Part one-A Little Girl Searching for God

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.

—--------------------------------------------------------------

Part one-A Little Girl Searching for God

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.