The Secret to Family Harmony

(Minghui.org) I’m a rural woman in my fifties. After I started practicing Falun Dafa in 1997, I was soon freed from depression, and illnesses.

My husband and I were introduced to each other by a matchmaker. It turned out that we attended the same school. He was handsome and treated me with great kindness and deference, and we got married. I looked forward to a happy and beautiful life, but things did not turn out as I had hoped.

After we married, my husband became a completely different person. He drank and played every day, had no sense of responsibility, and brought in no income. To him, home was like a hotel—he only came home to eat, drink, and sleep. He didn’t earn money to support the family, but instead thought his wife should support him.

This was a complete contrast to my hardworking and thrifty family. I did not know that some people lived like this. I was angry all the time and gradually became sick. I thought about getting a divorce and went to the civil affairs office. At that time, it wasn’t easy to obtain a divorce, so year after year, day after day, I endured in misery.

I had to support myself and my daughter. In the countryside having a daughter often led to discrimination. As soon as my daughter was born my husband disliked her and moved out, saying that the child cried and kept him awake. When she was older and went to school he gave me little or no money for her tuition, claiming he didn’t have any.

My husband accumulated many debts over the years. When he wasn’t drinking, he was okay, but when he drank he acted wildly. He burned much of our clothing. He stuffed things into the stove at midnight, which caused the chimney to explode and fill the room with smoke, choking my daughter and me awake. He sometimes called my entire family in the middle of the night, demanding they take me back because he didn’t want me. When he was drunk he cursed using the foulest language.

When my husband’s younger brother bought a house, when his family members were ill, or when children needed school fees, I contributed money to help them. Even though my father-in-law once hit me, I bore no grudge—I gave him money and organized his birthday banquet. I bought food and clothing for my mother-in-law. I am very grateful to Master for giving my daughter a kind heart. She is very considerate and filial, and gives her grandmother money and clothes, buys her father shoes and clothes, and even gives her cousins pocket money and school supplies.

Through many years of cultivation, I gradually eliminated my mentality of holding grudges, wanting revenge, being competitive, jealous, resentment, arrogance, lust, the desire to outdo others, intolerance of criticism, resisting suffering, obsession with right and wrong, attachment to fame and gain, showing off, pursuit of joy, and so on. All these attachments were fully exposed, and I resolved to remove them and rectify myself in Dafa.

I wondered why I often felt others were wrong and why they acted so irrationally. In fact, the problem was how I viewed these things. I was not treating myself as a genuine cultivator, but was instead measuring things with human notions. I was deceived by the illusion and couldn’t see the truth. Everything I encounter in this life is the result of karmic retribution, and is arranged by Master to help me repay karma during conflicts, improve my xinxing, and increase my gong (cultivation energy).

I am grateful to my husband and my in-laws because they helped me see that I was narrow-minded and self-centered, and that I behaved in all kinds of ways that deviated from Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. In my interactions with them, I discovered my various human attachments and I rectified them.

Life is like a dream or a play, where people play different roles. It’s just that we sometimes get too absorbed in the play and forget who we really are, thus becoming lost and confused in the human world.

Last year, things began to change. Because of my husband’s health issues, doctors told him he could no longer smoke or drink. Although he still drank, he no longer got drunk, and his drunken rampages ceased. Our home became much quieter. When he fell ill and had no money my daughter and I paid and chose the best hospital for his treatment and attentively helped him.

My in-laws also felt my kindness, and our extended family grew more and more harmonious. Without Dafa, we would not have this warm and peaceful home.

I am immensely grateful to Master and to Dafa. After more than twenty years of cultivation, I have been transformed from someone who viewed everything from a selfish perspective into someone who first considers others’ feelings, follows Master’s teachings strictly, treats others kindly, and cultivates to become a truly selfless and altruistic person.