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Friday, November 23, 2012

The Danger of a Couple Living Separately

This is the last part of the book about the 20 daily habits of the happiest marriage.  Saturday and Sunday will be AchieveWorld Peace day off.  Then one last week before a December break from daily posting. 
 
Below  the author of the book shares his experience of how unhealthy it is living apart from the spouse and that by taking the test posted yesterday, he had received an F and if he had taken action, problems may have been avoided.
 
Members refer to the author of the Divine Principle True Father for teaching us as a father how to live and become as the Father in Heaven wanted.  Dae Mo nim is a spiritualist who sees and aids members with her spiritual sight into the spirit world, and Cheonpyoeng is where she helps, through God and good angels, members tackle problems that began in the spirit. 
 
 
The Dangers Associated with a Couple’s Living Separately Because of a Job Away from Home
 
My beloved wife, Yasuko, ascended into Heaven at the CheongShim International Hospital on February 14 (January 1 by the Chinese calendar), 2010 as a result of her terminal stomach cancer. She was buried in the Korean Unification Church’s 2nd Wonjon at Chuncheon City. I am deeply grateful to the numerous Blessed Marriage families around the world who kindly prayed and gave warm encouragement for my wife’s healing during her two operations and hospitalization since August 2009, until her ascension.
 
Even though more than five months have passed since my wife’s ascension, I still occasionally receive questions about her fight against her illness or the background of her ascension. This is why I decided to address the two questions related to my wife’s fight against cancer and her ascension, partly selecting from my new Japanese book Makotono Ai-to Zettai Sei-to Kenkouhou (True love, absolute sex, and health), which was published in January, 2010.
 
Thus, finally, I would like to offer here words of my heartfelt thanks to those many members around the world who, with deep concern, kindly cared for my wife and my family with their sincere prayers, communications, and financial contributions, during my wife’s hospitalization and ascension. I have learned anew the real preciousness of the friends in our faith and the classic lesson that “A friend in need is a friend indeed!” I can never thank them enough, for ever.
 
Appendix Q.1: I heard that on the basis of your recent experiences, you have come to strongly emphasize the dangers caused by living alone by taking a job that compels one to leave his family behind. You mention that taking a job away from one’s family has a bad influence on the health of the couple. Could you provide a detailed explanation about this?
 
A: I made and presented objective self-score tables about the “10 habits that make a supremely happy couple” in an Appendixto my Japanese booklet, Kouten Jidai-no Niju-no Seikatsu Shukan which was published in April 2009. Based on these objective self-score tables, I evaluated our couple’s practice of true love during every month of the past few years. It turned out that our couple’s monthly score often repeated: A, F, F, F, F, F, A, F, F, F, F, F, and the average mark for every year was an overall “F (failure).”
 
Honestly speaking, before the strict objective evaluation of our relationship, I was living in a subjective fantasy, and at the end of the process of grading, I finally realized “Oh, we had a problem” and was shocked by the results. Getting an “F (failure)” as the average mark of every year meant that we had not been practicing true love in our life.
 
This also meant that we had not been practicing the rules of health: “Become an absolute Blessed couple of one heart and one body” that True Parents and Dae Mo Nim have taught. In fact, it is impossible for couples to faithfully practice the daily-life habits of true love and True Parents’ rules of health in a daily life wherein one spouse takes a job that results in his leaving his family behind, even if the couples are eager to practice the habits.
 
In July 2009, when my wife was diagnosed with stomach cancer, I was so surprised. It came out of the blue and was a big shock. But then again, I had already had a bad feeling that something was wrong when I discovered the results of the self-score tables that I had made and applied to our couple a few months prior to the diagnosis. That spring I discovered that as a couple, we rated an “F (failure)” for the 10 months during my working alone in Korea every year. It was then that I had a hunch: “Oh, this will be dangerous.”
 
As a result of this, when my wife was diagnosed with stomach cancer, I felt much regret and realized that it happened because we had not faithfully practiced the True Parents’ rules of health: “Become an absolute Blessed couple of one heart and one body,” and because I had continued for over 15 years the unprincipled life of working alone at a job away from home, separated from my family. It is clearly an unprincipled life to work alone at a job that separates an individual from his spouse and family for most of the year. It is an unprincipled life to leave one’s spouse behind in the pursuit of work for many years. It is definitely not the type of life that God is pleased with.
 
My eldest daughter graduated from a medical school in the United States and became a medical doctor (still an intern) at a hospital in Detroit City. In regards to her mother’s diagnosis of stomach cancer, my daughter remarked: “If I kept a small bird in a cage surrounded by several cats, the bird would die soon because the small bird would become severely stressed and would be unable to eat peacefully.”
 
My daughter’s words were not meant to criticize me directly, but it did make me realize my failings. Because I had started my new post in Korea alone, and was away from home for a significant amount of time every year, I did not sufficiently fulfill my responsibility as a husband. I left my wife to face life’s hardships alone for over 15 years, which inevitably must have caused her significant stress.
 
When I look at her situation, I realize just how much stress and difficulty she must have faced. For over 15 years without her husband, she lived in a foreign country, America, where she could not speak, write, or read freely. She was in a completely different culture and society, with foreign rules and a completely different educational system. On top of that she had to raise four children alone and manage her retail business at a small indoor shopping mall, all without her husband to depend on, because I had left my family behind to take my teaching job in Korea.
 
All that my wife had to depend on were her church friends and other secular friends who knew the wisdom of the world. With insufficient support, she fought alone while running about in utter confusion. Because my wife was always busy with continuous work, there was no time for her to eat slowly. She became accustomed to swallowing her entire meal in a very short time.
 
When I look back, I feel so much regret because I should have realized the danger of leaving my family behind. Early on, in 1999, when I had a stroke at Sun Moon University, I should have realized that I needed to live together with my wife. It is so important for a husband and wife to live together because then they can monitor each other’s health. If the husband and wife look at each other every day, and if they are interested in each other’s body, they are more likely to notice if something is amiss.
 
Also, if a husband and wife spend time together and consistently massage painful areas of their spouse’s body, they will be able to check the status of their spouse’s health and catch any problem early on through observation, touch, and massage. If this careful attention and early awareness of potential problems exist, a couple can prevent serious illness by catching problems before they become serious.
 
In 1999, as a result of the periodic medical examinations given to the faculty and staff of Sun Moon University, I found out that I had high blood pressure and that I should take the proper medication to control it. But, because of my busy schedule and work, I ignored it for a while. This neglect caused a greater problem for me later on, a brain hemorrhage. If I had lived together with my wife, we could have managed my health together.
 
She could have helped me take proper care of my medical problems, which might in turn have prevented the bleeding in my brain. During this time, as a result of the brain hemorrhage, I was facing serious health problems, and it was determined that it would be very good for my health if I went to Cheongpyeong Hospital.
 
So, after getting permission from the President of Sun Moon University, Dae Mo Nim, a highly reccommended spiritualist, invited me to be a professor at CheongShim Graduate School of Theology in the spring of 2004. My life in Cheongpyeong has been wonderful. Cheongpyeong has a nice environment that promotes good health. The area is endowed with clean air, pure water, beautiful nature, and woody hills for daily hiking. In addition to the benefits of the environment,
 
I could also receive many benefits spiritually, being able to frequently participate in Cheongpyeong Workshops.
 
Also, the food served at the cafeteria of CheongShim Graduate School of Theology was much healthier than that served at Sun Moon University. The food service that catered to the CheongShim Hospital was also in charge of the meals at our Graduate School, which meant that the food tasted better and was far more nutritious than what I was previously accustomed to. My life as a professor at CheongShim Graduate School of Theology made me much healthier than before because the environment greatly resembles that of the CheongShim Hospital.
 
Thanks to the grace of Cheongpyeong’s environment, my life became very healthy, but the life of my beloved wife continued to deteriorate because she couldn’t have her husband with her since the time he was in Korea. As a result, her situation was like that of a lonely widow. She worked everyday like a workhorse, alone, with nobody to help her, and her hardships continued.
 
 In connection to one’s taking a job away from home and leaving one’s family behind, another decisive factor that has a bad influence on health is a lack of health insurance. If a husband works full time for a company, generally speaking, his dependents (wife and children) can receive the benefits of family health insurance.
 
This policy is, however, usually not applied to dependents living in a foreign country. If my wife and children came to Korea to live with me, they also would have automatically been qualified for health insurance as my dependents.
 
However, they lived in the USA. So they managed with overseas travel insurance for Japanese citizens, which was more economical than the regular private health insurance coverage in the United States.
 
My wife, however, could not receive that insurance any longer; when she became a naturalized citizen of the USA, she lost the qualifications needed to obtain overseas travel insurance for the Japanese. In addition to no longer being qualified for overseas insurance, my wife also faced difficulties in obtaining other cheap health insurance due to my income in Korea that exceeded the level for her to be qualified for the subsidized health insurance in America. This became problematic because when problems with her stomach worsened, she had no health insurance coverage in the United States and could not get a specialist’s timely help, which she needed.
 
In the beginning I did not worry too much because I thought if something serious happened she could always come to Korea and get help. My wife could easily come to Korea where she could receive the health benefits of my insurance and have operations and such if she should get seriously ill. But it was unfair of me to think in this way.
 
A wife should always be able to receive the benefits of health insurance, whether sick or not, and be able to have regular medical examinations without having to worry about expenses. Providing this peace of mind is one of the most important responsibilities of a husband.
 
My wife was very self-sacrificing, patient, and frugal, and avoided spending money just on herself. She would always think of others first and make providing for their needs a priority. When I received the True Parents’ instruction to go to the Czech Republic and Slovakia for missionary work as a Japanese Ambassador for Peace, she willingly agreed with my going there at my own expense.
 
She also willingly agreed with me in borrowing a large sum of money from a bank and lending it to a senior Japanese Blessed family without requesting any loan interest from them, so that they could pay for their family’s hospital charges. But then my wife would hesitate about getting health insurance for herself and paying the expensive fees, because it would be only for herself inasmuch as she was the only one in our family without health insurance.
 
My wife became all the more hesitant about paying for the expensive health insurance around the beginning of 2009, when in the currency exchange market the value of the US dollar visà-vis the Korean won went up sharply, that is, the value of the Korean won vis-à-vis the US dollar fell sharply.
 
That is why I stopped the remittance of the cost of living to my wife in America from my salary in Korean won, telling her to temporarily use the money in her bank account because the value of the American dollar vis-à-vis the Korean won would soon fall sharply just as the value of the American dollar vis-à-vis the Japanese yen had dropped sharply. Therefore, my wife hesitated even more about paying the expensive cost for health insurance only for herself.
 
I recently read a newspaper article about a research study that found that the sum of the husband’s income greatly influences whether the couple can live a long life together. This made me feel so sorry for my wife. In the case of stomach cancer, many experts also point out the importance of early treatment through early detection.
 
For early detection, periodic medical examinations are crucial. After visiting the CheongShim Hospital and seeing my wife’s condition, which failed to improve even after her operations because of the late-stage stomach cancer, Dae Mo Nim emphasized: “All Blessed families should, by any means, receive a medical examination at least once a year.”
 
I strongly recommend that all Blessed families obtain health insurance, get periodic medical examinations, and get a specialist’s diagnosis early on, especially if the stomach has any problem. As a husband who has the responsibility for protecting his wife’s health, I feel so deeply sorry for my wife that I often cannot hold back my tears. Because her health insurance expired and she could not get further coverage, she could not go to a specialist in America to get an exact diagnosis, when necessary.
 
 
Man Was Not Created To Live Alone
 
As a result, my wife’s stomach cancer was discovered too late, and it became terminal. In conclusion, and based on my own experience of taking a job away from home, and leaving my family behind for more than 15 years, I am certainly against maintaining this kind of life for an extended period of time. In Korea, there are many middleaged men who live alone, leaving their wives and children abroad while they study English. This is a big problem.
 
Many of these middle-aged men who live alone have come to suffer from serious geriatric diseases, such as high blood pressure or heart trouble, because of their unhealthy irregular meals and lifestyle. Human beings were not created to live alone. Human beings were created for marriage, and to live as a couple. Being in a marriage partnership is the best state for human beings and can lead to a happy and healthy life.
 
This is especially true if they live peacefully hand in hand with each other every day, if they are interested in the state of their partner’s bodies, if they experience loving physical contact in everyday life, and if they live everyday with a smile. Then, they can reduce each other’s stress, build strong immune systems, and maintain overall physical and emotional health. That is the central message of the “rules of health: Become an absolute Blessed couple of one heart and one body” which True Parents and Dae Mo Nim have taught us.
 
I have eagerly studied these rules of health that True Parents and Dae Mo Nim have taught. The finding of my wife’s terminal cancer, however, made me acutely realize that I had not faithfully practiced them every day with my wife. Consequently, I have come to strongly encourage others to stop as soon as possible their unprincipled lifestyle of taking a job away from home and leaving their family behind because it makes the daily practice of these rules of health impossible. I have also come to emphasize the importance of practicing these rules of health every day as a couple as much as possible.
 
Especially now, the age of paying for the mistakes of our ancestors in history is providentially over, and we are in the new Era after the Coming of Heaven. Therefore, in this new Era, True Parents have also emphasized the importance for Blessed couples to do things (e.g., prayerreport) together with their partner and to participate as a couple in public events such as the Church Holy-Day Celebrations as much as possible.
 
Blog Note: The church has a deep belief in being helped by angels and good spirits in support of our direct work with the Messiah of the Second Advent.  Even True Father and Dae Mo Nim have stated that if a cancer or disease is too far along, it may be too late even for heaven to save that person's body.  When this happens, sometimes a member or person without this understanding can lose faith because a person dies in the church and also may accuse the ill person of paying for mistakes.  The author addresses this from a direct question centered on this.
 
Appendix Q.2: It is reported that in other hospitals, many patients of stomach cancer are completely healed or can live for several years after being diagnosed with it. But your wife passed away within a year after she was diagnosed with it. Is it true that healing angels really work at the Cheongpyeong Training Center and CheongShim Hospital?
 
A: I have never directly received this question from any member of our Church. I felt, however, the existence of this unspoken question in the heart of some members around the world. Actually our second son, Takamasa, said to my wife and me at our home in New York in August 2009, before our departure to Korea for the treatment of her stomach cancer, “I can believe in God, True Parents, and Dae Mo Nim, if Mama is cured or gets better at Cheongpyeong, but I can’t believe in God, True Parents, and Dae Mo Nim any longer, if Mama is not cured or doesn’t get better at Cheongpyeong.”
 
When my wife’s health got worse around December 2009 because of the loss of her ability to eat any food after two operations for her terminal stomach cancer, she was very much worried about our second son’s losing faith in God, True Parents, and Dae Mo Nim (Cheongpyeong Spiritual Works). She regularly participated in the Holy Song (Ahnsu) Sessions at the hospital and made every effort to recover from her illness, not only for the sake of herself, but also for the sake of our children, especially for the sake of our second son who did not have firm faith in God and the spirit world. Nonetheless, the discovery and operations for her stomach cancer were too late for it to be cured, even with the focused help of the angels (I have already explained above the reasons for the delay of its discovery).
 
Our second son and two daughters came to Korea from the United States to take care of their beloved mother in the last days of her life on earth. Our children and I prayed desperately for her miraculous recovery from the cancer during the Special Workshop, but in my view it was my wife that prayed most seriously for our children in her heart on the bed so that they would not lose their faith even if she passed away, as her health gradually deteriorated.
 
Although no miraculous healing happened to my wife during the 15th Anniversary Special Workshop, her earnest and ceaseless motherly prayers to keep or strengthen the faith of our children brought about the small miracle of a photo of our son with angels. When our daughter took a picture of our second son at the Cheongpyeong Training Center immediately after the Holy Song session, a number of balls of light showed up with him and around him in the room. It was our somewhat skeptical children who first told me that “angels” appeared in the picture.
 
Frankly speaking, I was previously not sure about the pictures of angels on the leaves of the Tree of Love, like small light bulbs, when I saw them several years ago. Nonetheless, I could easily agree with our children in their view about angels on the picture because they took it with our family’s ordinary digital camera without adding or changing anything through a computer.
 
As a result of the picture, our second son has become less skeptical, or more serious, about the existence of angels and the spirit world. I have also come to be firmly convinced, now more than before she became ill with her stomach cancer, that healing angels really work at the Cheongpyeong Training Center and CheongShim Hospital, although they may not be able to cure all diseases.
 
 
Yoshihiko Masuda, PhD
 
(Professor, CheongShim Graduate School of Theology
 
CheongShim GST University Press
 
Based on the Speeches of True Parents and Dae Mo Nim
 
Published by CheongShim GST University Press
 
Copyright
 
ⓒ 2010 by Yoshihiko Masuda
 
All Rights Reserved
 
Published in the Republic of Korea by CheongShim GST University Press

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