This is from a testimony given by Mrs. Betsy Jones to a Blessing Candidate Preparation workshop in Russia.

I know in these 25 years, God has come close to us. I think that when God has come the closest to us personally and to our family has been when we could follow True Parents' direction for our family. This is so important. When we talk about the change of blood lineage, when we talk about being engrafted into True Parents, what does that mean? Yes, sometimes it means crisis. When our children were very young was a time when all the wives were mobilized. That's not the time most people would want to go and think about the nation and the world. But the providential time table is a real thing. As blessed couples, when we can connect to that, we move. You will see. Your family will move leaps and bounds ahead. So when we were a young couple, even though we were fighting sometimes, Father said, "I want all the wives to go around the country." So actually when we said, "Bye, bye," is when we started to feel true love. It's a paradox. Isn't that a paradox? "Bye, bye. (I really feel something)"! Then when we are apart from each other and trying to do things for God and writing to each other and taking responsibility for each other, trying to take responsibility for something bigger than our family, God becomes so close. Our relationship became so close. It's the same with our children. That time when we went on witnessing conditions and left everybody behind, I can remember thinking: this is not the way to parent. But actually we have to find that balance and that heartistic unity with True Parents.

So I feel like Farley and I are here today by God's grace and True Parents' foundation and guidance to our family. I have to give testimony to my husband. He made a great effort. In his family, when he was five years old, his father left the family. So he never saw a family committed to each other. At times he had a hard time being committed to me. I had a hard time that he wasn't committed to me. I thought I could take that for granted. But he made an effort and he listened to me sometimes when I had an inspiration, when I could feel True Parents' heart. It's like a handkerchief. Sometimes God can't take the whole family at once. So He will pull one corner; you will hear God's voice in your family. Sometimes it's through the husband. He's trying to pull your family through your husband, and you know it. You can be the kind of wife that holds back: "Stay back here. Just take care of me." Or you can let that inspiration come into your family, and you make your offering as a family. Or sometimes Father tries to pull the wives, and the husband has to follow. Father says the hinge between the Messiah's family and the blessed couple is the wife's position. So that's why these ceremonies right from the very beginning focus on Eve. On the foundation of Eve's making unity with True Parents, the husbands should understand and support that. If this is the sweet persimmon tree, through the wife's unity with True Parents, a bud can be brought back to the bitter persimmon. So the husband's position is particularly to cut back on fallen desires. He should be like a tree that's been pruned and ready to receive that bud. It's a very cooperative activity. It's like riding in a canoe. If the canoe sinks or turns over, you are both responsible.

Many people will come in after trying to relate to their spouse for a little while and say, "He's like this," or "He's like that." But there are many reasons for your match. Maybe that's the perfect restorational spouse for you. You don't know what kind of ancestral problems you had. So whatever problem comes to you, you can say, "With this spouse, we will find the way to get through it, to overcome it." Some people think the solution is to change your spouse. That's not the solution. Even if you get married the second time, the same problem may come up, even sooner.

I was reading Psychology Today the other day on the train. There was an article on happiness that included a story from the Buddhist tradition, about a woman whose son had died. She had such a hard time accepting his death. And someone said, "Well, go see the teacher." And the medicine that the teacher prescribed was: "Go to every village and find one person who has not gone through the death of a parent, the loss of a spouse, the loss of a child, or some other major loss. You find one, and bring that person back to me. Put the child down and go." So the woman did as the teacher said. As she went from village to village she listened to one heart-breaking story after another and she did try to comfort those who had suffered. Through comforting others, she realized her grief had been healed.

You can probably learn many things from that kind of story if you think about it, but one thing that is very clear is that problems will come, crises will come, losses will come. Even when you try to accept your mate, sometimes you have to cry and give up something that you thought about yourself. Maybe you have some pride: Gee, I'm from Germany and now I'm blessed with someone from Thailand. This is totally different from what I am used to, and maybe even from what I wanted. So we must be like the mother who looked for medicine -- and realize that the real medicine is to change our viewpoint about ourselves and our situation.

I've been touched many times by blessed couples who really understand Father's philosophy when he teaches us that our storehouse of suffering on earth is our warehouse of Blessing in the spirit world. One time my husband and I were fighting a lot, and True Parents took me aside and asked me, "Why do you fight with your husband?" I was prepared to say, "Well, I think it's because he's like this and like this." I was thinking that in my head before I said anything, but then I realized and I said to True Parents, "It's because I want him to be like me." And Father laughed. He thought that was a right-on answer. That's what we all do in a marriage situation: One says, "Come over here. Join my side." The other one tries to pull the other in the direction of "Do it like I do it. Think like I think."

The most amazing thing is that after 25 years you start to really enjoy the way the other one does things. It's amazing. Really, I just love the way my husband is. I can count on certain things, his character, his way. In the first year of marriage he thought he was going to die being blessed to someone like me. In his family everybody was very rational and logical. After one year of marriage, he said, "I'm going to write on your gravestone: Here lies Betsy. She never hid her feelings."

Download entire page and pages related to it in ZIP format
Table of Contents
Copyright Information