(Minghui.org) The young mother woke before 5:00 a.m. for an early morning shift, but her mother-in-law still hadn’t come out of her room to take care of her grandson. Concerned, the young mother carried the sleeping boy into the old woman’s room.
She said in a low voice, “Mom,” a few times, but there was no reaction from her mother in the bed. Her elderly mother-in-law had cancer and had already undergone surgery and several rounds of chemotherapy. The young woman wondered, “Is she dead?”
***
It was an afternoon in the fall of 2001. My older brother’s wife called me secretively to go to her house, but didn’t tell me what it was about.
The persecution of Falun Gong had started two years earlier. Local authorities knew I was a Falun Gong practitioner and had harassed me, my relatives, and the leaders of my work unit. I found another job in a different city and kept my cellphone turned off most of the time to avoid disclosing my whereabouts and bringing trouble to my relatives.
When my older brother’s wife and I met at her house, she told me a friend wanted to learn Falun Gong. “Falun Gong” was a sensitive phrase that we couldn’t say over the phone, as the communist regime could eavesdrop on phone calls at any time.
I was happy that someone wanted to learn the practice and agreed to teach her friend.
The following noon, her friend, an older woman, came to my brother’s house. “My daughter-in-law came home after finishing her early morning shift and took the baby back. I came here as soon as I was free,” the old woman said.
My brother’s wife and I were having lunch, so we invited her to join us. “Thanks but no. I bought a pie for lunch on the way here,” the woman said, showing us a half-eaten pie. She quickly finished her pie and began telling us why she wanted to learn Falun Gong.
She said that she had taken her grandson out to play with other kids one day, and the wind blew a flier to her feet. She picked it up, wiped away some dirt, and saw the title, “Good Destiny” (Shan Yuan). “I liked these words. So I read the flyer while my grandson played with the other kids,” she said.
The woman said that her mother had died when she was young and her step-mother had treated her badly. She later married a man nearly 20 years her senior when she was only 18, and he also treated her poorly. After her husband died, she worked very hard to bring up their children alone.
All of her children were finally married, and her son had a newborn, so she moved in with his family to help take care of the infant. She was then diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent surgery and chemotherapy. As time passed, her son and daughter-in-law had grown tired of taking care of her illness, and the family relationship had become tense.
Feeling guilty about being sick and bringing trouble to her son’s family, she kept the pain to herself and continued helping the young family with shopping, cooking, and taking care of the baby. She relied on pain killers to sleep at night, and always woke up early.
“My life was so miserable that I sometimes didn’t even want to live any longer,” she said, “The woman in the flier had a similar life to mine, so I was happy that she had a good destiny in the end.”
She put the flier in her pocket, then after supper, when the young couple were watching TV, she went to her bedroom and read the flier again. She dozed off while reading it.
Pain pulled her out of her slumber. The clock showed it was past midnight. Looking at the flier in her hand, she remembered the story in it about a woman who had cancer and was about to die, but by reciting the verses “Falun Dafa is good” and “Truthfulness Compassion Forbearance is good” she regained her health and rebuilt her life.
“I put the flier on my pillow and sincerely repeated in my heart ‘Falun Dafa is good’ ‘Truthfulness Compassion Forbearance is good.’ and I fell asleep again,” she said.
It was then that her daughter-in-law came into her room and tried to rouse her. The young mother had pushed her several times to wake her up and then handed her the baby.
“What happened to you? You usually can’t sleep because of the pain,” her daughter-in-law had asked.
The old woman took the baby and said, “It’s a miracle! It’s really amazing!”
Her daughter-in-law looked at the flier on the pillow and asked, “Do you mean the Good Destiny (Shan Yuan) is amazing?”
The old woman said, “Yes, very amazing. You have to go to work now. I will tell you the story after you come home.”
At dinner that night, her daughter-in-law told her son that his mother wanted to learn Falun Gong. Her son became upset and warned his mother angrily, “Don’t bring us trouble. The TV and newspapers are all telling people to report anyone practicing Falun Gong to the authorities, and they can receive a reward of 5,000 to 10,000 yuan (USD$770 to $1500) for every Falun Gong practitioner arrested. Please stop your dangerous ideas and let our family have a peaceful life!”
The old woman dared not pursue learning Falun Gong, but she kept saying the two verses before going to sleep. She quickly found that she was no longer in pain, so she stopped taking her painkillers.
It came time for her to have a medical exam before starting another round of chemo. In the past, chemo treatments made her very weak and sore, and she really feared them. But this time, she recited the verses during the medical exam and felt calm and pleasant in her heart. Afterward, the doctor told her that all her lab results were good and she didn’t need any more chemotherapy.
“So all the stories in the flier were true? It happened to me, too. I must learn Falun Gong,” she thought as she left the hospital.
She ran into a friend in the street, my sister-in-law, and whispered in her ear, “Can you help me find a person who practices Falun Gong?”
“You found the right person!” my sister-in-law said.
As the old woman finished her story we were also finishing our lunch. The old woman, my brother, and my sister-in-law all learned the Falun Gong exercises together. The old woman also bought a copy of the book Zhuan Falun.
The old woman was preparing to head home. She held my hands with tears in her eyes and said, “Thank you!”
I told her, “Our master said:
“All practitioners are disciples, no matter when they began the practice.” (Lecture Three, Zhuan Falun)
“Please thank our Master for his compassion!”
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