In my childhood, my grandmother told me a lot of stories. These stories varied but they all shared a common ending: bad guys always perished and good guys always prevailed. So I came to the conclusion that there's got to be somebody more powerful than both the bad guys and the good guys so as to make sure bad guys got punished and good guys got delivered.

"Who is he?" I asked.

"He is heaven." My grandmother said to me calmly.

"I see! Oh Heaven! It is above us, so high and far. Nothing can escape His judgment. Oh Heaven! It is surrounding us, so wide and large. Nobody is more powerful than He!"

How wonderful heaven is!

After I was exposed to natural science in grade school, I got to know that heaven was so beyond what I was able to see! The earth we lived on was merely a planet in the solar system, which in turn was one of the stars in the Milky Way, which in turn was merely one out of billions of galaxies out there in the universe! Oh how could heaven care about our life on earth, a tiny little affair in such a vast and endless universe?

My grandmother never went to school and so she could not provide me a good answer. Heaven to her remained a dream.

But who was really in charge of human destiny?

I no longer dared to watch the sky. A huge unknown surrounded the sky, out of which came my initial pantheistic philosophy.

I believed that God created the earth and God also controlled the earth. This belief was rooted in my life. Although I wasn't sure where God was, nor what His name was, I still believed He existed somewhere in the invisible. What puzzled me was why God, who delivered all of mankind, had a name like us, and why the almighty God, who was able to create as well as destroy, specially and exclusively cared about Jerusalem.

In my understanding, God not only created the earth but He also created the universe. God not only looked after mankind but He also looked after everything else. How could God with these qualities become involved in races and kingdoms? How could He have a name?

With my friend's departure, my questions started to travel through mails between Beijing and Los Angeles. A sudden illness on me, however, interrupted my search for truth: facial paralysis!

I stepped out the hospital and stared at the pedestrians and stores on the street. All was the same, but I seemed to have been spun out of the world. Standing in the familiar reality, I tasted nothing but emptiness.

I decided to face all this without telling my husband who was in New York. We had separated for two years, during which there were enough troubles and problems between us.

My mother couldn't bear watching the way I ate. So she always quietly ate before she called me to dinner. My little daughter, however, was innocent enough to laugh at me: "Grandma, come and see. Mom spits her food again!"

"Be nice." I tried to stop my daughter, lest my parents should feel bad. But I was not able to say any words that required closing the mouth. The word Be never seemed to be able to leave my mouth. I abruptly gave it up but forced mouthfuls of food directly into my throat.

Illness brought me pain. At the same time, however, it also brought me comfort.

Some of my colleagues in the editorial department were mobilized to search for doctors with fame or special prescriptions as if they were the ones that were ill. Fearing I might fall along the way, they also accompanied me to the hospital in the suburb, a trip that required three bus transfers.

Some of my former classmates were normally busy with their family and their work and couldn't even find time to see each other. This time, however, they took a day off to come to see me. Fearing that I couldn't go shopping, they brought me a lot of vegetables and rice.

My phone rang far more frequently than usual. I was frequently invited to parties, shopping, buffet dinners, theaters and concerts. Pedestrians often cast their curious eyes at me. My friends, however, were all used to my odd appearance. It was odd enough for me to have to wear a cotton hat, a pair of dark glasses and a gauze mask and walk through the warm street of Beijing.

Fading twilight and dying traffic introduced calmness of the dark, which accompanied me in the chill of early spring.

I couldn't help writing to my friend in Los Angeles. One of my eyes couldn't close. It grew so wearisome that I had to cover it with my hand. I wanted to tell my friend that the attempt to conquer the heaven was meaningless and that the attempt to control our own fate was deceitful. How could we conquer the heaven while we were not even sure about our life and death? Our appearance was very unpredictable, how much more so was our fate?

So insignificant, fragile and unmentionable as I was, how could I deserve so much care and concern? Had it not been the kind of friendship and support I received, I would have fallen into the sea of bitterness. All of a sudden, it dawned on me that I would never have had a chance to shockingly understand human limitations had it not been my illness; nor would I have realized in detail that, outside families and love, there existed a kind of warmth in the heart.

I asked my friend if my sufferings were merely a test from God, who would want me to gain life experience through destruction. I had no idea what my friend's response would be, but I merely stared at the darkness outside the window and quietly prayed to God: "No matter who you are, please do help me."

My husband found out about my situation after all. A few days later he called and told me that he had denounced God because He had made him suffer. He said he could not understand why God of justice would punish an innocent person like me instead of him since he was the one who blasphemed. Then at the night of his accusation, he felt a bit numb from his scalp and face though he did not pay too much attention. A week later he had a heart attack; he couldn't seem to breathe and he almost died. In total desperation, he repeatedly called to the name of the Lord: "Jesus loves me. I love Jesus."

God answered him, he said.

Just then his phone card expired and he had to hang up momentarily. As he was fetching another card, a thought swept through my mind: "Is God really playing a role in our life?"

The phone communication was re-established. I hurriedly asked him when this all happened. "A midnight about three or four days ago." I couldn't help but exclaimed: "It was about the time I started to recover!"

It was an afternoon full of the spirit of spring. I woke up from a long nap and felt fresh. Slowly I tried to move my facial muscle and I experienced a wonderful feeling: the awkward pain seemed to be gone. I didn't dare to look into the mirror, so I asked my mother to come over. She came, followed by my daughter.

"See if I can close my eyes." I tried to close my eyes.

"You did it! You did it!" my daughter exclaimed.

I still wasn't sure. I asked my mother: "Are you sure? Are they completely closed?"

"Yes. Completely!"

I hurried into the kitchen. I drank a mouthful of water and left the water in mouth without swallowing it. Although a tiny part of the water came out through the corner of the my mouth, most of it stayed in the mouth! I walked toward the mirror with anxiety and fear. It took me a while to gather enough courage before I raised my head. I moved my forehead muscle and sure enough, I saw some wrinkles there. I moved my nose muscle and wrinkles appeared there, too. Then I knew that I had recovered from facial paralysis. I turned around and my mother was still staring at me from behind. I almost shouted to her: "I recovered! It's all gone now!"

This time, my mother wept in my presence.

How could I have known, however, the story that happened thousands of miles away at exactly the same time?

Pure coincidence shocked both my husband and me at the two ends of the phone line.

My friend who went to Los Angeles to study theology came back. Like a fresh breeze sweeping through the hot summer, she brought me a story that I would never forget in my life:

How lonely and how hopeless we would have been if God hadn't carried us along!

Finally, I am now a Christian after much struggle about faith.

Now my mother told me that my grandmother was also a Christian. Hearing this, I was deeply moved.

Looking up at the sky again, I don't feel confused any more. The heaven, the earth, people and everything else are God's work. And God will be with us forever and ever.

*****