Changed By One Example of Jesus

“For the longest time, I believed there's no one there to love me.  I just held on to hope something drastic will happen that I will have everything my heart desires which is to be loved and have people to love”, said Mai.  

She was born in Iraq and raised in a strict culture that demeaned women. Her mother died when Mai was ten. Her father, said he was a Christian, yet grew violent - calling each blow ‘the wrath of God’.

Mai reflects, “I believe that my dad has that higher spiritual power to where God tells him to do something to me. I'm like, who am I to question it? So, I accepted everything. I accepted the verbal abuse. I accepted the lack of self-worth, the lack of self-love. I was like, I'm not worthy of anything of love, compassion, care.”

When the family moved to New York in 2009, America looked like freedom to 12 year-old Mai.  However, her father’s abusive control got worse, to counter the ‘Western’ influence.

“I felt very trapped,” said Mai, “to the point that I felt like when I went to high school I was living a double life, nobody knew what was going on in my house, not even my friends that are Middle Eastern.  My dad saw my hair down. He goes, ‘what do you think you're doing?’ I'm like, ‘I'm going to go to school with my hair like this. I'm going to do something different. It's my 16th birthday.’  And he goes, “no, you won’t.’ That's when he wrapped my hair around his arm and decided to use a kitchen knife to cut all my hair off. I hated him. I wanted the worst thing to happen to him.”

Her senior year, A friend at school convinced Mai to investigate whether she was being disciplined - or abused. 

Everything she read on abuse fit her life. She knew she needed out.

Soon after she spoke with a school counselor and left the next day to live with her grandmother in Idaho.

“I remember being so paralyzed with fear, said Mai, “I was not scared of what’s going to happen, but  I was scared of my father catching me. If I don't do this, he will never leave me alone.”

Her father never pursued her, and after graduating high school, Mai went to college, supporting herself with two jobs.

However, her new life of freedom left her feeling alone.

Mai remembers, “During the holidays is when it really hit me how lonely I am. And I question. Did I make the right decision by leaving? Is this how my life is going to be on from now on - that's when I hit my rock bottom mentally. I'm like, well, I guess I chose that life, so I better suck it up and keep that miserable feeling to myself and just go on, because I have to prove my dad wrong.”

The isolation gave her time to process her past and examine her view of God. “I remember thinking why do I need to follow a God who is a God of abuse and allow mistreatment? I was like, you know what? I don't want anything to do with that. God, I don't think there is a God.  I think my dad is just using him for abuse.”

Then, she met Kirk, a Christian, “What attracted me to him is seeing that pure joy and, the love of life he had was very attractive to me and I was like, ‘I want that’,” said Mai.

After dating a few months, the couple eloped.  “I loved being around him and his family was so wonderful and so welcoming, And I felt like I was part of their family even though I’d only known them for a short period of time. Like there is hope, like what I was hoping for, I was seeking, is happening.”  

As the couple attended church together, Mai learned about a loving God. 

“My sister-in-law, actually she got me my first Bible and a study book that goes along with the Bible,” Mai continues, “and all the things that I saw and read in the book, and I . . . cross referenced it with philosophers and researchers and whatnot. So, I'm like, oh, like, this is not a fairy tale book. It's literally a history book.

I want to know Jesus. I want to know that God of mercy that everybody talks about. I want to know the God that who loved his children so much. He sent his only son on earth to save us and bring us back to him.”

Mai surrendered her life to Jesus and was baptized; Feeling loved by God and her family, she forgave her dad. “My dad, he had his demons, and I needed to forgive him to be able to be having a better relationship with Christ, to have a better relationship with my kids. I needed to break that cycle. And I have Jesus on my side. I was like, if it means I get to have more intimate relationship with God, if I let go of my past, yeah, I'm going to do that!”

Looking back, Mai realizes it was God guiding her all along – to His love that she always desired, “he gave me the strength to walk away from my entire existence that I accepted. That was my reality. He needed me to walk away from that because if I did not, I would not have a relationship with him. I would not get to know who my who my Jesus is, and I would not have known that I can't be loved and I can love, and I can have joy, and I can have peace, and I can have the capability to actually live life to where I honor not just people that I love, but mostly I honor God.”