As a child, I lived near the Haihe River in Tianjin, close to the former residence of Li Shutong and the riverside Wanghailou Church. Every time I passed by that church, I felt its architecture was both mysterious and beautiful. Its lights radiated a sense of peace, as if they concealed an answer to my deep, wordless confusion about life.
Yes, I have always been confused about life. From the very beginning, my life seemed full of cracks. I couldn’t feel love growing up—my childhood held almost no memories of being loved. After I was born, my mother suffered from severe depression, and the atmosphere at home was always heavy. My memories of my father were also vague.
My mother’s pain seemed to follow her throughout her life. She came from a stable landlord family of four—her parents and older brother—but during the war, her brother joined the Communist resistance and was killed by the Japanese. Later, during the Land Reform Movement, my grandfather was publicly denounced for being a landlord, the family home was confiscated, and they were forced to live in a dilapidated temple. My grandfather passed away in fear and illness. My mother then moved to Tianjin, leaving my grandmother alone in the countryside. Not long after, my grandmother also died in poverty and illness. These sorrows and hardships broke my mother. After giving birth to me, she often had no strength to care for me, and my older sister had to take over.
Her pain was surely passed on to me. I grew up in a repressive environment, developing a deep sense of insecurity and emotional detachment from people. I preferred solitude, yet often felt lonely, empty, and uneasy when alone.
At seventeen, I had to suspend my studies for over a year due to severe insomnia and anxiety. Though I later managed to enter university, I soon dropped out because of health issues. Three years later, I was admitted again and barely graduated by tiptoeing through my sleepless nights.
Yet insomnia remained a constant companion. By day, I felt like I was walking through fog. I believed life had been unfair to me. I often asked myself: “Why can others live calmly, while I am trapped in such chaos and weakness? My parents never scolded or punished me, yet why have I never felt loved?”
I deeply doubted my own worth. Until I met my wife—that was the first time I felt that someone in this world truly affirmed me, truly loved me. But after marriage, we moved to Vancouver, and everything—language, life—needed adjustment. When my true self, with all its flaws, was fully exposed in the friction of daily life, that feeling of “love” quickly faded.
One day, a friend brought me to a church in the west side of the city. The people there spoke gently, the hymns were peaceful and beautiful. Though my English was limited, I was deeply moved by the atmosphere of mutual care and unconditional acceptance. Less than six months after joining that church, my wife and I were baptized, led by Jesus.
After baptism, outward life continued, but inside I still felt dry. Later, when our child was born, my life was consumed with busyness and anxiety. We stopped going to church for several years.
Even in hardship, I held on to hope in my faith. I occasionally sought out churches and was sometimes touched during worship. But nothing seemed to really change. I still suffered from insomnia, still wandered in the fog of daytime. Sometimes sheer willpower wasn’t enough, and I had to pause work several times to rest and recover before starting over again.
Eventually, friends brought us to Holy Word Church (Shengdao Tang). The brothers and sisters there were gentle and peaceful. Though my understanding of biblical truth was limited, their devotion and love deeply moved me.
My wife served actively at Holy Word and often shared with me about God’s love for the world. I told her, “I’ve always known parents should love their children—but I’ve never truly felt loved. Can you imagine how hard that is? If I can’t even feel the love of my parents, how can I feel or believe in the love of the Heavenly Father—or the love of people?”
To me, love was always a theory, not an experience; logic, not warmth. But I’m thankful—there was a moment when I felt God’s love in a sermon by Yuan Zhiming: “He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” In that moment, I was touched by a kind of unconditional love. The sunlight shines without asking who you are, without conditions. I suddenly realized: maybe God’s love is like sunlight—always present. I just never truly felt it.
Through interacting with church brothers and sisters—especially in the Vancouver small group of the Love Home Fellowship—I began to feel acceptance and warmth. I experienced their gentleness, openness, and willingness to listen. Slowly, I was bathed in the love of the group and began to open my heart. Though I still sometimes avoid people internally, their acceptance has time and again warmed my closed-off soul.
Bit by bit, I started to feel love—in testimonies from brothers who still gave thanks and trusted God in hardship; in simple “thank yous” while helping serve food; in brothers who gave their time to teach me and my child technical skills; in another who helped build our community garden plot. I felt love in the trust, support, and encouragement of group co-workers, and in the beautiful companionship within the church body.
One brother once invited me to dinner and even gave me food to take home. I thought, “Why are they so good to someone like me—so weak and unworthy?” These acts of love were tangible. Through interaction, words, and sincere action, they slowly opened my long-numb heart. It felt like soaking in a hot spring—these warm waters of love gradually warmed me. And now, I’m glad to say: I can feel love. I can feel the love of my brothers and sisters—and the love of God.
Looking back, my journey of faith hasn’t been smooth. Besides struggling to feel love, I’ve also been someone who puts logic above all else—who loves to debate and analyze. I scrutinized faith through rational, critical eyes, searching for logical inconsistencies. I asked: How could a perfectly good and loving God create an eternal hell? Are our fates predestined or freely chosen? Can people like my father, who never heard the Gospel, still be redeemed at the end? I searched and searched for satisfactory answers in Scripture—but never found a perfect explanation I could accept. I concluded that God could not be logically self-consistent. I was stuck in doubt and judgment for a long time.
But one day, I sat beside a lake, watching the breeze ripple the water, listening to birdsong. The stillness of nature cradled my heart like a lullaby. In the rhythm and breath of earth and sky, I felt God’s presence. It was as if my self dissolved. I experienced a merging: I was in Him, and He was in me. In that moment, I realized—language and logic are tools of the human mind, but they are insufficient to describe eternal being. They cannot contain the vastness of truth. God’s existence is simply: I AM. He transcends the limits of thought and speech. He must be experienced, entered into, felt. That moment, I understood: It is not I who understands God—but God who accepts me. In the stillness and oneness with all creation, He received me.
This union with God made me realize: since language cannot fully contain God, then my thoughts and emotions—including fear, doubt, anxiety, and self-denial—cannot define the real me. The true me is the one eternally warmed by God’s sunlight, eternally nourished by the rain of His presence—a more complete, transcendent self. From this understanding, I saw clearly: none of my negative emotions truly define me. The real me is the one who can rest in peace and joy, united with God.
After all this, I must say: my testimony has no dramatic miracles, no clear “moment of salvation.” It is a long and healing process—a journey from doubt to trust, from isolation to openness, from questioning to rest. In this journey of self-seeking, I’ve wandered like the prodigal son—again and again leaving home, longing to return. Until finally, I realized: faith is not the result of logical proof—it is a homecoming of love. The ultimate truth stands like a Father, with open arms, always waiting—waiting for me to walk toward Him and into Him.
Today, I can say: I have found Him—and I have found myself. I see myself standing in the sunlight, bringing home the soul that has wandered for years, and I say:
“Jesus, I’m home.”