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“No, God,” I said. “Please, not that.”

We had been in Malaysia for five years. We’d been granted refugee status and had applied to be resettled elsewhere as refugees. Now we were just waiting for the United Nations to give us our final settlement location. John had found a job with a nonprofit, I was homeschooling our daughter, and our family felt loved, accepted, and embraced by our church. Everything was going as well as it could, considering we were far from our families.

Ever since I had become a Christian, I tried to pray more than I did as a Muslim, so I began waking at three o’clock every morning to pray for an hour. One time, when the house was silent apart from my whispered prayers, God spoke. You need to share everything I’ve done in your life.

I knew what that would require. In order to talk about God’s rescue, I would have to explain how far away from him I had been. I would have to reveal the secret I had kept hidden deep within me since the night I said good-bye to my mother and crept out of the house.

“Everything? But John will leave me if he finds out I was plotting to kill Christians,” I begged.

I am with you.

I heard nothing else after that.

I knew the Lord was right—how could I hide the transformation he’d done in my life? And I knew whom I needed to tell first.

“John,” I said later that day, after he had finished eating his favorite meal of fried fish and chapatti. “I want to share something with you. Please don’t be angry.”

He shot me a worried look and put his hand on mine. “It’s okay. If anything happened, you can tell me.”

“You promise you won’t divorce me?”

“What happened?”

“I want you to promise,” I said, unable to stop myself from crying. “If you leave me, I’ll have nowhere to go and no one to go to. And I can’t go back.”

“Esther, I’m not going to leave you. Even if something bad has happened, I won’t leave you. Even if it’s something like adultery. Mistakes can happen to anyone.”

I took a breath and tried to find my voice again. “There’s one part of my life that I’ve kept hidden from everyone, but it has always been open to God. I want to tell you who I was before we met. Do you remember the first church we visited here, when the pastor asked if I was an ex-terrorist?”

“Yes,” John said. “That made me so angry.”

“He was right.”

John stared at me, confused.

I told him everything. When I was finished, he asked me why I had never told him about the madrassa, the call for jihad, and the day I raised my hand.

“I hoped God wouldn’t reveal it,” I whispered.

He was quiet for a while.

As the silence between us stretched out, I feared that he might respond the way my father so often did—by rejecting me and withdrawing his love. Surely this would finally be too much for John. He had given up so much for me, but how much more could he be expected to sacrifice? Could I really expect him to accept the fact that I had been so ready to embrace evil?

When he finally spoke, his words were slow and heavy but filled with warmth. “It’s okay. This is your past. I know how much you love God now.”

“Yes,” I said. “You know that from the first drop of blood to the last, my life is for the Lord.”

We talked a little more, and while the news had come as a shock to him, John was able to forgive me and accept what I’d told him.

“The only thing I’m worried about is telling other people,” he said. “Maybe it’s better to keep the truth between us and God. Other people might not understand.”

“I see what you’re saying,” I said as we sat on the bed. “But I can’t keep quiet anymore. God has told me to tell people, so I have to speak.”

†

John had reason to fear how people would react when I told my story. While being a Christian in a Muslim nation like Malaysia was nowhere near as dangerous as it was in Pakistan, we were still an unwelcome minority. There were plenty of Muslims in Malaysia who reacted to Christians with anger and abuse.

Early on during our time there, I was waiting at a bus stop with Amiyah when a woman in a hijab started talking to her. Amiyah was three and a half, with curly hair, chubby cheeks, and fair skin, and the woman gently rubbed her back and told me in Malay that she thought my daughter was beautiful.

“Thank you,” I said in English.

“Are you Malaysian?” she asked.

“No, I’m from Pakistan.”

“Ah,” she nodded. “Islam?”

“No.” I made a cross with my two index fingers. “Christian.”

The woman’s face soured. She still had her hand on Amiyah’s back and pushed her hard. Amiyah fell forward and hit her face on the ground. I picked her up and saw that blood was pouring from her mouth. Thankfully it was just her lip, but I squeezed her tight to me, desperate to take away the pain.

When she calmed down a little, I looked Amiyah in the eye. “It’s okay,” I said. “When we’re Christians, people will do this to us. We can forgive them just as Jesus has forgiven us.”

It hurt to see my daughter facing persecution at such a young age, but how could I shield her completely from the rejection we will all face as followers of Jesus? And if I was really honest with myself, did I even want to? More than a life free from opposition, I wanted my daughter to know that in the face of hatred she could learn the way of Jesus—the way of love and grace and forgiveness.

†

Our apartment had lots of windows but no air-conditioning, which meant that every afternoon the air inside grew so hot and stale it was impossible to concentrate on schoolwork. On especially hot days, we would take our books outside and I’d homeschool Amiyah right on the playground equipment. While she studied, I would talk with other moms and tell them about how my life had changed since my dream about Jesus.

It was not easy, and I was surprised by how much harder it was to introduce strangers to Jesus than it had been to talk to my mother, sister, and brother. Some of the women I met at the playground were interested in what I had to tell them, but for every open opportunity, there were many more conversations that ended with hard stares and turned backs.

Sometimes the discouragement got to me. There was one period when John was without work and the cupboards were bare and I missed home, and it hurt when I talked about Jesus and people spat insults in return. I could feel the weight of all the rejection that had built up in the decade since I became a Christian.

It was as if I were a child again. I needed to know that God hadn’t left me, that he still cared about my family and me. I decided to fast and pray, and after three days, I finally heard his gentle whisper. Daughter, my Spirit, who brought you from Pakistan, is still with you. In your painful times and in your joyful times, I am still with you.

I wept. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

My work for you in Malaysia continues. But when you’re done here, nothing will stop you from what I have in store for you next.

“Please, Lord,” I begged, “give me the work you have called me to!”

The next day a friend introduced me to a Muslim family that was applying to be resettled as refugees and needed advice. I visited them at the same asylum center we had stayed in when we arrived.

“Thank you for being so kind and coming to us,” the wife said as we waited for her husband to join us. “But tell me, why don’t you come to Islam? Allah’s mercy should be on you.”

I smiled, remembering how I, too, had learned the three-step plan to convert a Christian.

“I’m already under mercy,” I said. “What do you think about becoming a Christian?’

“No.” She frowned. “Their book has been changed.”

“Really? Who changed it?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Well, when you find out who changed it and when, you should shout it out. But until then, I don’t think you should spread rumors. Christians are kind and loving, and Jesus is still performing miracles today.”

This made her think. “Have you seen any miracles?”

“Yes—many,” I said.

She paused. “Okay, I want you to pray for me. I want to know if you’re right and Jesus really can heal me.”

She was a diabetic and took insulin, and I prayed for her before her husband joined us.

A month later, this woman called me. She’d just had a checkup, and her blood sugar levels were normal. Her doctor had taken her off insulin.

I visited her again soon after, and we talked about how Jesus still heals today, just as he did in the Holy Bible. I asked her why she didn’t read the Bible when it contained three of the holy books that all Muslims are supposed to read, and she said she didn’t really know why.

We talked more, and our conversations reminded me of the debates. She was an educated woman, and I encouraged her to think deeply, to look carefully at the Qur’an, and to ask questions.

I visited her regularly for three months, and during that time the whole family became Christians. They found a local church that embraced and nurtured them, and soon after, we heard that the United Nations had accepted their appeal. Within months they left Malaysia, ready to start a new life in Europe.

This was a bittersweet victory for us. We were thrilled for our friends, but their departure was also a reminder of how delayed our own process was. We were approaching our seventh year in Malaysia, and so far every stage of our application had taken longer than any other case we’d heard of. Where others had to wait weeks for an appointment, we waited months. When we were told to expect a response in months, we knew it could take years. We tried to find out why, but we never received any official explanation.

In the midst of the waiting, we learned yet another valuable lesson. Whenever we compared our situation to that of others, we would get upset. There was always someone with a smoother application process, better accommodations, or fewer obstacles. But whenever we reminded ourselves of what Jesus went through—from his lowly birth to his agonizing death—we looked at our own circumstances with fresh eyes. What we faced was nothing compared to what the Son of God, who traded the glory of heaven for the pain of the cross, endured. Remembering that helped us to persevere. This perspective reminded us to remain faithful, because we were convinced that when the Lord wanted us out of Malaysia, nothing could stop him.

†

I continued sharing about Christ with moms at the playground, taxi drivers, friends of friends, and anyone else I came into contact with. I started seeing more people come to faith, and these victories gave me profound encouragement. The more I shared and the more I prayed, the more I learned to search for the lesson God was teaching in every situation.

One day as I was waiting for a bus with Amiyah, who was about eight at the time, a man approached. He had a long beard and the traditional white cotton robes of a devoted Muslim. I had a sense from the start that this was not going to end well.

“I want to sit there,” he said, pointing at the bench where Amiyah was sitting.

I told her in English to come and sit on my lap.

“You are Malaysian?” he asked.

“No, I’m from Pakistan.”

“Oh! Pakistan,” he said, nodding. “Islam?”

“No.” I shook my head and smiled. “Christian.”

He stared at me for a second, not flinching. Then he threw back his head and spat at me. He missed me but hit Amiyah squarely in the face. She started crying, but the man raged on.

“Why are you Christians here in our country? Get out of here. I don’t like Christians. If I were the prime minister, I . . .”

I stopped listening. I was trying to calm Amiyah down. When our bus came, the man didn’t move. I looked at him, said thank you, and got on the bus with Amiyah.

Later that evening, she told John all about it. He knelt down in front of her, listening carefully. When she was done crying, he took her hands in his and spoke quietly. “The same thing happened to Jesus. They spit on him, beat him, and hurt him. But nothing could change his mind about loving people the way God wanted him to.”

“Why?” Amiyah asked.

John opened his Bible, and together they read about Jesus being beaten and crucified.

“You know,” he said, “I think it does us good to feel some of the pain he endured before he was crucified.”

Even as I ached for my daughter, I felt gratitude wash over me. She would not be immune to pain as a Christian, but she had a father who loved her and accepted her—and who showed her what the heavenly Father’s love is like.