(Minghui.org) My mother told me that I was a crybaby from the time I was born. One night when I was three years old, I wanted to play with my friend Erni so much that I cried until my mother took me to knock on Erni’s door even though it was late at night.
At school, I studied hard. I was in first place in my class when I was a fifth grader. My mother and my teachers always praised me, so I became complacent and only wanted to hear compliments. Whenever someone criticized me, I would get so angry that my stomach hurt. I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know how to let go of my anger and unhappiness and could only cry.
When I got a little older, I began to wonder: Where did I come from? Where am I going? Who is my real mother? Why do I get so angry so often? How could I not be offended so easily? I read many books, but I couldn’t find any answers. Gradually, to avoid being hurt, I isolated myself. I wondered if it was possible to live in a glass container so that no one could hurt me.
In 1993, I met my future husband through a colleague. He recommended Falun Dafa to me and gave me the book Zhuan Falun.
It was really a good book! But I wasn’t sure if I could follow the requirement of not fighting back. Because my husband was learning it, I still studied the book with him and I did feel good afterward. Sometimes I also listened to Master’s lecture audios. My husband didn’t insist that I start practicing Dafa. He just asked me to follow the teachings as much as I could.
I later learned that my husband’s family, including he, himself, and his parents, sister, and brother, had all attended Master’s lectures between 1992 and 1994 and started to practice Dafa. When Master was going to give lectures in Jinan City, Shandong Province, my husband bought tickets for both of us.
The day before we went, I had diarrhea. The symptoms were gone after we arrived in Jinan and I have been healthy ever since. I later understood that Master purified my body before I attended the class.
Another amazing thing happened to me. When I had a checkup at college, the doctor told me that my uterus was two-thirds the normal size, which caused me to have irregular periods. After practicing Falun Dafa for a while, my periods became regular, and my uterus returned to the normal size. Now I am in my 50s and still have regular periods.
After I came back from Master’s lectures in Jinan, my thinking and behavior changed dramatically. I fully understood what Master said:
“Seeking Master for how many years,One day seeing him in person,Obtaining Fa, cultivating to return,Reaching Consummation, returning with Master.”(“Predestiny Leads Back to Sacred Fruit,” Hong Ying)
I realized that I didn’t just want to be a good person, I wanted to be a Dafa practitioner and eventually return to my original, true self. To walk the spiritual path, I should study the Fa and do the five exercises. After that I got up early in the morning to join the group exercises and study the Fa as much as I could.
I used to have back pain. I couldn’t sit or stand for more than two hours at a time. My back pain disappeared not long after I began to do the exercises. And gradually I could sit in the full lotus position for the sitting meditation.
I was self-centered since I was young. I always cared about what I wanted but never thought about others. By learning Falun Dafa and observing other practitioners’ behavior, I began to understand how to be a good person, a better person.
The first thing I could change was to smile and say “yes” when people asked me to do something. Instead of refusing them out of hand, I should put myself in their shoes. When I encountered difficulties, I should believe I would be fine if I followed the teachings of Dafa.
My father-in-law was the president of a university, and my mother-in-law was a professor there. They are knowledgeable, kind, and hard working. They offered to prepare lunch for me every day (the lunch was always on time), often paired with my favorite fruits. They also helped take care of my child after lunch so that I could take a nap.
One of my colleagues once asked me, “You always eat at your in-law’s—how much do you pay them a month?” Actually, I paid nothing. When I told them about it, they laughed, “We are happy that you eat with us.” They never charged me anything for the meals and even paid our utility bills.
With more Fa study, I gradually learned how to be considerate of others and eliminated a lot of bad thoughts. We once invited a young practitioner to have dinner with us, and I noticed he took an overcooked steamed bun on purpose. That shocked me, because I always picked out the best food. I realized that those little things truly reflect a person’s character. I also realized how selfish I was but my parents-in-law never said a bad word about me and always treated me well. What they did reflected my shortcomings.
Because I am from the countryside, I often felt inferior and envied people from the city. After practicing Falun Dafa, with my parents-in-law’s help, I grew more confident and overcame my low self-esteem. I stopped crying and smiled more.
My brother witnessed how I changed. He used to worry that I would never be able to get along with my parents-in-law because of my bad tempter. He later told my mother, “I never expected my sister could change so much. She is such a nice person now and she can get along with everyone so well!”
When my character changed, my mood changed. I felt it was sunny every day. One day at work, a colleague verbally abused me for about half an hour. I don’t know what happened, but somehow I just couldn’t open my mouth to say anything. I was surprised at how calm I was. If it had happened in the past, I would have been irritated and had a stomachache.
In China, some employers used to provide housing for its employees. I was previously given a bungalow. But in 1998, the hospital decided to tear down the bungalows and build an apartment building to accommodate more employees.
I got a priority number to pick an apartment in the new building. However, at that time we had already bought an apartment through my husband’s employer, so I didn't need the priority number. I could easily have sold my number to someone at the back of the line for thousands of yuan, but I didn’t. As a Falun Dafa practitioner, I shouldn’t do that. Later on, when my director learned what I did, he openly praised me.
My husband is a teacher. After he started to practice Falun Dafa, he stopped accepting gifts from his students’ parents. Unlike other teachers who sometimes kept extra tuition for themselves, my husband always returned the money to his students.
Once when it was raining, my husband brought five to six extra umbrellas and handed them out to my colleagues. It was not a big deal, but no one had thought of it. His colleagues always said, “You can’t find such a good person nowadays.” “Falun Dafa practitioners are really good people.”
When I look back at my past, I am grateful of Master’s compassionate salvation and changing me into a better person.
Master said in “To the Practitioners of Vietnam,”
“Cultivation is a process of elevating the soul, and it begins by becoming, bit by bit, a good person, and progressively becoming ever better, such that you become more virtuous than non-practitioners and, ultimately, someone higher.”
(Selected submission in celebration of World Falun Dafa on Minghui.org)