31

“You were a Muslim?”

I paused the sewing machine and looked around. The workshop was small—not much bigger than my mother’s workshop back in Pakistan. Even though I knew I was safe and that a conversation like this in the United States was no more controversial than a discussion about politics, I still felt nervous.

I’d been working at the sewing shop for three days, sitting at the bench alongside four other women as we made costumes for an upcoming city parade. The bright fabrics reminded me of home, as did the women’s laughter as they teased the delivery guy who hovered nervously in the doorway. Happy memories from a lifetime ago came flooding through my mind.

“What do you mean, you used to be a Muslim? I don’t understand.” Nasirah was looking at me intently. She was the only Muslim in the workshop—at least, she was the only woman wearing a veil—and from the moment I met her, I had been praying for an opportunity to talk to her about Jesus. Even so, it still felt like a risk to say, “Yes. I was born and raised a Muslim.” Would she see me as a kafir? What if she had ties to militants? I watched her search my face as she realized that I was not who she thought I was.

I knew I needed to tell her more. “Something happened to me,” I said, determined to make the most of this opportunity. “Something I never expected—but it opened my eyes to the truth.”

I noticed the twitch in her mouth, the narrowing of her eyes. I was no longer a target for friendly evangelism but an infidel worthy of scorn. I knew I didn’t have long before she dismissed me and shut down the conversation, so I kept talking, telling Nasirah my story in a handful of sentences. To my surprise, she didn’t interrupt me or turn away. She just listened, her eyes locked on the wisp of bright red thread in her hands. As we talked, I prayed silently, asking God to breathe life into my words and ignite a hunger within Nasirah to know more about him.

When I was done telling my story, I didn’t know what else to say, so I extended an invitation. “Would you like to come to my home to talk some more?”

“Yes,” she said, looking up at me. “I’d like that.”

†

It took me a while to adjust to the freedom of life in the United States. Being able to work, drive, use public transportation without fear of strangers—all these experiences are so different from what we faced as Christians in Pakistan and Malaysia.

Other changes have been more difficult to come to terms with. Ever since I left home, I’ve been moving farther and farther away from my family. I know it is unlikely that I will ever see them or even have contact with them again. I don’t know if my mother is still alive. I may never know if my father and my two older sisters came to Christ. Amiyah will never know her grandparents or her aunts and uncles and cousins. It has been more than ten years since I left my family, but the risk is still too great—if my father is the man he used to be, nothing will stop him from killing my family and me for the sake of his religion and his honor.

But even in the face of those losses, God has provided. We have been blessed with so many friends here, and one family in particular has adopted our family into theirs. I might never reconnect with my family in Pakistan, but I know I’ll always have a mom and a sister here in the United States who will love me, care for me, and protect me.

I am so glad Amiyah will grow up in a country like this, where she is free to learn and live as God calls her to live. But the temptations of the world are great, and John and I know that, like all Christian families in the West, we can’t take for granted that our daughter will continue to grow in the Lord. Children need to be taught and shown how great our God is and how important he is in our lives. We have to pray together and read the Bible together as a family. Like every child, our daughter needs to be equipped. She may never debate a mullah or face a roomful of angry militants, but she still must be ready—ready to take risks for God, ready to trust him no matter what.

†

Of all the changes in my life since I’ve come to the States, the most significant has been the freedom to share my story freely in public. Ever since I moved here, I’ve known that I can’t stay silent. What God has done in my life is something I cannot hide. The days of keeping my past to myself are behind me.

So wherever and whenever I can, I share my story. I speak up at work, and I speak up in the grocery store. I talk to Muslims from all around the world on Facebook, and I speak in churches in my area. Sometimes I talk with a crowd of a hundred; other times I sit and talk with one person. It doesn’t matter how many or how few are there—all that matters is that I share what God has done.

As I talk to people, I am aware that while my story is different from other people’s, in many ways it isn’t unique at all. God is powerfully at work in the lives of Muslims today, and over the last couple of decades millions have come to faith in him. Like me, many met him in dreams. Others met him through evangelism and outreach, whether in their own country or in the West.

As the local church, we have the joy and the responsibility of inviting these individuals with Muslim backgrounds into the family of God. Our world is growing increasingly small, and when people come from other countries or from other religions, my hope is that the church will accept them with love and joy. After all, God loved these people enough to cross boundaries and borders to bring them home, and we have the privilege of doing the same.

They need our help—financially, emotionally, physically. There are so many ways in which we can share the burden of someone who has to leave everything behind so that they can follow God. He invites all of us to play our parts, whether that means sharing our faith with a skeptic at school or work like Azia and John did for me, opening our homes for displaced believers as many Christians did for us in Pakistan, or spending years walking alongside new Christians as Paul and C. Howe did for us in Malaysia. Whatever our resources, whatever our situations, whatever our gifts, God invites each of us to join the work he is doing.

So if you happen to meet a refugee or a family of refugees, don’t rush away out of fear or uncertainty over what to say and do. Ask God how he is inviting you to be involved. How can you help? What part can you play? What would God have you do to reveal a little more of his love to them? Ask them what they need too. Ask them about their stories, and share your story too.

As you listen, you might discover that their journey has been full of struggles and sorrow, pain and persecution. It might be different from yours in dramatic ways, but there will be similarities, too. For isn’t it just like God to bring different people together? Isn’t it just like God to weave strength out of brokenness in all of us? Isn’t it just like him to use the unqualified and the weak to be a part of his plan?

My life started with a wound. It festered, making me ever more desperate for the love and attention of a father who was determined to turn his face from me. But God was there. He saw my hurt, and he saw all the foolish ways I tried to mask the pain. And when I was about to make the gravest mistake of my life, he stepped in and rescued me.

I will never know how many lives God saved when he took me off the path of jihad. Perhaps I’ll never know whether God has rescued my father, my sisters, and people like Anwar. But I know for sure that none of us are too far from God’s hand. All of us are invited to know the love and acceptance that our perfect heavenly Father offers.

For this is the God who loves us. He takes us, wounded and weak and misguided as we are, and brings us home.