If Love Could Be Reborn
【Mobility in Heaven - Testimony】
After the most popular Japanese drama "Restart Life" in the spring of 2023 was broadcast, it aroused a lot of responses among Asian audiences. This play describes the heroine's discovery that she can go back to her previous life after death and live a new life. Because she had predicted the course of her life for more than thirty years, she tried her best to change or correct the mistakes she made in the previous life, or to change her interpersonal relationships.
The heroine is set to be born in the post-90s era. The situations and musical interludes in the play are full of memories, leaving the audience with endless aftertaste. However, what has caused the most discussion is - if you could live your life again, how would you live it?
Put yourself down and become a listening parent
"If I had known that my son was living a good life now, I wouldn't have worried about what college he would go to and what his future would be. I kept arguing and quarreling with him for no reason, which hurt my feelings and damaged a lot of my brain cells!" Main said this to her friends at her retirement celebration party. Her son held a lively and warm retirement party for her, took care of everything, not only delicious meals, but also bought flowers to decorate the table, which made Mine feel flattered.
I recall that when Mine was in her son's schooling process, she argued endlessly every day because of his different interests and the major she considered "promising". In the end, her son compromised and majored in accounting. Several times when their son came home from school, he said he wanted to change his major. However, the Main couple thought that he had a weak personality and could not endure hardship, and it would be very expensive to change majors and re-study, so they rejected his wishes. It wasn't until her son lost contact during his sophomore year and was absent from school for a long time that Main was shocked to realize the seriousness of the situation.
The son who returned home from school locked himself in his room every day, never leaving the house and not talking to his parents. It was as if a high wall had been built, blocking the parents from even getting a glimpse of their son's inner state. The couple suddenly lost the channel of communication, and then they realized that if they could have listened more to their son and given opportunities for two-way communication, perhaps their concern would not have been blocked out.
There are only a few dozen steps from the room to the door, but the distance of these dozen steps has taken almost two years. Helping their son to walk out of the house included the Main and his wife's introspection and tearful prayers, hundreds of "unread" text messages from their son, the emotions of hope, disappointment and hope, as well as the help of professional psychological counseling.
Later, my son picked up photography, his favorite thing in high school. After taking several photography courses at a vocational school, he found a job as an assistant. Seven or eight years have passed, and my son is now also a professional photographer, specializing in photography work such as wedding banquets and celebrations. He walked out of the house and saw another piece of sky.
The road to repairing the relationship was a bit circuitous, but compared to the current situation, Main felt that all the hard work and tears were not in vain. If they could live their lives over again, both Main and her husband would let go of their "parental pride" influenced by their family of origin - they always want guidance and think they have more experience than their children. If he had a listening ear and a gentle heart at that time, the son would not have to struggle under the pressure of his own passion and the difficulty of his mother's destiny, or even want to disappear.
belated reconciliation
Mary and Anli are doing a very difficult separation: tidying up their mother's house.
My mother passed away from cancer not long ago. During the farewell ceremony, friends from the church remembered her bravely in facing the sufferings of life, her passion for preaching the gospel, and her seriousness in serving the church. These concerns about their mother's attitude towards people and things sounded very real to the two sisters but also strange. Because their mother was strict with them, I rarely heard words of encouragement or affirmation from her when they were growing up.
Yes, my mother’s life was full of misfortunes, with marriage, work, and health all thrown at her like “balls of change.” But because of her trust in Christ, she often testified to others that God led her through the valley of the shadow of death. Yes, after my mother believed in the Lord, preaching the gospel and serving in the church became the focus of her life. The two sisters were happy about this, because they were afraid of facing their mother and were speechless when they met.
Mother often says to them: "If it weren't for you..., how could I...!"; "It's because of you... that I...!"; "Others can..., why can't you?" Words, tone It was full of bitterness, piercing the hearts of the two sisters like needles. The wound was invisible to the needle. The mother did not realize that it was her negative words that caused the two sisters to flee the home. Then she complained that they had abandoned her, which made her even more sad. The mother's bitterness is like the smell of cooking fumes in a poorly circulated kitchen, making it hard for the two sisters to breathe and wanting nothing more than to escape.
When the sick mother mentioned her two daughters, she was still negative and complained. Fortunately, she had brothers and sisters from the church to accompany her and give her guidance. On the sickbed, my mother received light in prayer, and realized that God had not treated her badly, and had given her a lot of timely help and unexpected success in her painful and tiring life, including her two daughters.
In her last moments before her death, she apologized to her daughters in tears of remorse, indicating that there was maternal love hidden behind her words, and she just hoped that they would live a better life than she did, and did not want her precious daughter to follow her hard path. The mother and daughter shed tears of relief in the reconciled embrace.
Although the mother returned to heaven not long after she reconciled with the two sisters, her tears and hugs seemed to put medicine on their wounds. Although the final reconciliation was bittersweet, the two sisters firmly believed that their mother's tears washed away the bitterness and her embrace could cover up all the pain.
They know that if their lives could be repeated, the mother would definitely want to reconcile with her daughter as soon as possible!
You can start your life again now
Just like the plot of "Life Restart", people often misestimate their impact on others. In the first round of life, the heroine got a boyfriend who loved gambling and lent him money to pay off his gambling debts. In the second round of life, I failed to get to know him. Later, she discovered that her ex-boyfriend did not recognize her, but instead worked hard and became a CEO at a young age.
The heroine helps develop a new drug in her third life. When I was in my fourth life, I was still worried that I couldn’t participate in research because of my different profession, and I couldn’t “accumulate negative virtues.” It turned out that without her participation, new drugs would have been discovered a year earlier. Wan'er's plot reminder: If we didn't intervene in many things, maybe the outcome would be better.
Fortunately, we are the sons and daughters of the Lord Jesus who shed His precious blood and were resurrected from the dead. Because of His justification, we don’t have to accumulate bad virtues to be reborn as in the play. "In Christ, old things have passed away; all things have become new." Past mistakes and failures in various interpersonal relationships, as long as we give the sovereignty to God and love according to the truth rather than tradition or our own will, in the Lord All can be rebuilt and repaired.
Why wait until the next life to reflect on how to change your life and live a better life? We can now turn over the past in God's grace and live a different life with a new life.