Changkai Benxi City, Liaoning Province
The common phrase “All lay loads on the willing horse” is one with which I am all too personally familiar. My husband and I were all particularly guileless people: When it came to matters that involved our own personal benefit or loss, we weren’t the type to haggle and fuss with others. Where we could be forbearing we were forbearing, where we could be accommodating we also did our best to be accommodating. As a result, we often found ourselves cheated and abused by others. It really seemed that in life, “All lay loads on the willing horse”—if you have too much kindness in your heart, if you’re too accommodating and modest in your affairs, you’re very liable to be cheated. With these thoughts in mind, I resolved to not subject myself to all this abuse and live in frustration anymore: In future matters and in dealings with others, I vow not to be too accommodating. Even after I accepted Almighty God’s work, I still applied this principle in conducting my behavior and interactions with others.
At one point, I was working with a sister in fulfilling our duties. This sister often pointed out my inadequacies and shortcomings; I had the feeling that she was holding me down in every way. At first I thought: It’s not easy to be on your own away from home, try to use some forbearance. Later, however, after the sister proved to be unrelenting in her criticisms, I finally thought back to that phrase “All lay loads on the willing horse.” It occurred to me that the sister must have recognized I was too kind and therefore an easy target and decided to make things hard on me by nitpicking over petty and inconsequential matters. I decided I wasn’t going to accommodate or forbear her behavior any longer, so I summoned all of the fishwife energy suppressed inside me and let loose an apoplectic tirade, stopping only when the sister didn’t dare to utter another word.
