hands.
After graduation from college, I joined a foreign company, and then became the focus of its cultivation on account of my family, educational background, and personal achievements. At that time, an elder accountant who had many years of work experience was always pecking at me. Nevertheless, by my own efforts, I was soon approved by the leader, who put me in charge of the general accounting department half a year later. Again, I used my ability to prove that I could control my own destiny.
After a year, I gave up the well-paying job to study in Japan. My choice was incomprehensible to both my family and friends, who deemed it unnecessary for me to study abroad and suffer hardships now that I had such a good job. However, I believed that so long as I worked hard, I could be adept at living wherever I went. Work-study life was surely austere, yet I never asked my family for even a cent. When my 6-year life of study was over, I successfully got my degree, as the head of the international students. Since my graduation, whichever company I worked in, both my capacity and attitude had been approved by its leadership. And some companies said that later they would continue to recruit the Chinese students who studied in Japan, even though they had unfavorable impressions on Chinese students. These achievements even more strengthened my belief: I can control my own fate, and nothing is impossible if I depend on myself.
In the second half of 2014, I was already a mother of two children. One day, there was a continuous feeling of discomfort and stinging sensation in my left breast. After that it still pained occasionally, because I was fully occupied, I couldn’t afford the time for a check-up in the hospital. One day, when seeing that I was massaging my breast for pain, my child cried loudly and asked me, scared, “Mom, have you got breast cancer? I don’t wanna lose you.” I didn’t know where a seven-year-old child had heard of breast cancer and even knew that it was fatal; but all of a sudden, I felt frightened: Have I really got cancer? Am I dying soon? At this moment, my children cried and I cried with them. Looking at my two little children, I told myself: I can’t die, absolutely can’t. Thus, I decided to go for a check-up.
The next day, sitting in the streetcar alone, I felt both lonely and unsettled, my vision blurred by tears time after time. It seemed as if all the noise of the moment had subsided and I could hear and see nothing, It was all worry and fear within me: What if it’s really breast cancer? What is to become of my children? After arriving at the hospital, I felt all the more inexpressibly desolate and scared.
After an ultrasound check, I sat on a bench in a corridor alone, waiting for the results. I was so desirous yet also afraid to get it that my heart suffered bouts of torments. After a short while, it finally came out. The doctor told me, “The growth is benign, but at the position where you feel pain, there appears a vesicular tissue that is to become malignant anytime. It will always be inside you and keep growing. Granted that it remains benign, it must be removed surgically when reaching the length of over 3 cm.” I was stunned by the words as if I was sentenced to death. Nevertheless, I, competitive, would not easily give in to anything but would strive to change the result. So I asked the doctor, “How to have it cured? What shall I do?” The doctor replied, “You can do nothing but have it removed when it grows up. Come back for a check in six months.” At his words, I was very angry, thinking to myself: What do you mean by nothing? One can take medicine while he has a cold, and have chemotherapy when he gets cancer. How come that there’s nothing I can do about my illness?
Despite that the doctor said so, I couldn’t just wait. After getting home, I borrowed various medical books and materials from the library to learn about my illness, and turned to the Internet for its cure. I even studied knowledge involved in breast cancer for several successive days without sleep, wishing to study medicine to have myself cured. After a long struggle, when I found that the answer I got was no different than the doctor’s, a sense of desolation and dread pulsed through me, yet I still did not give up. I thought: My family has connections with so many specialists, and good hospitals; there must be someone that can offer me therapy. Thus, with all my contacts, I went to consult and see some specialists, yet only to get the same answer: There’s no effective therapy but just waiting. With all my efforts actually repaid with such a result, I felt desperate and helpless. For me, the answer of waiting was much crueler than the sickness. I felt myself really sentenced to death this time, and felt for the first time the sense of helplessness in my heart.
I, haunted by fear, did not know how to face life every day. When busily engaged, I forgot that I was a patient; yet when in pain, I was besieged by fears, wondering whether the vesicles were deteriorating or growing. Those days seemed just like a year to me.
One day in 2015, Xiaoyang, the mother of my daughter’s classmate, preached the gospel to me and gave me a book. Although I did not decline, yet influenced by atheism since childhood, I simply regarded belief in God as a kind of religious faith. Therefore, in my contact with her, I made no mention of my illness.
Half a year passed and I was going to have a second checkup. Several days before that, I became agitated and kept thinking: What if the vesicular tissue really becomes malignant? And what is to become of my children? … Then the result was out; the doctor pointed at the sonogram and said, “Here’s a comparatively big vesicular tissue. Its size has been doubled and the cells are fairly cloudy. Judging from my years of clinical experience, this isn’t a good sign. We must abstract the living cells for analysis at once.” Then, I was made to lie on a sickbed, waiting to have my breast punctured for abstracting the cells. I lay there with tears streaming down from the corners of my eyes; the loneliness and helplessness in my heart were beyond description. I suddenly felt that I really couldn’t save myself! The moment the needle was introduced into my body, I tightly closed my eyes. At that moment, I truly felt that I was so weak and small, and that nothing I possessed could then harden me, much less save me from the torment of the illness. After the puncture was finished, the doctor asked me to come for the result a week later. A week is not a long time, but for one who is waiting for the diagnosis to figure out whether it is a cancer, it is so long and worrying. Every night when I lay down, I was occupied with the thoughts: Will I fall to cancer? Am I going to die? Never had I felt that death was actually so close to me, yet I could do nothing.
Afterward, I had meetings with brothers and sisters regularly. Once, I mentioned my illness to Sister Liang. Then, she fellowshiped with me, “In the beginning, Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden and led a happy life under God’s care and protection, without illness or death. Later, Satan used a lie to entice them; they believed it and thus betrayed God. Thereupon, man began to live in all sorts of pain, along with the affliction of illness. Satan is evil. Its enticing us was for the purpose of controlling us, and forcing us to betray God, stray away from God’s care and protection, and thus live under its deceit. As God cannot bear to see us live under Satan’s hand and be afflicted by it, He has incarnated on earth once again and expresses words to save us, so that we can understand the truth and learn His will from His words, penetrate Satan’s schemes, and thereby return before Him to receive His care and protection. Only then can we be free from the sufferings and be truly happy.”
Next, she read me two passages of God’s words saying, “Whatever your background, and whatever the journey ahead of you, no one can escape the orchestrations and arrangements of the Heaven, and no one is in control of their own destiny, for only He who rules over all things is capable of such work. … Man’s heart and spirit are held in the hand of God, everything of his life is beheld in the eyes of God. Regardless of whether or not you believe this, any and all things, whether living or dead, will shift, change, renew, and disappear in accordance with God’s thoughts. Such is the way in which God presides over all things.”
“Almighty God, the Head of all things, wields His kingly power from His throne. He rules over the universe and all things, and He is in the act of guiding us on the whole earth. We shall at every moment be close to Him, and come before Him in quietness, never missing a single moment…. Do not lose heart in the face of illness, keep seeking again and again and do not give up, and God will illuminate you with His light. How was Job’s faith? Almighty God is an all-powerful physician! To dwell in sickness is to be sick, but to dwell in the spirit is to be well. So long as you still have one breath, God will not let you die.”
She continued her fellowship, “God’s authority rules over everything. All things in the universe are under His sovereignty, and illness is also in His hand. Whatever sufferings and tribulations we undergo, we should imitate Job and believe, ‘Jehovah gave, and Jehovah has taken away; blessed be the name of Jehovah.’ God wants to use this environment to help us understand the truth and to test our faith in Him as well. Thus, we should read more of God’s words, pray more before Him, and rely on and look to Him. I believe God will guide us.” I understood her; however, for me, who had been indoctrinated with atheism and always believed that “one’s fate is controlled by his own hands,” it seemed so vague to rely on and look to God. But, for now, I had no other choice but to have a try, whether or not the prayer worked. Whereupon I tried praying to God: O God! My fate is controlled by You. Whether I will get cancer is also in Your hands…. Sometimes, I prayed a great deal a day.
After a week, I, accompanied by my family, went to the hospital for the test result and found that it was benign. With the report in my hand, I couldn’t help shedding tears, as if I had faintly felt God’s existence and His help to me in the depths of my soul. My faith in God increased and I continued to have meetings with brothers and sisters.
It was now the first half of 2016. After my third checkup, the doctor told me delightedly, “The vesicular cells remain what they were six months ago, without growth or deterioration.” A hope came to me, then my stress was alleviated bit by bit and I felt better. In the next few months, the sister reminded me many times to pray to God with a true heart and learn to rely on and look to Him. While I did not know what she meant by a true prayer, I prayed to God every time I thought of the illness. After each prayer, I felt assured and sometimes even felt that my pain seemed to be relieved. Over time, I had learnt to speak my heart to God.
In January 2017, I was about to have my fourth examination, before which I made a prayer of submission to God. When I waited for the result after the check-up, I felt assured and peaceful as never before. Listening to the slow music played in the hospital, I seemed to forget that I had come for the checkup. After about half an hour, the doctor called my name. When I went in, the doctor looked at the result of my examination and said in an agitated tone, “Congratulations! The vesicular tissue doesn’t take a turn for the worse, but instead, it is smaller in size than it was half a year ago. What a surprise!” When I heard it, my tears gushed out in a split second; I knew very clearly that it was God’s deed and the result His work produced on me. I yelled in my heart, “O God! You love me so!” The doctor went on, “On the basis of your previous condition and general laws, you should have been arranged to have a surgery. It’s already hard to find the vesicular tissue didn’t get worse in the third examination, let alone to find it diminishing in size this time, which is almost impossible. I’ve been a doctor for decades but never seen such a scene. …” Before the doctor had finished, tears blurred my eyes. When I came out of the hospital, I turned on on my cell phone and found messages from many friends. I couldn’t hold back my excitement so I called to tell the sister this exciting result, and she said agitatedly, “Praise God! Praise God!”
On my way home, I reflected upon the scenes I had experienced. Since my childhood, nobody had ever told me about the existence of God; thus I only believed in knowledge and myself. But for this personal experience, I would never have any true understanding of God’s almightiness and sovereignty. Thank God for saving me.
Later on, I saw God’s revelations of the mystery of the six junctures of life. God says, “One has no say in who one’s parents and relatives are, what kind of environment one grows up in; one’s relationships with the people, events, and things in one’s surroundings, and how they influence one’s development, are all beyond one’s control. Who decides these things, then? Who arranges them? Since people have no choice in the matter, since they cannot decide these things for themselves, and since they obviously do not take shape naturally, it goes without saying that the formation of all these people, events, and things rests in the hands of the Creator. Of course, just as the Creator arranges the particular circumstances of every person’s birth, He also arranges the specific circumstances under which one grows up. … The people, events, and things that one comes into contact with; the common sense, knowledge, and skills one learns; and the ways of thinking that influence one, with which one is inculcated or taught, will all guide and influence a person’s fate in life.”
After reading God’s words, I came to know that the military family I was born into and the kind of character I have were ordained by God, and that the various people, events, and things I had encountered as I grew up were also arranged by God. In retrospect, on the eve of my graduation from college, my family happened to become acquainted with the boss of a foreign company so I got the chance to join it. Now, I saw that it was also God’s sovereignty. Furthermore, after I came to Japan, a boss whom I had just met offered to help me and gave me opportunities to develop, which made me believe all the more that all these were ruled and arranged by God. This time, ill as I was, I learned from it that man’s illness is from Satan and is the misery brought by Satan due to our rebellion against God’s words and betrayal to Him. Such an experience also enabled me to learn that God presides over the fate of we humans, and it is actually not vague to rely on God.
Next, I read another passage of God’s words, “When people have property, they think that money is one’s mainstay, that it is the means by which one lives; when people have status, they cling tightly to it and would risk their lives for its sake. Only when people are about to let go of this world do they realize that the things they spent their lives pursuing are nothing but fleeting clouds, none of which they can hold onto, none of which they can take with them, none of which can exempt them from death, none of which can provide company or consolation to a lonely soul on its journey back; least of all, none of these things can save a person and enable them to transcend death. … They realize that life cannot be bought with money or fame, that no matter how wealthy a person may be, no matter how lofty their position, all are equally poor and insignificant in the face of death. They realize that money cannot buy life, that fame cannot erase death, that neither money nor fame can lengthen a person’s life by a single minute, a single second. The more people feel this way, the more they yearn to keep on living; the more people feel this way, the more they dread the approach of death. Only at this point do they truly realize that their lives do not belong to them, are not theirs to control, and that one has no say over whether one lives or dies—that all of this lies outside of one’s control.”
These words reminded me of the journey I had taken: Before the illness came upon me, I had always believed that there was nothing I could not do. I possessed a superior family background, a high degree, and all manners of personal contacts, and more importantly, I thought I had real strength, so I could control my own fate and would never easily bow before any difficulty. However, only when I sought the cure for my illness in various ways, but in vain, and when I learned that the vesicular tissue in my body was deteriorating yet there was nothing anybody could do, did I come to realize that all the money, power, and reputation I had possessed could offer no help to my illness. Also, for the first time, I became aware that even if I had gotten all these conditions that made me proud and self-confident, I was still so helpless and lonely in front of cancer and nothing could make me strong. Rather, it was God who led me through it, comforted me, and gave me strength, and it was He who had saved me. Thinking of that, I felt enormously indebted to God: Under the condition that I was totally unaware of His existence, He had done so much for my salvation; yet I had been disobeying Him, believing that nothing was impossible to me. But in reality, when I relied on myself to walk the path, I was empty and miserable, busy if not tired, and never ever had I been truly peaceful or happy. Now, I am living a normal church life, feeling an incomparable sweetness in my heart, because I have found the real reliance, and known the unique true God who created and holds sovereignty over all things.
