By Liyat Bilay –
Reema* grew up in a strict Muslim family. Like all Muslims, she regarded Jesus as a mere man, a prophet, but not God incarnate.
“Sure, he was special, and he did great things that were different from others, but he’s not the son of God,” she thought at the time.
“I found that easy to believe because in my head I was like, yeah, of course he’s not God, he’s human,” she relates on her Be Still YouTube channel.
Despite being raised in a rigid family, Reema found ways to get into trouble when they moved to Saudi Arabia when she was 13. She fell into sin and even prayed to Allah to sin more.
She engaged in sinful activities with her boyfriend. When her family found out, she got busted and was locked up at home for a couple of weeks. They monitored her every move, checking her for evidence of continued contact with the boy.
Eventually, the family moved away from Saudi Arabia altogether. Reema vowed to keep the relationship going despite the distance.
“Watch and see, I’m gonna make this work,” she prayed to Allah. “The relationship had been full of sin mentally, physically, and emotionally. But at the time, I was absolutely blinded by this idea of just being with someone. It came purely from what I watched or what I read from books or the Disney channel.”
However, the boy broke things off, but Reema stubbornly pursued him, defiantly telling Allah she would make it work.
“Just wait and see,” she told Allah. “Even if you don’t want this for me, I have the power on my own to make this work.”
It was a painfully lonely time in her life. She didn’t ask for help because of the implications for her family. Ultimately, she wasted seven years of her life on a sinful and fruitless relationship that only she believed in.
“At 20 years old I started to feel like my soul was yearning for help,” she says. “I felt like there was no good way out.”
She sought escape in the social media app Tumblr, mimicking the smoking and drinking she saw others her age doing.
Finally, she made a friend who invited her to church. “I became curious about what a church actually looked like,” she says. “It was so weird because if you praise Allah with loud music, it’s disrespectful.”
For two months, she attended church, filtering out every mention of Jesus.
One day the preacher prophesied from the pulpit, speaking directly to her without knowing it. “If you feel like you’ve lost seven years of your life, don’t worry, come to God and He’ll add those years back to your life,” he said.
How did he know? Reema thought.
“When he said God could give me back the seven years of my life I messed up, I was in absolute disbelief,” she recounts. “I think I froze. I was trying to comprehend how big God’s love is. In that moment, I felt the love of God just come down and rest on my shoulders. It was really, really, really heavy. I knew the weight I was feeling was the love of God.
Reema was touched in a powerful way by the Holy Spirit. “I was crying on the inside because it was the first time I experienced God’s love,” she adds.
Once she returned home, she felt “so weird” and even canceled plans with friends. She slept profoundly and woke up happy. “I never felt this kind of happy in the last seven years,” she says. “I felt unblinded. I felt light.
“I went downstairs and it was like I was seeing my mom and my younger brother for the first time,” she says. “Their faces looked different. Everything looked different. I had no idea what was going on. It was so beautiful. He saved me even before I knew Him.”
Reema felt the need to hide her Christianity from her parents. “I want to live for Jesus so loudly, so badly,” she says. “I can only share with strangers, not with my family. I’m definitely going to tell them in due time. My parents have sacrificed so much for me, I don’t want to end up breaking their hearts.”
Reema has dedicated herself to Jesus, though it took a couple of years to truly understand who He is and to overcome the religious biases instilled by Islam.
*Not her real name
If you want to know more about a personal relationship with God, go here
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About the writer of this article: Liyat Belay lives in Los Angeles and studies at the Lighthouse Christian Academy.
