Stuttgart / Germany
Muslim girl meets Jesus
I grew up in Germany as a Muslim girl in an environment where girls had it much harder than boys. I experienced a lot of violence and rejection in my family. For example, if my father or my siblings were angry about something, I was punished and beaten. They simply took their anger out on me. As a result, I lived in constant fear and often hid. I was a lonely and sad child. Even when I attended the madrassa, I was always afraid of doing something wrong and being punished for it. Even as a child, I wanted to die rather than live. Only when I was pregnant with my own child did this change, then I wanted to fight for my child.
What I didn’t understand at all as a child, but what had always given me a lot of strength, was an "angel" who came to me again and again and who comforted me. This apparition gave me love and security at a time when I had never received love from people. This apparition helped me through the most difficult situations. As a child, I was not at all aware that this was something special that other people could not experience. It was my angel who kept coming to me.
When I was nine years old, my parents started looking for a suitable husband for me. I was desperate and didn't want to get married early at all, I would have loved to have had a good school education and vocational training. But that was not important to my parents. When I was 14 years old, my parents flew with me to Turkey, where I was married to a man who was a stranger to me. We lived apart for a while and I returned to Germany with my parents because I still had to finish my school education. Afterwards I was supposed to move in with him.
Once my "husband" called me drunk and berated me savagely, I realised that he did not agree with this arranged marriage either and that he hated me. I was desperate and ran away from home. Someone then took me to the youth welfare office, which then took care of me. By running away I had defiled the honour of my family, what I had done was a disgrace to my marriage. I was then divorced from my first husband in Turkey.
This disgrace now weighed heavily on me. There was a lot of pressure on me to marry another man to erase this shame. So I had to marry again, to a man I didn't love in the least and whose aggression I was very afraid of. My fear did not count at all. A week before the wedding date, I tried to kill myself. I didn't want to die for my own sake, but only to not be a burden on others, to break this cycle of shame for which I was held responsible. The attempt failed.
The wedding night was traumatic, what I experienced was rape. It was so humiliating. The situation did not get better after that, my husband was indeed as violent as I had feared before. I lived in great loneliness, sadness and lovelessness.
I was always brought up in such a way that nothing that happened within our own four walls was ever allowed to get out. So I was never allowed to let on how I was feeling and what I had to endure. I had a good job where I was appreciated and recognised, but at home everything was different.
When I became pregnant, I started thinking about leaving my husband. I did not want my child to suffer the same fate that I suffered. After my delivery, when a woman at the hospital saw how my husband's family treated me even there, she offered to let me move in with her for a while. That was my salvation.
Later I met a young man with whom I experienced for the first time what it is like to be accepted and taken seriously, what it is like to be appreciated as a human being. He was the first person who was there for me, I was so infinitely grateful to him for that. We got married.
Religion didn't matter at that time, my husband was an atheist and I didn't want to practise the Muslim faith. All I wanted was to treat people with the same respect and honesty as I would have liked for myself. I wanted to be pure in my heart, but I didn't want to have anything more to do with a faith. Faith was always just a threat to me. I wanted nothing at all to do with Christianity. I was an agnostic.
That went well for ten years. Then, completely unexpectedly for me, I had a severe nervous breakdown with depression and panic attacks. This was followed by 12 weeks of therapy, during which all the dramatic and traumatic childhood memories and experiences of violence in my life were broken open. Over the next two years, I spent a total of six months in the clinic. Later, when I was looking for a place where I could find peace for 2 to 3 weeks and recharge my batteries, I found a monastery where I could retreat; I did not want to go to the clinic again.
At the beginning, I was very irritated in this monastery that there was a cross hanging in every room. In my room there was even a very big cross with Jesus on it, which was frightening for me. But that changed: this cross gave me a great peace, a peace I had never experienced before, not even during my hospital stays. But I let it stay with this positive feeling and did not set out to find out why I had such peace in the presence of the cross.
Two years later, I suddenly "heard" a very clear and strong voice inside me: "Go to church!". This was absurd to me, I was agnostic after all. I ignored it. The next day this voice came again, more and more often. This went on for a fortnight, with the voice becoming more and more urgent, until I said to myself: "Well, then I'll go to this damned church, then at least I'll have my peace".
So I went into an empty church, sat down in a pew at the front and still thought, how can you combine such beautiful marble with such ugly tiles? The church wasn‘t making a good impression on me. As I was about to leave again, a great heaviness suddenly came over me, preventing me from standing up. Suddenly I had the very clear impression that God was here. But that made me incredibly angry. I then inwardly reproached him most vehemently. "What do you want from me? What do you want from me??? Where were you when I needed you, where???" But then I suddenly saw my whole life as if in a film, including the experiences of my childhood. Suddenly I realised that this angel of my childhood was Jesus. I didn't want to believe it at all, I had always rejected Christianity and suddenly I knew with great certainty that it was Jesus! But I could not accept him, not yet. I was ashamed. Jesus then showed me all the difficulties of my life and also showed me that he had always been near me, always. I then asked him what the meaning of our life here on earth was. And he only said, "Love! Love, my child!" And then I was enveloped by a love that I can never describe. From head to toe, it was indescribable. I had always longed for love so much, and suddenly I felt such incredible love, so intense, so intimate.
Then, when I opened my eyes again, next to the pillar in front of me I saw Jesus, like a carving. What I consciously perceived of it was his open heart, a cross and his eyes. I was still thinking, "Holy shit, don't become a Christian now!" I still had an inner resistance. Then I heard him calling me to him. I walked closer to him, then looked into the eyes of this carving and they looked straight into my soul. And I was still thinking, "how can you carve like that, so that the eyes are so real?" Then I heard him say, "no matter where you are, who you are and what you are doing, I am in you and always with you".
Then after about an hour, when I left the church, I didn't know myself anymore, I had such peace and love inside me. Suddenly I remembered that when I had gone into the church I had not seen a statue. I went back again, but there was nothing next to the column, nothing. After all, I wasn't crazy, I had spent a whole hour in front of that statue. I could not have been mistaken.
From that day on, my bulimia which I had had for 26 years, since I was 16, was also suddenly gone. Completely gone.
I then went regularly to this church and sat in it because I always felt such peace in it. A few weeks later, I suddenly heard his voice again from the big cross hanging on the altar: "Come!" I didn't dare go up to the altar, what if someone came into the church and threw me out? He said again, "Come, trust me". Then, like a frightened child, I went closer to him and for the first time really looked consciously at this cross with Jesus on it. Only then did I really see what he must have suffered and how people had maltreated and tortured him. Then a great pain rose up in me, I felt his pain. I did not know the story of Jesus. I fell to my knees, all I could do was cry and ask him, "Why are people doing this to you? Why?".
I don't remember how long I knelt before him like that. Then, when I got up, I heard him say again, "Deal with me!" Suddenly I was ready from the bottom of my heart.
At home, I typed in the keyword "Jesus" on Google and found the film "Son of God" on Netflix, which I then watched. I cried so much because of the pain and love. I found God.
Jesus had also told me: "I don't want to force anyone to come to me. But I wait before every heart, patient and full of love. Whoever comes to me and opens his heart to me, I will give him all I have, but never with urge or compulsion."
I have been given so much, I am full of peace, I have become so free and whole inside and I have so much love for people who are suffering. I want to share these gifts and my experience with all these people. Jesus is waiting!