Eastern Lightning | A Rebirth
Yang Zheng Heilongjiang Province
I was born into an impoverished rural family that was backward in their thinking. I was vain from a young age and my desire for status was particularly strong. Over time, through the social influence and a traditional education, I took all sorts of Satan’s rules for survival into my heart. All kinds of fallacies nurtured my desire for reputation and status, such as building a beautiful homeland with your own two hands, fame will make you immortal, people need face like a tree needs its bark, getting ahead and being on top, one should bring honor to his ancestors, etc. These gradually became my life and made me firmly believe that as long as we are living in this world, we have to work to be seen highly by others. No matter what crowd we are with we must have status, we should be the most outstanding one. Only through living this way can we have integrity and dignity. Only living a life this way has value. In order to achieve my dream, I studied very diligently in elementary school; through storms and sickness, I never missed class. Day by day, I finally made it to middle school that way. When I saw that I was getting closer and closer to my dream I didn’t dare slack off. I frequently told myself that I had to persevere, that I had to present myself well to my teachers and classmates. However, just then, something unexpected happened. There was a scandal about our head teacher and the principal of the school that caused an uproar. All the teachers and students knew about it. One day in class, that teacher asked us if we had heard about it and all the other students said “No.” I was the only one who honestly replied “I heard.” From that time on, that teacher saw me as a thorn in her side and would frequently find excuses to make things difficult for me, to crack down on me. My classmates started to keep their distance from me and exclude me. They made fun of me and humiliated me. Finally, I was no longer able to tolerate that kind of torment and I dropped out of school. That was how my dream of getting ahead and being on top was crushed. Thinking of my future days with my face to the earth and back to the sky, I felt an inexpressible sadness and melancholy. I thought: Can it be that my life will be passed so unremarkably? No status, no prestige, no future. What’s the point of living like this? I really wasn’t willing to accept that fact at that time but I was helpless to change my circumstances. Just as I was living in pain and hopelessness that I wasn’t able to extricate myself from, Almighty God saved me and reignited the hope in my heart that had been extinguished. From then I began a whole new life.
