Editor’s note: Sister Wang, born in Songyuan, Jilin Province, followed her grandmother to the church at a young age. Studying abroad in the U.K, she hit rock bottom in the difficult year of 2020. Her mother suffered from a strange disease, pushing her into the valley of the shadow of death. But God worked in her family through the issue.
Her parents stay with her paternal mother, while she and her younger brother live separately in other places. Her mother, who is emotional and sensitive, hardly received a response from her aloof father. The common Chinese family problem seemingly lies in the relationship between the daughter-in-law and the mother-in-law. Coupled with the harsh couple’s relationship, her mother suffered from a mental disorder which was difficult to notice in the family.
Below is the story of Wang:
In January 2020, I returned from the UK to China to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year with my family. I stayed at home for three months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but I found my mother was different from normal.
She fetched an egg from a chicken's coop, suspecting that my grandmother poisoned it with a watermark. Then she was looking for evidence to prove it, starting to follow my grandmother and secretly observe her every move.
Her movement attracted the attention of my grandmother. They had a quarrel, aggravating their broken relationship. My grandmother then moved to live with my aunt.
Considering the fact that she just had a problem with my mother, we thought that she entered into menopause. We took her to see a Chinese doctor and to get some Chinese medicine to help with her health condition.
Two months later, I went to Shenzhen as the pandemic subsided. My parents farmed at home. With a deep affection for my grandmother, my father who complained about her departure started to unwittingly give my mother the cold shoulder.
Without saying a word to my mother, he slept or watched TV at home or went out for a walk.
After half a year, the mental condition of my mother was exacerbated. She stopped eating, worried that my father had poisoned her meals. She did not eat anything my father touched.
Reluctantly, the family sent her to a psychiatric hospital where she said that she, while being forcibly tied to a bed, was fed with medicine. She was frightened, but within hours; fortunately, she was discharged soon after .
Then my family hired a Shamanic practitioner to interact with the spirit world to seek healing. During that time, my mother fell unconscious once the shaman beat a drum.
Seeing my mother’s ghastly pale face with the bones in the chest sticking out, I smelled odor from her who was lying there without having any food or water.
I played Christian hymns and sermons to her, but my family persecuted me. My mother refused to eat anything, and after a while, she stuffed the rice into her mouth until she vomited it out. Then she cried out to God to save her.
Seeing she lost her mind, the family agreed to let me introduce God to her as long as she could recover from the madness.
Knowing this, my aunt paid a visit to my mother. On that day, we prayed together rather than eat. Seeing that my mother recovered significantly, my father and younger brother prayed to accept Jesus as their savior. We removed the idols that were stored at home to bless my parents’ business.
My mother suffered such symptoms resulting from not only spiritual problems but also damaged nerves. Grievances accumulated for years failed to find an outlet, growing into a disease. An authoritative doctor diagnosed her with persecutory delusion. She was hospitalized for half a month and returned home in a stable condition.
My father changed a lot, starting to show concern for her and listened to her. He confessed to her that our family could not live without her.
- Translated by Karen Luo
