“What could you tell me that would change anything about what I believe?”
“Nothing. I can’t show Jesus to you. Only Jesus can do that.”
He thought for a moment.
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s okay. We can pray together. Sometimes that helps.”
“How?”
I pointed to the wall. “You see the cross there? Let’s stand in front of it and pray.”
As soon as we did, he started to cry.
“Jesus,” I prayed. “I cannot show you to him. I cannot say anything about you to him. I want you to reveal yourself in his life. Please show him who you are.”
He was trying so hard to hold in the tears. His face was reddening, and his body started to shake a little. Afghan men don’t cry, especially not in front of women. But God was at work. The air was thick with the sense of it.
I prayed again. “It says in the Bible that every knee must bow before you and every tongue confess . . .”
He fell to his knees, unable to hold anything in for a second longer.
He wept for almost a whole hour, just like me in the home of the gray-haired neighbors, or Hussein at the meeting with thousands of people all around. I sat with him and thanked the Lord. I knew so little of his story, but I didn’t need to. God was at work; that was enough.
When he was finished, I asked him what he had seen.
“I saw a place where the earth was rocky and hard. There was a little boy wearing white robes; then Jesus came in. He took the boy and hugged him. I was the boy.”
“How do you feel now?”
“Like I know that Jesus was with me.”
He went on to tell me a little about his life. He talked about the Taliban and how they had killed both his parents. By the time he was fifteen, he was an orphan and a refugee weighed down with so much pain and trauma as he tried to start a new life in Sweden.
“What do you want to say to your Swedish parents?”
“I want to become a Christian. How do I do it?”
I told him to lift his hands in prayer and repeat after me.
We all cried when I took him to his parents in the corridor outside. They asked me what I had said to him, and I told them the truth: “Nothing really. I just spoke a little about Jesus and asked him to help.”
Sometimes the stories I hear from the refugees I work among remind me so clearly of my own life. So many of them have been wronged so greatly, and I talk a lot about Joseph’s story in the Bible and how what was meant for harm, God can use for good. So many of them have so much to forgive. I often think about Asghar and how it took me years to forgive him. In the end, it was only with God’s help that I could do it. Without forgiveness, those wounds can become toxic. Unless we fall on God for help, we can so easily become stuck.
Others are bound up by fear, just as I had been. They are terrified of losing their identity, of leaving Islam and their communities—as if leaving their homeland isn’t hard enough. So I tell them about Ruth and how she was an alien in a foreign land, how she chose to follow Naomi’s God instead of the one she had been brought up to believe in. And when she did, God used her. She had to choose God before he could use her.
Some are just so full of pain that as I listen I am taken back to the mountainside, to the pile of stones and the wolves’ eyes that reflected in the firelight.
What do you say when confronted with pain, fear, and suffering like this? I say very little. I never talk about the differences between Islam and Christianity; for if life has taught me anything, it is that words can have power, but the Spirit of God is even greater still. If we want to see lives changed, the best thing we can do is step back and pray.
My life has changed so much, and not just on the outside. As far as my journey has taken me—so very far from my home and my old life in Iran—it is nothing compared to the transformation that God has gently nurtured within me. With his help I have left behind the feelings that once threatened to suffocate me.
For so many years, the only thing that kept me alive was the instinct to fight for my children. An anger burned within me, an instinct to protect them from all harm. God has even transformed that in wonderful ways. He has helped me to forgive, and he has also birthed within me a desire to fight for the people I meet who are desperate just like I was. And so I fight for something more than just my own survival or the survival of my children. I fight for those who need God. Even though I know that I am powerless, that God alone can rescue, I play whatever part God has for me to play.
I have learned to live without fear. After I became a Christian I wanted to keep life quiet and safe, to avoid any danger. So I tried to hide the truth about what Asghar had done to me. I was afraid that people would judge me, afraid that I would be a disappointment to them if I spoke of all the mess that my past contained. With God’s help, I have let go of that. I am not afraid anymore. God is the one who keeps me safe. And he’s the one who tells me: Your story saves others. Tell it. Shout it from the rooftops. You have nothing to be ashamed of.
One summer, as the news was full of almost daily coverage of refugees climbing on boats and hoping to make it to Greece, I was asked to pray with a man who had walked into the church.
Fiaz told me about the night that he, his wife, and two daughters stood on the shore in Turkey and watched the boats approach. The flashlights were weak and the waves crashing on the rocks were strong. He scooped up his little girls and called to his wife to follow.
The crowd was pressing on all sides. The water was cold, and the men who had taken all the money that Fiaz had left were shouting at everyone to hurry. He looked back, but it was too dark and there were too many people around for him to be able to see his wife.
Only when they had pushed away from the shore and the people froze still in terror as the waters came up over the sides did Fiaz discover that she had not made it on board. There were other boats, he told himself. She would have gotten on one of them.
When they landed he searched for her, checking frantically up and down the coast for any sign of her.
Nothing. He waited as long as he could, but his girls were cold, terrified, and needed to get somewhere warm. Eventually he had to leave the beach.
In the end, it took nine months for Fiaz to discover the truth. His wife had fallen down in the push to climb on board. She had drowned right there, just a few feet away from him. She was twenty-three.
“Only God can heal you,” I said as Fiaz and I stood before the cross. “Open up your heart to him.”
He let out a cry so raw, so loud, and so full of the deepest, darkest pain. It was the same cry as my own in the mountains. A rage against evil.
The next week Fiaz and his daughters moved in with a family from church. The journey ahead will be long for all of them. There will be no quick fixes and no simple solutions. But God will be with them, guiding them, leading and loving them. Every day he will be there for them to discover, reminding them of his love for them. He will call them back to him again and again and again. All they have to do is say yes and yes and yes.
I know this path they are on. I know the journey. It has taken so many years to reach this far, and I trust that however many years there are ahead, God will continue to guide and lead me. There will be pain ahead, and trouble and problems that I won’t be able to fix on my own.
But in them all, I know God will be there, calling me to look to him. Inviting me to take the next step toward his open arms.
And I will say yes.
And yes.
And yes.
AFTERWORD
Thank you for sharing this journey with me. You may be wondering whatever happened to the three constants in my story: Cherie, Daniel, and Roksana. I am happy to say that God’s protecting and guiding hand has been on all three over the years.
Saying goodbye to Cherie when we started our new life in Sweden was so painful. But we had no choice. We had to let her go back to her father, Asghar. He did not treat her wel
l, and eventually social services removed her and placed her in a sort of youth housing until she was eighteen and able to look after herself. Today she is married, has a son, and still lives in Denmark. Cherie broke all contact with Asghar after she left him, although he tries to contact her on occasion. In 2008, by coincidence, she and I got connected again. We had been searching for each other, but both had changed our names. Today Cherie is once more a part of our lives and we visit whenever we can.
Daniel is well. He studied political science and psychology in college and is currently working in Stockholm where he lives with his Rottweiler, Nato. After twenty-five years of prayer, Daniel recently got baptized during our summer conference in 2017. I am so proud of him and grateful to God for this wonderful breakthrough. Listening to him read and talk about the Bible is one of the greatest joys in my life!
Roksana got her double bachelor in political science and international relations. She married in September 2016, lives in Stockholm, and is the chair of the Farsi church where I currently minister. Having worked as a press secretary for a political party, she is about to embark on a new career that God is leading her on.
As for me, I continue to follow God’s call to serve former Muslims and to train churches on how to reach out and disciple them. It’s been my privilege to be a part of the amazing work Jesus is doing, and I hope to keep walking alongside him in this way for years to come.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am deeply grateful to many people for their help with this book. My children, Daniel and Roksana, and her husband, Thomas: you have been my inspiration to keep going. You have helped me to be bold and courageous, to follow God’s calling and to share this story. My sister, Elina: your love and support gives me the strength to believe in myself. My parents: thank you for your guidance, love, and support. His majesty Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden: thank you for inviting me to share my story and work with you. Anja Kontor: for the documentary that helped this story to first reach all over Sweden. Lars-Göran Carlsson and Tone Carlsson: for the opportunity to study at Johannelund Theological College and for teaching me about listening to and trusting God’s word. Without that, my ministry wouldn’t even be possible. Gordon Hickson: you were obedient to God and gave me the encouragement I needed at the perfect time. Craig Borlase: thank you for portraying something so heartbreaking in a way that shows God’s unending love. Martin Raz and my agent Don Jacobson, Jessica Wong, Heather Skelton, and the team at Thomas Nelson: you all believed in me and in this book. Thank you for taking a risk and seeing God’s hand at work.
I thank God for each and every one of you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Annahita Parsan is an ordained minister in the Church of Sweden and leads two congregations, one of which ministers to the growing number of former Muslim refugees. She is a confident public speaker who has regularly shared her testimony with live audiences, journalists, and TV interviewers, even speaking one time at the invitation of the Queen of Sweden. She has worked pastorally with hundreds of former Muslims and regularly trains churches to reach out to Muslims and disciple them once they join the church.
Craig Borlase (craigborlase.com) is a bestselling British author and collaborative writer of more than 40 books. He specializes in dramatic memoir driven by faith. His most recent books are 10,000 Reasons with Matt Redman (David C. Cook), Fleeing ISIS, Finding Jesus with Charles Morris (David C. Cook) and Finding Gobi with Dion Leonard (Thomas Nelson).
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