Seen: From Darkness to the Light of Christ

Content Advisory

This is a true story of faith, loss, and survival. Some chapters contain sensitive accounts of imprisonment, threats of execution, violence, and death. These experiences are shared with honesty and care. Please read at your own comfort and pace.

I never intended to write this book.

But some stories aren't meant to stay hidden forever.

If you've ever wondered whether God still sees ordinary people, I hope my journey encourages you.

This is only the beginning.

As I continue writing Seen: From Darkness to the Light of Christ, I'll be sharing stories from my journey, lessons God has taught me, and moments from my art studio that have shaped both my faith and my work.

Thank you for being here. I hope you'll walk this journey with me as each new chapter unfolds.

Continue reading Seen: Part one childhood

Part one- Childhood

Sharing these parts of myself is not easy. It requires me to be vulnerable and open about things I have carried quietly for many years. But if I am going to tell my story honestly, I need to begin with the person I was before these experiences happened.

You need to know my background, my struggles, my strengths, and the parts of myself that I did not always understand. Because my story is not only about what God did for me; it is also about who I was when He found me.

Let me tell you something about myself: there were areas of life that I was slow to understand. I know that may sound strange, because I believe God has given me intelligence and many talents, and I say that with humility, not pride.

If you showed me something, I could immediately understand it and recreate it with my own hands. I have always had the ability to see, learn, and create. Throughout my life, I have taught myself many skills, discovering new talents along the way and using the gifts God placed inside me.

But when it came to understanding people, God, my surroundings, and even reading the room, it often felt like my mind worked differently, as if I was somehow behind. Sometimes it almost felt like I came into this world ready to argue with others. For many years, I struggled with this part of myself. I was afraid of being judged, yet there were times when I was also quick to judge others.

But God has been changing my heart. Through the Holy Spirit, He has been teaching me patience, compassion, and humility. He reminds me that we are all human, all imperfect, and all in need of grace. Who am I to judge someone else when I know my own weaknesses and the things God has forgiven me for?

The more I have experienced God's mercy, the more I have learned to extend that same mercy to others.That is why I kept these experiences locked inside me for so many years. I was afraid that if people read what had happened, they would not believe me. I worried they would think I had lost my mind or that my imagination had taken over. I was afraid of what they would say.

I did share my story a few times over the years. Some people were moved and amazed. Others told me plainly that I had imagined the whole thing. Each time, that old fear returned and closed around me again.

But today, I have finally set that fear aside. I asked God to give me the strength to write this for those who need to read it and know that even in the 21st century, God still hears, still sees, and still answers.

These things happened, and I am writing them down one by one in this book. Every word is the truth.

There were times when, even with my fear of being judged, I would quietly ask God, “Why?” Why have You shown me so many miracles in my life? I am getting older now, and sometimes I feel I have not done enough with what You have given me.

I know that perhaps some of these miracles were meant only for me. But God, I want others to know what You have done. I want them to know how great and powerful You are, and at the same time, how close, how warm, and how gentle You are.

You saw me. Me, of all people. A woman who was at war with herself. I often felt like I was nothing remarkable. I saw myself as ordinary, and in some areas I felt far below what others could do.I have never felt that speaking was my strongest gift. Finding the right words in front of others has not always come easily to me. But God gave me another way to express what was in my heart. He gave me the ability to write, to put my feelings onto paper, and to share the things I could not always say out loud. For that, I am deeply grateful.

Because this book is focused on my testimony of faith, I will not go into the details of my personal life here. That story deserves its own space and will be written separately. What matters in these pages is what God did in my life and how He found me.

Today, my heart tells me that these words may reach women who feel, as I once did, unseen. Perhaps there are men who carry that same feeling too. This story is for you.

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My mother was eighteen when she married my father. She was in love with him, and he loved her deeply in return. Because of his work, he took her away to another city, and over the years they moved more than once, following wherever his job led them.

My Grandma (father's mother) was getting old and frail, and she had high blood pressure and diabetes. My father, not wanting my mother to be lonely and not wanting his own mother to be alone either, brought her to live with them. My mother had enormous respect for her mother in law and was always a little shy around her, always careful, always proper.

My mother became pregnant with her first child not long after they married. When the labor pains began, my father was not home. And my mother, too shy to say anything in front of her mother in law, said nothing. She lay there in silence, bearing it alone, hour after hour, all the way to the middle of the night. Until she simply could not hold on any longer.

It was my old grandmother who finally understood what was happening. She went out into the street in the middle of the night and knocked on the door of a midwife, practically dragging her back to the house. But the baby came out feet first. The midwife did everything she could. But the baby did not survive.

They had chosen the name Hooshang for him.

For years afterward, that night quietly ate away at my mother. If only she had not been so shy. If only she had said something. If only she had gone to a hospital. She carried that with her for a long time. I think for rest of her life.

My mother used to tell us about Hooshang. She had only seen him for half an hour. But she always talked about him, and she always cried.

A year and a half later, I arrived. A girl. Small, thin, weak, with big eyes and straight hair. Not exactly the grand entrance anyone was hoping for.

For the first three years of my life, according to my mother, I was almost always sick. In and out of hospital, lying with my face toward Mecca, somewhere between staying and going. Nobody was very confident I would make it.

The only thing that kept any food in my stomach, apparently, was the tea my grandma would give me from a little bottle, sweetened with sugar, coaxing me gently back toward life.

My father was a traditional Persian man, old fashioned in the way that men of his generation were. He loved my mother deeply, truly he did, but in his world love came with a certain arrangement. He was the head of the house and my mother was expected to follow his lead. And she did, mostly. That was simply how things were.

Every morning he went to work and every evening he came back, and somewhere in that routine the same question would find its way out of him. He would look at my mother, almost smiling, and say, so, is she still alive? Half joking. Half absolutely not joking. And then he would smile as if it were nothing.

But it was not nothing.

When someone is that afraid of losing you, they don't always know how to love you fully. And he didn't. Not completely. Not me.

Fourteen months after me came a boy. Then another. Then another. Then a girl, a boy, a girl, a boy. After me she had three boys, and I noticed. Children always notice these things.

I never really knew what it felt like to be loved by him. It was fear, dressed up in words that tried to sound light.

Continue reading part two girl searching….

Part Two-A Little Girl Searching for God

I was born on the first day of spring. Nowruz. If you are Iranian you know exactly what that means. The biggest day of the year. Everything feels fresh and new, families visit each other, children get money in little envelopes, there is food and laughter everywhere.

And every single year, my birthday quietly disappeared into all of it. Just another Nowruz. No cake with my name on it, no happy birthday, nothing that said this day is yours.

Until I was nine.

That morning my mother called me over and something about her face was different. She had a gift, wrapped in paper with a red ribbon. For me. Actually for me.

Now I want to be clear, my mother had given me things before. She was not a cold woman. But there is a difference between being given something and being given a gift. A real gift. Something wrapped up that says I thought of you, this is yours, happy birthday.

Inside the paper was a white Chador, the traditional Hejab, Soft, with little flowers on it. My size. Made for me.

Finally, I felt seen by her.

And then she sat beside me and began to talk to me about God. She had said these things to me before but that morning it felt different, more serious, like she really needed me to hold onto what she was saying.

She said : God made the sky. God made the earth. God made you. And He always sees you.

Then she gently wrapped the chador around my head and shoulders. I sat very still. I did not want to get it wrong. She placed a small clay seal on the ground in front of us. I had seen it before but now it felt important, like I had just been let into something that mattered.

Now we will pray together, she said. Just repeat after me.

I sat up straight. I was ready.

We started, and I followed her every move and every word as carefully as I could. But even as I repeated the words, questions were quietly forming inside me. I did not understand any of this Arabic. What did these words actually mean? And if God had truly made me, if He could see me at any moment of any day, why couldn't He just understand my own language? Why did I have to speak to Him in words that meant nothing to me? Why couldn't I talk to Him in Farsi, the language I thought in, the language of my heart? I looked at my mother and asked, mama, why are we speaking in Arabic? You always say God made me, so why doesn't He understand Persian?

She smiled, but her voice was serious. This is how we learned it, she said, and this is how my mother taught me, and her mother before her. We don't ask questions. And neither should you. Just do what I tell you.

After my ninth birthday, my mother started waking me up before sunrise every morning to pray. It was now my duty. I was nine years old, a girl, and this was simply what was expected.

But I had a problem.

When I slept, I really slept. Waking me up was like trying to pull someone out of the bottom of a deep dark ocean. My mother would shake me, call my name, pull the blanket clean off me. And I would try, I genuinely tried, to open my eyes before the sun came up.

But most mornings, I just couldn't do it.

And with every missed prayer, the guilt would settle a little deeper. I had already been asking myself why I had to pray in Arabic. Now I wasn't even managing to wake up for it. Was I a bad girl? Was God angry with me? Was the God my mother loved so completely, disappointed in me? I didn't know. I was nine years old and I was trying to reach a God who felt very far away.

And it wasn't just the prayers.

I was the eldest daughter, which came with its own set of unwritten rules. While my mother took care of the younger ones or cooked, I cleaned the house. I did my homework. I helped with the children. I was expected to be responsible, to be helpful, to be good. And on top of all of that, I was expected to understand God, to pray in a language I didn't understand, and also learn how to “fast”.

Because when the month of fasting came, I had to fast. Full fast. From before sunrise to sunset, no food, no water, nothing. Twelve hours of hunger and thirst, sometimes in scorching heat. My brothers didn't have to fast until they were fifteen. But me? I was nine.

Nobody asked me how I felt about any of this. Nobody asked me what I needed. I was just expected to carry it all, quietly and without complaint, the way good girls do. The way my cousins were doing it most of them were a few years older than me.

But my father, in one way at least, was different from most men in our large Families. He loved learning. He loved books. He was curious about the world in a way that not many people around us were, and he believed his children should be educated.

He carried an open mind about education and growth in a place where most men did not. My father never had the chance to continue his education beyond the eighth grade.

And maybe that was exactly why it meant so much to him. He wanted more for us.

More knowledge. More understanding. More opportunities. He had a tough childhood and was determined that we wouldn't suffer like he did. He worked hard to create a safe environment for us. He wanted us to have everything. Good schools, good clothes, good food, two vacations a year. But more than that, he wanted us to be prepared for life. He taught us all to drive. When we were twelve or thirteen, every kid had to learn. He taught us all about survival, independence, and taking care of ourselves. I didn't understand it then, but I do now. He was sick. He knew his body was failing. He knew he might not be there to protect us forever. So he prepared us. He made sure that if something happened to him, we would know how to survive. Apparently, his father died when my father was only 6 months old. That's why they had a very tough childhood. He had to learn how to survive without his father, then he had to go back to his mother and take care of her too. And that's why he gave us the tools to be strong. I know now after having a counselor for 3 years and talking to her sometimes twice a month that I was a rebellious child ….

To be continued ….

Part Three- The Iranian’s Revolution

It was around 1978, just before everything started to change in Iran. Even as a child, I could feel something was changing, something uneasy in the air, though I didn’t yet have the words to describe it. This was long before the world we know today, before the internet, before information could be freely distributed. We lived by what we were taught, and what we were taught became our truth.

In the evenings, we would sit in front of the television and watch everything on that black and white screen. Crowds in the streets. Voices rising. A kind of chaos that seemed far away, but somehow close enough to reach our home. I had no words for what I was seeing, but I could feel it. Something was changing around us.

And in the midst of it all, something was changing inside me too.

A deep fear had taken root in me, quietly but steadily.

After that, life did not suddenly make sense.

Nothing became easier. If anything, everything became quieter inside me.

I learned not to speak too much. Not to question. Not to expect. I adjusted. That is what people call it. Adjusting. But it did not feel like adjustment. It felt like disappearing.

Days passed. Then months. And somewhere in that time I stopped looking for someone to understand me. Because no one ever did.

I carried everything inside. The anger. The confusion. The hurt I did not even know how to name. And on the outside I became what I needed to be. Quiet enough. Acceptable enough. Invisible enough not to cause more trouble.

But inside there was always something unsettled. A question that never left me.

Is this what life is supposed to be? Is this all there is?

I did not have answers. So I kept living. Growing older but not really growing free.

I made choices. Some I understood, some I did not. Some came from strength, but many came from that same place inside me that had been silenced years before.

And without realizing it, I began walking a path that was leading me somewhere I could not yet see. A path that would eventually break me open.

And then, somehow, lead me home.

I want to pause here for a moment. There is so much more to this part of my life, more details, more people, more pain, more joy, than I can fit into these pages. But this book is not really about me. It is about God, and what He did, and what I witnessed with my own eyes. My life story is simply the road that led me there, But for now, I am keeping to the path, and the path leads somewhere much bigger than I am.

Part Four- The Beginning of the Path

One day my mother came to me, her voice filled with panic.

"He has converted," she said. "He left his faith. If he does not return, he will go to hell. Please go talk to him. You are more established in your belief than anyone, and besides, you are his older sister and he respects you very much."

My brother was not a big talker, at least not with us. Maybe with his friends. He was a good kid who always obeyed my parents quietly. He treated them well. Every time they asked him to do something, he did it without hesitation. He was also an athlete, disciplined and strong. But you could always sense something beneath the surface. An anger he carried quietly inside him. The kind that sometimes came out in ways that surprised you.

I was shocked. Afraid. Angry, perhaps. I shared the same belief, having been born into it, raised in it, shaped by it. Everything we knew told us this was one of the worst things a person could do. Leaving the faith meant one thing. Destruction. Punishment. Eternal fire. That was what we had been told. And that was what we believed.

I told my mother: "Don't worry. I will talk to him."

At that time I was a single mother. Not that my personal life belongs here. Perhaps one day I will write it when I find the courage. But it shaped the way I carried pressure.

My husband had asked me to be ready. He told me we would join him soon. Again and again he asked me to sell everything. In his mind the call would come any day.

So I obeyed. I sold everything, exactly as he asked. Every piece of our shared life reduced to waiting and hope.

The future he promised never arrived.

So I started my own business with the little money I had. A beauty salon. It was not elegant at first. But little by little I improved it, added to it, built it into something I was proud of. I moved out and created a place of my own.

When what happened with my brother unfolded, I was already standing on my own feet.

My parents came from a respected family, a lineage of quiet dignity. Simple people. My mother could only read and write at a basic level. My father, despite his love of knowledge, had to leave school at thirteen to work and provide for his family. They cared deeply for us and offered everything they could. But I knew with a certainty that settled deep in my bones that I had to find a way to survive. To become my own anchor.

In my heart I still desperately believed my husband would come back. Not for me, perhaps not even for our children the way a father should. But because he was very close to his parents. I clung to the thought that he could not live without them. He will come back for them, I told myself, a fragile prayer whispered into the void.

A few days later I reached out to my brother. I needed to understand.

When he came over the silence was heavy. He had never been one for many words, but this time the quiet spoke volumes.

I could not grasp it. How could someone simply leave? It felt like a betrayal of everything we knew, everything we had been taught was the only path, the only truth. Abandoning it was unthinkable. And yet my mother had asked me to talk to him. Talk to him. What would I even say? I did not have the answers myself. All I had was what I had always been given. And suddenly even that felt hollow.

As I looked at him I saw no madness. No lost soul. Instead a profound calm radiated from him, an unshakeable confidence, even a sense of peace. That inner stillness, so starkly at odds with the fear I had been raised on, deeply unsettled me.

He did not argue. He did not try to preach. He simply offered me a CD.

"Just watch it," he said. His words were quiet but carried enormous weight.

I took the CD. But a storm of anger surged inside me.

Later I watched it. It was not a grand production. Just two elderly men in a simple conversation about Jesus. They spoke of His identity, His teachings, and what set Him apart. Disarmingly straightforward. Two men calmly discussing a figure I thought I knew. But in a way that revealed I actually did not.

Before that moment my understanding of Jesus was superficial. We acknowledged Him as a prophet. We credited Him with miracles. But I had never truly considered Him, not deeply, not personally. He was simply a name in ancient narratives. A background figure in the story I had been handed.

Then came the words that shattered my world.

"Jesus is the Son of God."

The moment those words left their lips, something inside me broke. A rage, visceral and overwhelming, consumed me. It blazed in my chest, gripped my throat, flushed my face. If I could have burned that CD, or even my brother for giving it to me, I would have. The intensity of my reaction was beyond rational explanation. It felt spiritual, though I had no words for it then.

I slammed the CD shut.

And I said to myself: brother. Here I come.

I went straight to my mother and told her everything. I told her how dangerous this was. How could he believe such a thing?

I was not just angry. I was afraid. I truly believed he was on the path to destruction. And I wanted to stop him.

My mother went pale. She knew what it meant. She knew that if my father found out he would not just be angry. He would not hesitate. This was not an exaggeration. It was a real fear. Honor. Reputation. Faith. Everything. And betrayal? There was no room for mercy.

I saw the terror in her eyes.

And for a moment my anger stopped, replaced by something colder.

Fear.

I spoke to my brother directly. Firm and serious. I told him how wrong this was, how dangerous, how unacceptable.

He listened quietly. Then he said something that surprised me.

"I hear you," he said. "But first I want you to meet someone."

Part of me was suspicious. But I thought, what could it hurt? I would talk to that person too. In my mind I was still the one in charge. Still the one protecting him. Still the one standing for truth.

I agreed to go. Not to be convinced. To confront.

I had no idea what was waiting for me.

A few days later I closed my shop and went. The person my brother wanted me to meet lived in a holy city, two hours from my own.

That two-hours journey was the beginning of something I could not have imagined.

As we walked toward the house, the words I had carefully rehearsed, the challenges I planned to raise, the defenses I had built, all of it was running through my mind.

And then, ust about five minutes before we reached the house, everything suddenly changed for me.

With my eyes wide open, I found myself seeing a vast desert, stretching as far as my eyes could see.

In the middle of that emptiness, two enormous pieces of metal were suspended in the air. They were so massive that the sight of them was terrifying. The two pieces were grinding forcefully against each other, producing a sharp, piercing sound.

The noise was so intense and unbearable that I pressed both of my hands tightly over my ears.

I could not move.

My knees had locked, and my legs would no longer carry me forward. With my eyes still open, I watched what was happening before me, unable to understand what was happening to me.

My brother was beside me. When he realized I could not walk, he helped me. With his support, step by step, I continued toward the house.

All the words I had prepared for that meeting, all the questions and arguments I had carefully arranged in my mind, no longer seemed to matter.

By the time we finally reached the door, I was silent.

All I knew was that something had happened to me that I had neither expected nor could explain.

A young man, around thirty, with dark hair and a beard, opened the door. No fear. No resistance. Only kindness. He gestured for me to sit. A small table between us. A book. Two women.

Everything around me faded. I was not just in a room. I was somewhere else entirely, suspended, time bending, the world outside gone. The only thing I could see was that small table and what was about to happen at it.

He sat quietly and began to read from the book. No explanation. No commentary. Just words.

And as he read something inside me began to burn.

I hated what I was hearing. Not because it was meaningless. Because it was threatening everything I had built my life on. Everything I thought was solid and certain. And I could not stop myself. I began to curse at him. Profane and from the depths of me. Raw burning anger. He did not know me, not really. But I knew his type. And I unleashed everything I had.

He did not react. He just kept reading.

The anger in me did not decrease. It grew. A storm rising from somewhere ancient inside me. Something buried. Something that had been sleeping without my knowing it.

And it had woken up.

Then he looked at me with calm eyes and said: "Something has been holding you back. God has called you, but you are being held. Would you like us to pray for you? We will ask God to show you."

His words landed like a blow.

I said: "I don't care. Do whatever you want."

I wanted to leave. But my feet would not move.

He looked at me again. A quiet plea. "Sister, please. Let us pray for you."

Every instinct said run. But I could not move. They gathered around me. I closed my eyes.

And somehow, I stayed.

They guided me to the middle of the room and surrounded me. I did not want to stay. To this day I have no idea why I let them pray over me.

I closed my eyes.

And I saw a vision. I was standing in a river. Clear and calm. Someone was gently pushing my head under the water. Gentle. Not forceful. And I got scared and opened my eyes.

I was still in the room. The people around me. Their voices praying softly.

I closed my eyes again.

The river again.

Every time fear came I opened my eyes and I was in the room. Every time I closed my eyes I was back in the river. Back and forth between the two worlds until it was finished.

When it was finished I opened my eyes.

The room was quiet. He looked at me with certainty and said: "Jesus, the Son of God, died for you and for me. He was the Lamb who had to be sacrificed for our sins. When we believe in Him, His blood sets us free from our sins and gives us new life."

"You have been called. Perhaps even chosen. You and your children."

The words hung in the air like light.

I did not believe him. But a part of me remembered the river.

When I left I did not feel free. I did not feel saved. I felt angry. Lost. Unsettled.

I had not done what I came to do. I had not defended my beliefs the way I planned. I had not protected my brother the way I said I would.

What had happened to me in that room?

I got into the car in silence. Heavy. Full of questions I did not know how to ask.

I did not know it yet.

But something had already begun.

To be continued ….

Part Five-The Dream of the Lamb The Lamb

I left that house, but the man’s words left with me.

On the way back, they kept repeating themselves in my mind.

“Jesus is the Lamb of God. He was sacrificed for our sins. His blood sets us free.”

The Lamb.

The blood.

The Freedom.

Those three words kept circling in my mind.

And suddenly, something from years earlier awakened in my memory.

A dream that had remained somewhere in the quiet corners of my mind for years, a dream whose meaning I had never understood.

The more I thought about the man’s words, the clearer the images of that dream became.

The lamb.

The blood.

The tree.

And suddenly, my mind traveled years into the past.

Back to a time long before that day.

Back to a dream I had never been able to understand.

Years ago my husband and I moved to his parents house. We had a room there, then mid 1993 to May 1994 my husband decided to go to south and work there.

Around that time there was a great deal of fear because people were talking about a comet (Shoemaker-Levy 9) that was supposed to strike the earth. Many believed the world was about to end. I was trying harder than ever to be faithful and devoted to the religion I had grown up with.

One night I had a vivid dream.

I found myself standing on a very high rooftop. In the middle of that rooftop was what looked like an old dead tree planted in the roof itself. My hands and feet were tied to that tree. My arms were stretched out to either side, and my body was held against it as if I had been crucified.

I could not move.

To my left was a doorway, standing slightly open. Beyond it, the sun was setting. I couldn't see anyone yet, but I felt an overwhelming sense of danger. I knew they were coming for me. Panic filled my heart, and I fought with everything I had to break free, but the ropes would not let go.

Then I heard a voice.

The voice said:

"You must touch the blood of this lamb if you want to be free."

I looked down and saw a lamb beneath me. It had been sacrificed, and its blood was on the ground.

I wanted desperately to reach it, but I was bound to the tree.

With all my strength, I stretched the tip of my big toe toward the blood. The moment I touched it, every rope binding my hands and feet fell away.

Instantly I was free.

Just as I was released, armed men burst through the doorway and entered the rooftop.

At that very moment, I woke up.

How could I have dreamed about a sacrificed lamb years before anyone had ever explained Jesus to me?

Why was I tied to a tree?

Why did the voice say I could only be free by touching the blood of the lamb?

Why today?

Out of all the days in my life, why did I end up sitting in that exact house, on that exact day, hearing those exact words?

I couldn't answer any of those questions.

But for the first time, I realized my dream wasn't random.

Someone had known the answer long before I did.

I didn't fully understand it yet, but I knew this much: the dream had been waiting for this conversation.

As I walked home that day, one thought stayed with me.

If Jesus truly is the Lamb of God... then who was the voice speaking to me all those years ago?

To be continued ….