She said that Jesus had promised his followers eternal life in his presence and that this promise was not based on anything she had done or could ever do.

It was a free gift given out of love.

She said that Jesus had died on a cross 2,000 years ago to pay the penalty for all human sin and that anyone who trusted in him would be forgiven and welcomed into God’s family forever.

She spoke these words simply and confidently without any trace of arrogance or manipulation.

She was not trying to sell me anything.

She was just telling me what she believed as naturally as if she were describing the weather outside.

I listened to her words and felt something stir inside me.

A tiny flicker of curiosity in the darkness of my soul.

A question that I had never allowed myself to ask.

What if the Christians were right? What if Jesus was more than just a prophet? What if there really was a way to face death without fear? I asked Miriam to tell me more about Jesus.

She smiled as if she had been waiting for this moment and reached into her bag.

She pulled out a small book, a Bible translated into Farsy, my native language.

She said she had been carrying it with her for weeks, hoping I would eventually ask for it.

She placed it in my hands and told me to start with the Gospel of John.

She said that book would introduce me to who Jesus really was.

I took the Bible and hid it under my pillow.

I felt like a criminal possessing forbidden material.

In Iran, owning a Bible was illegal.

Even in Lebanon, I felt nervous having it near me.

What if someone saw? What if they told my family? What if they reported me to some authority? But that night, after the nurses finished their rounds and the lights were dimmed, I pulled out the little book and began to read.

The words I found there would begin to change everything I thought I knew about God.

I read the Gospel of John slowly over the following weeks.

Every time I was admitted to the hospital, I would take out the book and read a few more pages.

The words were unlike anything I had encountered in the Quran.

The Quran spoke of a distant and demanding God who kept track of every deed and would judge harshly on the last day.

But this book spoke of a God who loved the world so much that he sent his own son to save it.

It spoke of a Jesus who healed the sick and welcomed sinners and forgave people who did not deserve forgiveness.

It spoke of eternal life as a gift rather than a reward for perfect obedience.

I read about Jesus raising a dead man named Lazarus back to life.

I read about Jesus washing the feet of his own disciples like a servant.

I read about Jesus being crucified and rising from the dead 3 days later.

Each page raised more questions than it answered.

But something was happening inside me that I could not explain.

The emptiness that had haunted me for 50 years was beginning to feel a little less empty.

Miriam and I talked about what I was reading whenever she visited.

She answered my questions patiently without ever pressuring me to make a decision.

She said that coming to faith was a journey and that everyone walked that journey at their own pace.

She said Jesus was patient and would wait for me no matter how long it took.

I appreciated her gentleness more than I could express.

Other Christians I had encountered over the years had been aggressive and judgmental.

They had shoved their religion down my throat and condemned me when I resisted.

But Miriam was different.

She seemed to understand that a lifetime of Islamic teaching could not be undone in a single conversation.

She gave me space to wrestle with my doubts and fears.

She loved me unconditionally without demanding that I change first.

And slowly, week by week, hospital visit by hospital visit, the walls I had built around my heart began to crumble.

I was still not ready to call myself a Christian.

But I was no longer certain that I was a Muslim either.

I was somewhere in between, searching for truth with a desperation that only a dying woman can understand.

By February 2026, my condition had deteriorated significantly.

The cancer was spreading faster than the doctors had predicted.

The pain had become almost unbearable despite the strongest medications they could give me.

I was spending more time in the hospital than out of it.

My body was failing and I knew the end was approaching quickly.

The doctor stopped talking about months and started talking about weeks, maybe days.

I could see the pity in their eyes when they examined me.

They had done everything they could and it was not enough.

I was going to die and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

I lay in my hospital bed during those final days of February, feeling weaker than I had ever felt in my life.

Walking to the bathroom exhausted me completely.

Eating even a few bites of food made me nauseious.

I slept most of the time because being awake meant being in pain.

The only moments of peace came when Miriam visited and read to me from the Bible or simply sat holding my hand in silence.

The world outside my hospital room was growing increasingly tense during those weeks.

The news was filled with reports about rising conflict between Iran and the West.

American and Israeli officials were making threatening statements.

Iranian leaders were responding with defiance and promises of retaliation.

Everyone could feel that something terrible was building.

War seemed not just possible but inevitable.

I watched the news coverage from my hospital bed with a strange sense of detachment.

I was dying anyway.

What did it matter if the world caught fire around me? But then I would think about my mother still living in Thran.

I would think about my brother Raza and his wife and their children whom I had never met.

They were in danger and there was nothing I could do to help them.

I could not even help myself.

I was trapped in this failing body waiting for death while the people I loved faced destruction thousands of miles away.

On the morning of February the 28th, 2026, I woke to the sound of urgent voices in the hospital corridor.

Nurses were rushing past my door with worried expressions.

I heard someone mention something about an attack.

I reached for the remote control and turned on the small television mounted on the wall across from my bed.

What I saw made my heart stop.

Breaking news banners scrolled across the screen announcing that American and Israeli forces had launched a massive military operation against Iran.

They were calling it Operation Epic Fury.

The footage showed missiles streaking through the night sky over Thran.

Explosions lit up the darkness.

Buildings were collapsing.

Fires were burning everywhere.

The reporter said that critical government and military targets had been struck across the country.

The Supreme Leader’s compound had been directly hit.

There were unconfirmed reports that Ayatollah Ali Kam himself had been killed in the attack.

I stared at the television screen, unable to process what I was seeing.

Thran was burning.

The city where I was born.

The city where my mother and brother still lived was being destroyed before my eyes.

I tried to call them, but the phone lines were jammed.

I tried again and again, but could not get through.

I sent text messages that showed as undelivered.

I was completely cut off from my family at the moment they needed me most.

The television kept showing the same footage over and over.

Missiles falling, explosions blooming, smoke rising into the sky.

The reporters were saying that this was the largest military operation in the Middle East in decades.

They were saying that Iran’s air defenses had been overwhelmed.

They were saying that the Islamic Republic was under attack on multiple fronts.

I watched in horror as the country of my birth was torn apart.

Whatever I had felt about the regime and its oppression, these were still my people.

This was still my homeland.

And now it was burning.

Later that afternoon, the news confirmed what everyone had suspected.

Ayatollah Ali Kam, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, was dead.

He had been killed in the initial strikes along with several other senior leaders.

The man who had ruled Iran with an iron fist for over three decades was gone.

The face of the Islamic Republic, the voice that had shaped my childhood and terrified my parents, was silenced forever.

I did not know how to feel.

Part of me felt a grim satisfaction.

This was the regime that had stolen my childhood.

This was the system that had forced my family to live in fear.

This was the theocracy that had imprisoned and executed anyone who dared to question it.

But another part of me felt only grief.

Grief for the innocent people caught in the crossfire.

Grief for my mother who was somewhere in that chaos.

Grief for a country that had never known peace in my lifetime.

I lay in my hospital bed weeping for reasons I could not fully explain.

Miriam arrived at the hospital that evening.

She had heard the news and rushed to be with me, knowing I would be devastated.

She found me curled up in my bed with tears streaming down my face and the television still showing images of destruction.

She did not say anything at first.

She just sat beside me and put her arm around my shoulders.

She let me cry without trying to stop me or comfort me with empty words.

She simply held me and was present with me in my pain.

After a long time, my tears finally slowed and I was able to speak.

I told her I could not reach my family.

I told her I did not know if my mother was alive or dead.

I told her I was terrified and confused and did not understand why any of this was happening.

I told her I felt completely alone in the universe with no one to turn to and nowhere to find the hope.

Miriam listened to everything I said.

Then she took my hands and hers and looked directly into my eyes.

She asked me a question I had been avoiding for months.

She asked me if I was ready to give my life to Jesus.

I stared at her for a long moment.

The question hung in the air between us, heavy with meaning.

I had been circling around this decision for weeks, reading the Bible, asking questions, feeling the pull of something I could not name.

But I had always held back.

I had always found reasons to wait.

I was not ready.

I did not understand enough.

I was not sure I believed.

But now lying in that hospital bed with death approaching and my homeland burning and my family unreachable, all my excuses seemed meaningless.

What was I waiting for? What more did I need to see? The foundations of my old world were crumbling.

The Supreme Leader was dead.

The Islamic Republic was falling.

Everything I had been taught as a child was collapsing before my eyes.

Maybe it was time to let go of the old and reach for something new.

I looked at Miriam through my tears and I said, “Yes.

Yes, I was ready.

Yes, I wanted to give my life to Jesus.

Yes, I wanted to know the peace she had described.

Yes, I wanted to face death without fear.

Yes, I wanted to be forgiven for all the years I had wasted searching for meaning in all the wrong places.

” Miriam’s face broke into a smile brighter than anything I had ever seen.

She squeezed my hands tightly and asked if I wanted to pray with her.

I nodded.

I did not know what to say or how to pray to a god I was only beginning to understand.

But Miriam guided me through it.

She spoke simple words and I repeated them after her.

I confessed that I was a sinner who could not save myself.

I declared that I believed Jesus was the son of God who died for my sins and rose again.

I asked him to forgive me and come into my heart and be my Lord and Savior.

I asked him to give me the peace that Miriam had described.

I asked him to help me face whatever was coming without fear.

The moment I finished that prayer, something happened that I cannot fully explain.

It was like a weight I had been carrying my entire life suddenly lifted off my shoulders.

The emptiness that had haunted me since childhood was suddenly filled with warmth and light.

The fear of death that had been crushing me for months loosened its grip on my heart.

I felt peace, real, genuine, profound peace unlike anything I had ever experienced in 52 years of life.

I started crying again, but these were different tears.

These were tears of relief and joy and release.

I felt like a prisoner who had finally been set free after decades in chains.

I felt like a blind woman who could suddenly see.

I felt like I had finally come home after wandering lost in the wilderness for my entire life.

Miriam held me while I wept.

And she wept with me.

She kept whispering, “Thank you, Jesus.

” over and over again.

The television was still showing images of Iran burning.

The world was still falling apart.

My family was still unreachable.

But somehow none of that mattered as much as it had an hour before.

I had found something that could not be destroyed by missiles or cancer or death itself.

I had found Jesus and everything was different now.

I slept peacefully that night for the first time in months.

Despite everything happening in the world, despite the uncertainty about my family, despite the cancer still destroying my body, I slept like a child safe in the arms of a loving parent.

The fear that had been my constant companion was gone.

The emptiness that had haunted me for 52 years was filled.

I did not understand everything that had happened to me.

I did not have all the answers to all my questions.

But I knew something had fundamentally changed inside me.

I had crossed a line that could never be uncrossed.

I had given my life to Jesus and he had given me peace in return.

When I woke the next morning on March 1st, 2026, the television was still playing news coverage of the attack on Iran.

The reports were confirming what had been rumored the night before.

Ayatollah Ali Kam was dead.

Multiple senior revolutionary guard commanders were dead.

The nuclear facilities at Natans and Ford had been destroyed.

The Islamic Republic had been decapitated in a single devastating strike.

I watched the news with a strange sense of detachment.

The images of destruction that had devastated me the day before now seemed distant and unreal.

I still grieved for the innocent lives lost.

I still worried about my mother and brother.

But the overwhelming terror and despair had been replaced by something else.

A quiet confidence that whatever happened, I was not facing it alone.

Jesus was with me now.

He would carry me through whatever was coming.

I closed my eyes and whispered a prayer for my family in Thran.

I asked Jesus to protect them.

I asked him to somehow let them know that I loved them even though I could not reach them.

I asked him to open their eyes to the truth just as he had opened mine.

I did not know if my prayers would be answered.

I did not know if I would ever see my mother again.

But I trusted that Jesus heard me and that was enough.

Around midm morning, I began feeling strange.

It started as a tingling sensation in my hands and feet.

Then my heart began racing for no apparent reason.

I felt lightaded and dizzy even though I was lying flat in my bed.

I pressed the call button for the nurse, but before anyone could respond, my whole body began to shake.

It felt like electricity was surging through every nerve and muscle.

My back arched off the bed.

My arms and legs jerked uncontrollably.

I tried to call out, but no sound came from my mouth.

My vision blurred and then went completely white.

I could hear alarms beeping somewhere in the distance.

I could hear voices shouting orders.

I could hear someone saying my name over and over again.

But all of it seemed to be coming from very far away like sounds heard underwater.

Then even those distant sounds faded into silence and I felt myself being pulled away from my body.

The sensation of leaving my physical form was unlike anything I can describe with human words.

It was not painful.

It was not frightening.

It was simply a release.

Like slipping out of a coat that had grown too heavy to wear.

I rose upward and found myself floating above my hospital bed.

I could see my own body lying there below me, convulsing as nurses rushed to help.

I could see them checking my vital signs and calling for a doctor.

I could see the fear on their faces as they realized something was seriously wrong.

But I felt no connection to that body anymore.

It was like looking at a stranger.

I watched for a moment, curious but not concerned, and then I felt a pull from somewhere above me, a gentle but irresistible force drawing me upward towards something I could not yet see.

I stopped resisting and let myself be carried.

I rose through the ceiling of the hospital, through the floors above me, through the roof and into the sky over Beirut.

I kept rising higher and higher.

The city of Beirut shrank below me until it was just a cluster of tiny buildings along the coast.

I could see the Mediterranean Sea sparkling in the morning sun.

I could see the mountains of Lebanon rising to the east.

I could see the curve of the coastline stretching north and south.

Then even those landmarks became small and distant as I continued to ascend.

I passed through clouds that felt like cool mist against whatever I had become.

I rose until I could see the entire country of Lebanon spread out below me.

Then the entire eastern Mediterranean.

Then the whole Middle East with its deserts and rivers and ancient cities.

I could see Syria and Jordan and Israel and Iraq and even Iran in the distance.

Smoke still rising from the attacks of the previous day.

The Earth itself began to curve beneath me and I realized I was rising beyond the atmosphere into the darkness of space.

The darkness did not last long.

Ahead of me, I saw a light, small at first, but growing rapidly brighter as I moved toward it.

This was not the harsh light of the sun.

This was something different, something warmer and more welcoming, something that seemed to to pulse with life and love and power beyond anything I had ever encountered.

The light called to me without words.

It invited me forward.

It promised safety and peace and answers to questions I had carried my entire life.

I moved toward it without fear, drawn by a force that felt like coming home after a lifetime of wandering.

The light grew until it surrounded me completely, wrapping me in warmth that penetrated to the very core of my being.

Then suddenly, I was standing somewhere else entirely.

I was no longer floating in space.

I was no longer in the darkness.

I was standing on solid ground in a place more beautiful than anything my human mind could have imagined.

The colors in this place were impossible to describe.

They were more vivid and alive than any colors on Earth.

The greens were greener than any forest.

The blues were deeper than any ocean.

There were colors I had never seen before, shades that do not exist in the physical world.

I stood on grass that seemed to glow with inner light.

Flowers bloomed around me in colors that made my heart ache with their beauty.

Trees rose toward a sky that was not blue but golden, radiating peace and warmth.

Continue reading….
« Prev Next »