[Armagan]

Rojda — I was born in 1985 and spent my life moving between Diyarbakır and İzmir. When my parents divorced our lives became a mess. My mother,all my siblings and I moved to Izmir . But we moved back to Diyarbakir a few times after that, not finding happiness either in Izmir or in our home town. However, we eventually got used to living in Izmir . When I turned 18 I began to question my life. I began to read books on psychology to understand my family’s situation. At the time I had a mentor who also read such books and gave me advice. She had a wonderful home and her children and husband were a very sweet family. At the same time I was writing to my oldest brother who was in jail. He went to prison when he was quite young. We would write back and forth about all we would do when he was released and I believed that we would have a wonderful life together. His letters gave me hope. The only thing I thought of was how to iron out our life. After two years my older brother was released from prison, but unfortunately my next youngest brother was arrested and jailed. Still, I had hope and I believed my big brother had changed and that it was time to act. Now my big brother and I would go work and we would have a clean and modest life.
We labored for a year, but nothing turned out as I had hoped. I saw that I had labored in vain. I began to lose hope in my brother. My mentor was unhappy despite her “perfect” life. I realized that even if I reached her standard of living I would not be happy. She was just as lost and hopeless as I was. I even began to hate the books I had been reading. All of those books on psychology had tons of questions but no answers . Nothing could save me from this situation. I began to think, “This is life, I might as well suffer though it,” and so began to let myself go. I began to go to places I knew were wrong, even though I disliked them. I entered into sins that I had formerly judged. After all, I wasn’t perfect before, but now I was simply doing things for the sake of being stubborn. I thought, “If there’s no answer, what’s the point of trying?”
Then in April 2005, when I was on a bus travelling to Izmir , I had a vision. I was looking out the window when I saw a road that reached to the heavens. And I heard a voice say, “This is the way to God!” And then I came to again, but couldn’t understand what the meaning of the vision was.
Then in 2006 I met a Christian woman who told me about Jesus Christ. At the time I was doing the ritual prayers of Islam and was hopelessly praying for my family. This woman prayed with me and for each member of my family. Even her prayers for the most hopeless circumstances were full of love. She was certain that her prayers would be answered by God through Christ.
After that I went to church and saw that on one wall was written, “God is love.” “This is a mockery of God!” I thought, because I did not know what love was. Love was not an important concept to me and this was not only my opinion. Love had been emptied of meaning and twisted. We had no idea what love really was.
I began to pray to Jesus Christ and to plead with him. Once when I was praying for my mother, I said, “There is no hopelessness in love.” But did I really say that? What did that mean? Then I thought of the verse on the wall of the church and I understood that God wanted me to trust Him. I began to pray with great joy and gave everything into the hands of my God. I continued going to church with my mother. It was from then on that my mother and I began to see God working in our lives and we realized that we needed to surrender our whole lives to Him. And so we trusted Him. A few months later our lives began to take on a good shape again. It was difficult for both of us, but especially for my mother. There were blatant sins that we had left behind and neither I nor my big brother nor any one else in our family had been able to do this. Christ had died for us and wanted us to live a holy life in Him. Now we know that He is the way to God for everyone and we have accepted Christ as our Lord and Savior. This doesn’t mean that our problems are all gone, but now we can live a holy life. Christ is changing us. We owe our happiness to Him.

[Yazar]

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