An atheist's experience with LC

Hello dear members of this forum.

I'm a German atheist who found this forum by following the link of a link of a ...
Please excuse my mediocre English.
After having read through some of the stories posted here I'm incredibly happy to finally have found a place to share and to ask questions.

I'm not sure about the "common believe" of the members of the forum. You are christians, but do you believe that the earth is 5000 years old? Is homosexuality morally wrong? Prematurial sex a sin? Is human made climate change a hoax? Evolution false?
These concepts sound very strange to me and would to 99% of christians in Germany.
I apologize in advance if my believes offend somebody.


Halfway through writing all this I realized that much of it is probably of little interest to you all. But seeing as it is past midnight and I have been writing for the last 4 hours I don't want to spend more time cutting it down to the point. Apologies.
Some parts of my story sound as if out of a bad tear-jerker movie. But everything is real.


About myself:
I'm male, 29 years old,
I grew up in a semi-religious (roman-catholic) family (parents + 2 brothers) in a small town in western Germany. I was baptised as an infant, went to church with my family every sunday, later became alter server and received the sacrament of confirmation. Even though I did the full program I never felt very religious. I never believed that god created the world in seven days, Adam out of mud etc. I also didn't believe that god actively intervenes in human life (or anything really). God was to me always more of a feeling. Love for one, but also respect, open mindedness and calamity. More the teaching of morality than anything "active".
When I was 19 I got my university-entrance diploma and changed city for studying. I stopped going to church and basically didn't think much about religion anymore. At some point I got curious again and for the first time read the bible as a whole (old + new testamony). To be blunt, I was very disappointed and unimpressed by it.
I like the idea of a "creator" who created the universe and the beginning of life on earth but everything that comes afterwards just sounds too far fetched for me to believe.
This marked the moment when I didn't see myself as a christian anymore and instead as an atheist. I guess I had always been one I just didn't know it yet.


Jump to March 2013.
I'm travelling through south-east asia and meet a chinese girl in Luang Prabang, Laos (we are both travelling alone). She calls herself Cici because her Chinese name is rather difficult to pronounce for westerners, comes from a city with 3 million inhabitants that even most Chinese have never heard of, and in short is the most amazing person I have ever had the pleasure to meet. She is funny, lovely, outgoing, kind, open-minded and to top it off beautiful.
I had been in love before, I have had other relationships before. But in just a few days I had gotten closer to Cici than to any other person in my life prior. We talked about absolutely everything without ever having to worry about being judged or ridiculed by the other. We didn't always share the same opinions but we always wanted to hear each other's. We cried together when she told me about her abusive father who often beat her mom and her and finally left them both for another woman because his child was a girl not a boy (one child policy...).
We spent whole days together wandering through the city, visiting waterfalls, watching the sunrise from Mount Phousi...
I don't want to bore you with details so just let me say that I had never felt as connected to another human being and had never felt as happy as I had with her. Even though I didn't tell her at that time I had fallen in love with her.

We planned to continue our trip together and possibly even continue the relationship afterwards. Unfortunatly life had other plans with us and after some unfortunate events she decided that we should rather split up. I continued north, she south. We stayed in contact afterwards, but the time between our emails grew longer and longer while both our lifes continued. I thought I would never see her again.


Jump to December 2014
Cici and I start to have more contact again. Even talking on Skype from time to time. In April I begin my master thesis. In early June my then-girlfriend and I break up for unrelated reasons.

In July Cici calls and tells me that she got a job as a flight attendant and will be flying the China-Germany routes with base in Frankfurt (meaning this is where she will be living). I'm thrilled to be seeing her again. Frankfurt is only 1,5h away from where i live.
When we meet it is as if we had never been seperated. We joke, we laugh, we cry, and we love again.

I help her finding a flat in Frankfurt, help with paperwork etc. In August we are officially a couple. My family (and even my very conservative grandmother) love her. She has a way of making the sun shine wherever she goes.
I have never been as happy in my life than I am at this point in time. Everything is better than I had could have imagined. I've finished my degree, I've found a job that I like in the city I studied in. The relationship with Cici goes great. We are in this "long" distance relationship until January '16. Everytime she's back in Frankfurt I go visit her or she comes visiting me.

One day in January though Cici is told that she won't be kept as a flight attendant after her probationary period. No reasons given. She has time until the end of March to get all paperwork done, find a next tenant for her flat etc. Then she has to leave Germany.
Her Visa is connected to her work permit which she got due to her job and therefore now lost. She can't apply for another job in Germany as she doesn't have a universal working Visa. She can't even apply for a studying or a holiday Visa while being inside of Germany.

We talk about marriage. I know that this is the woman I want to spend my life with, but I'm worried. Not so much that I might be wrong about her, rather that my family wouldn't approve of me marrying so soon after getting together with her. My oldest brother married his wife after 5 years of living together, 11 years after being a couple. What would they say about us marrying after just a few months?
Anyway. I make the biggest mistake of my life so far and don't ask her to marry me.
We talk about our future though: She wants to apply for studying in Germany as soon as she gets back to China (bachelor in another field). The process usually takes half a year. I will visit her and her family for vacation (we get 30 days paid vacation in Germany).

She moves in with me for the remaining two months. But as I have to go to work everyday she spends most of the time at home feeling miserable, making me miserable when coming home from work... We try to enjoy the remaining time together, but as the inevitable day of her departure comes closer and closer we feel more and more desperate.
And then the day is there and she's gone. More than 8000km and 6 timezones away.

We videochat everyday. We are both counting the days until we can see each other again.

Then doctors discover that her mom (whom she lives with at that moment) has cancer. She never remarried after her first husband and lives a quite poor and lonely life.
Cici obviously doesn't want to leave her like this and holds all visa efforts. Then her aunt (whom Cici is close to like a sister) also discovers cancer.
While Cici has to take care of both her relatives I'm in Germany and barely able to help. I have a flight booked for July but in the weeks until then Cici's world breaks apart. Ontop of her own problems and worries she has to worry about her closest family members and feeling the full weight of all responsibilities on her shoulders. To cope with this she starts praying and going to LC meetings.

... I forgot to mention that Cici was an exchange student in the US during her time in high-school. She lived with a family that was deep into LC for half a year and got in first contact with christianity there. She also got baptised during that time. Back in China she continued to believe in God ("Lord Jesus") but didn't attend meetings etc. and soon after religion was just one small aspect of her life.

Her mother and aunt have operations. Everything goes ok.
Even though most of her worries are dealt with I can sense that Cici is getting... weird. Sometimes she links me videos with christian messages or quotes the Bible. A few days before my flight she tells me that she would rather not have sex with me anymore before we marry. If I mind? I tell her that yes I do mind, but (with a heavy heart) tell her that if this is how she feels we can wait until after marriage.
When I meet her in China she is the personification of lust for life again. She is over the moon happy. Her mother and grandparents accept me like their son. I get along great with everybody even though we can not communicate without Cici translating.
Cici and I have a blast. We spend 2 of my 4 weeks of holiday hitchhiking through the mountains, sleeping in small hostels, hiking up mountains to watch the sun rise... Everything is as if we had never been seperated (again...). She is also as physical as she had always been. All worries I had before coming to China are forgotten.

And then the day is there and I have to go back to Germany... See the pattern? :/

And again Cici falls into unhappiness. The videos she sends me get more and more concerning/crazy. "Prophecies in the Bible", "10 Marks For Why The End Is Near", "How to PREPARE YOURSELF For The Second Coming of Christ"... It is happening so fast, that I don't even know what is going on. First I'm worried where Cici got herself into and try to brush it off but then I'm getting scared. And the more we talk and the more I learn the more I'm getting actually terrified of what is happening to this person that looks but doesn't talk and think like the person I fell in love with.
I beg her to stop going to these meetings. To come back to sanity. I try reasoning with her, try to explain why these videos are bull****. But of course she doesn't listen. She tells me without these meetings, without the people there she would have killed herself in the spring, during the time when she was under constant stress. Without her believe she has nothing.
I tell her that she has me! That she has me with all my heart. But she says that I'm too far away. I tell Cici I will quit my job and come see her. I apply for Visa tomorrow and will be there in 2 weeks. But she knows that she has to decide between me and her newly-found believe in Christ (or whatever catchy theories it is she is believing). Around that time she has a big fight with her mother who also disapproves her changes and who knows that our relationship is falling apart. Cici moves out from her mother and in with somebody from LC. She tells me that she doesn't want me to come see her until she has herself figured out. Nobody knows where she is living. I would never find her.
Cici knows that I don't belive in "Lord Jesus" and she also knows that she won't be able to change my believes. Just 4 weeks after me getting back to Germany, after having our happiest time of our lifes together Cici breaks up with me by text message and blocks me from all ways of contact.

I want to contact her family because I know they are as terrified as I am as what is going on with Cici. But all I have is their home address. No phone number, no email address, no wechat contact (the chinese facebook). I ask a good chinese friend of mine (who also got to know Cici when she stayed with me) to translate a letter for me, send it by email to a friend in China and have him send a letter from there. But no reply. We try two more times but don't get answers.

______
It is 1am here right now, I have been writing for the last 5 hours and didn't even have dinner. I cut it short.
Many things happened to me during fall 2016 and spring 2017 that made it impossible for me to go to China in person. My 4th letter in May 2017 finally reached her mother. She also tried finding me the whole time but didn't know where to start looking. We videotalked on wechat with my chinese friend sitting next to me translating.
It is basically all three of us bawling our eyes out. Both her mom and I thought we could find some answers but all we get are more questions. Cici moved back in with her mother, caught and destroyed one letter, the other 2 might have gotten lost (letters get lost very often in China). 1st of February 2017 Cici took a flight to New Zealand without telling her mom in advance. She is doing a 2 year "full time training" course in Auckland right now.
Reading the same biased crap, talking only to people who are just as brainwashed as herself and generally living in an echo chamber.

This could be the end of my story here . I could say that I have tried all I could and try to move on.
For you it might even sound better the way it is now. "At least she isn't in a relationship with an atheist anymore who leads her away from God."
But I can't move on. Cici and her mom still talk from time to time and a few weeks ago her mom told me that Cici still cries whenever they talk about me. She still loves me just like I love her. I hope that some day we can meet again. And who knows what will happen.


Well... That's my story. I don't know where I'm going with it or even why I posted. It felt good to write it all down though. If anybody read this far: Thank you for reading. I can get into more detail about what happened since the breakup tomorrow but for now it is enough.

Good night, and God bless if He is there