They say you can’t see your own execution coming.

That’s a lie.

I saw mine for three days straight in the eyes of every servant who wouldn’t look at me.

In the silence that followed me through marble hallways.

In the way my own mother crossed to the other side of the corridor when she saw me coming.

But let me tell you about the moment I knew I was going to die.

I was standing in the courtyard, the one with the fountain that cost more than most people earn in a lifetime.

And I watched my father pull something from beneath his th something small.

Something silver.

A cross necklace.

My sister Ila’s cross necklace.

The one she’d hidden inside a jewelry box wrapped in tissue paper buried under gold and diamonds like a dirty secret.

And in that moment, with the afternoon sun beating down on Riyad and the call to prayer echoing from the mosque nearby, I understood that mercy was not coming.

Not for her.

Not for me.

Gather the family, my father said, his voice flat and cold as a blade.

She will face justice.

Islamic justice.

I need you to understand something.

My name is Amamira.

I was born into the Al-Rashid family, one of the wealthiest royal families in Saudi Arabia.

My childhood bedroom was larger than most apartments.

I wore abaya stitched with real gold thread.

I had drivers, tutors, servants who existed only to anticipate my needs before I even knew I had them.

On paper, I had everything.

But let me take you back to where this nightmare really began.

Not the day they found the cross.

Not even the day Ila whispered to me about Jesus in the dark.

It began the day I realized that all the silk in the world can’t cover the feeling of being buried alive.

I was 17 when I first understood I was not a daughter.

I was property.

Expensive property, yes, draped in designer abas from Paris, educated by private tutors from London, paraded at family gatherings like a prize mayor.

But property nonetheless, and property doesn’t get to ask questions.

Property doesn’t get to dream.

Property certainly doesn’t get to choose.

The palace we lived in, and yes, it was a palace with 52 rooms and gardens that required 20 men to maintain, felt like a tomb made of gold.

Every morning I woke to the sound of fountains outside my window, water flowing endlessly, freely, mockingly.

I would press my face against the masherbia screens, those intricate wooden lattises that let us see out but kept the world from seeing in, and watch men walk to work, children run to school, women shop in the souks.

free.

Moving through the world like it belonged to them.

I had never walked alone.

Not once, not ever.

Do you know what it’s like to suffocate in luxury? To choke on gold? The smell of oud perfume became the smell of my prison.

The softness of silk felt like chains.

Every morning, um Khaled, my mother’s oldest servant, would come to wake me for far prayer.

Her hands were rough.

the only rough thing in that entire palace.

And sometimes I would grab them and hold on just to feel something real.

Yamira, she would whisper, pulling away.

Your mother will be angry if you’re late.

My mother, Aisha al-Rashid, beautiful like a painting and just as lifeless.

She moved through the palace like a ghost, all floating fabric and downcast eyes, speaking only when spoken to, existing only to please my father.

I used to wonder if she had dreams once, if she’d buried them so deep that even she couldn’t find them anymore.

Now I know she did.

I found her diary once, hidden in her bathroom behind bottles of French perfume.

The first entry was from her wedding day.

She was 15.

The handwriting was round and hopeful, full of hearts dotting the eyes.

The last entry was dated 6 months later.

Just one sentence.

I will never write again.

She kept that promise for 32 years.

My father Shik Abdulaziz al-Rashid was a different kind of silence.

His silence was violence.

He didn’t need to raise his voice.

He perfected the art of destroying people with a look.

His eyes were black, not brown.

Black, empty, like staring into a well that had no bottom, no water, no echo when you screamed.

When he entered a room, the air changed, got heavier, harder to breathe.

I learned early to make myself invisible around him.

Small, quiet, forgettable.

But Ila, my younger sister, my only sister, Ila never learned that lesson.

She asked questions.

Why, Baba? Why can’t I study medicine abroad? Why must I marry cousin Fil when I don’t even know him? Why does Alla require so much but give so little? Every question earned her a tighter leash, a darker glare, a sharper punishment.

I watched her spirit crack piece by piece, year by year, until the day she turned 16 and stopped asking questions altogether.

That’s when I should have known something had changed.

When the rebellious fire in her eyes didn’t go out, it just went underground.

I was 23 when my perfect prison began to crumble.

It started with a dream.

Not a normal dream, something else.

Something that felt more real than my waking life.

I was drowning in the palace fountain.

Silk wrapping around my throat, pulling me under.

I was screaming, but no sound came out.

Above the water, I could see my family standing around the fountain edge, watching, not helping, just watching.

And then a hand reached into the water.

A hand with scars on it.

It grabbed my wrist and pulled.

And I woke up gasping.

My sheets soaked with sweat.

My heart hammering against my ribs like it was trying to escape.

“Um, Khaled found me sitting on the floor at 3:00 a.

m.

rocking back and forth trying to remember how to breathe.

” “Bad dream, habibi,” she asked, her voice soft in the darkness.

“No,” I whispered.

“A true one.

That was 3 months before they found Ila’s cross.

3 months before my father’s face turned to stone and my mother’s silence became a scream.

She swallowed whole.

3 months before I learned that stones could turn to flowers and miracles weren’t just stories.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

You need to know what we were running from before you can understand what we ran toward.

You need to see the cage before you can understand why we’d rather die than stay locked inside.

If you’re watching this from anywhere in the world where speaking these words won’t get you killed, thank God right now.

Thank him.

Because where I come from, the words I found Jesus are a death sentence.

And I was about to discover that my sister had already signed hers in blood.

The cross was no bigger than my thumbnail.

Sterling silver, simple, almost crude compared to the jewelry we owned.

But when my father held it up in the matchless, our formal sitting room, where family judgments were passed down like inheritances, it looked massive, heavy, like it weighed more than all of our gold combined.

Ila was already on her knees.

They dragged her there an hour earlier while I was in my room reading Quran or pretending to, the way I pretended everything my whole life.

I heard the commotion, the raised voices, my mother’s sharp intake of breath that sounded like something breaking.

By the time I ran downstairs, my sister’s face was already swollen on one side, a bloom of purple spreading across her cheekbone like spilled wine.

Amira, my father said without looking at me.

Sit.

I sat.

You didn’t disobey Shik Abdulaziz al-Rashid.

Not if you wanted to keep breathing.

The room was full of men.

My uncles, four of them, each harder and colder than the last.

My older brother, Khaled, who’d learned to be my father’s shadow so perfectly that sometimes I couldn’t tell them apart.

And my father’s religious adviser, Shik Ibrahim, a man whose beard was long and whose mercy was non-existent.

He sat closest to my father, his fingers working prayer beads that clicked like a countdown to execution.

My mother stood against the wall with the other women, my aunts, my father’s second wife, Rana, the servants.

Stand, not sit.

Women didn’t get chairs during judgment.

We got walls to hold us up when our legs gave out.

Do you know what this is? My father’s voice was eerily calm, the way the air goes still before a sandstorm hits.

Ila’s lips were trembling.

Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.

She didn’t answer.

I asked you a question.

Each word dropped like a stone into water.

Ripples of threat spreading outward.

Uh, a necklace.

Baba.

Her voice was so small.

My brave, rebellious sister sounded like a child.

A cross.

He said it like a curse word, like something obscene.

A Christian cross hidden in your belongings.

Like a viper, like filth.

like kufr kuffer disbelief the worst accusation you could level at a Muslim worse than murder worse than theft to abandon Islam wasn’t just crime it was betrayal of family culture God himself it was punishable by death and everyone in that room knew it the temperature seemed to drop 20° I felt ice spreading through my chest creeping into my lungs making it hard to breathe.

I wanted to run to her, throw myself between her and her father, scream that it was just a necklace, just metal.

It didn’t mean anything, but my body wouldn’t move.

Fear is a paralysis that starts in your soul and spreads outward until even your tongue turns to stone.

Where did you get it? Shik Ibrahim leaned forward, his eyes glittering with something that looked like hunger.

He loved these moments.

Moments where he got to be the sword of Allah cutting down the unrighteous.

I’d seen that look before at public executions in Deer Square.

The executioners wore the same expression.

Righteous.

Eager.

Leila’s silence stretched like a rope pulled too tight, ready to snap.

Answer him.

My father’s roar shook the chandelier.

Somewhere in the palace, I heard glass breaking.

I I found it.

Leila’s lie was transparent as tissue paper in the souk.

I thought it was just jewelry.

I didn’t know.

The slap came so fast I didn’t see my father move.

One moment he was sitting, the next his palm connected with Ila’s face with a crack that echoed off marble walls.

She fell sideways, catching herself on her hands, and I watched blood drip from her nose onto the Persian rug, a rug worth more than most people’s houses, now stained with my sister’s blood.

Do not compound your sin with lies.

My father’s voice had gone quiet again.

That was worse.

So much worse.

We found it wrapped in pages torn from a Bible.

A Bible in my house.

Under my roof.

You have brought shame upon this family, upon the al-Rashid name, upon Islam itself.

I couldn’t breathe.

A Bible.

Leila had a Bible.

Where did she even how did she? My brother Khalid spoke for the first time.

His voice a perfect echo of our father’s contempt.

She’s been in contact with Christians.

I checked her computer.

He held up a tablet, scrolling through what looked like messages, emails, website histories, secret email accounts, Christian websites, videos about Jesus.

She’s been poisoning herself with their lies for months.

Have you ever watched someone you love be dismantled piece by piece? Not killed, dismantled.

Reduced from a person to a problem that needs solving.

I watched it happen to Ila in that room, surrounded by our family.

All of them looking at her like she’d turned into something inhuman, something dangerous, something that needed to be destroyed before it infected the rest of us.

My mother’s sobbs were the only sound besides Shikica Ibrahim’s prayer beads.

Click, click, click.

Counting down to verdict.

You know the punishment for apostasy, Shik Ibrahim said softly.

And that softness was more terrifying than any shout.

The prophet peace be upon him was clear.

Whoever changes his religion, kill him.

Now the word ripped out of my throat before I could stop it.

Baba, please.

She’s just confused.

She’s young.

She doesn’t understand what she’s.

Be silent.

My father’s eyes turned to me and I felt the temperature drop another 10°.

Unless you want to join her in judgment.

I bit my tongue so hard I tasted copper.

But I couldn’t look away from Ila.

Our eyes met across the room.

And in that moment, I saw something that made my blood freeze.

She wasn’t afraid anymore.

The terror that had been in her eyes moments before had been replaced by something else.

Something that looked almost like peace.

No, not peace.

Certainty.

I’m not confused, Ila said quietly.

Her voice was steady now, stronger.

I know exactly what I’m doing.

I found the truth.

Baba, Jesus is the room exploded.

My uncle surged forward, shouting.

Shik Ibrahim stood, his face purple with rage.

My mother collapsed against the wall, wailing.

And my father, my father just sat there perfectly still, staring at Ila like she’d just driven a knife into his chest.

“You will recant,” he said flatly.

“You will denounce this Christian poison.

You will return to Islam.

Or you will die.

Then I’ll die.

” Leila’s words hung in the air like smoke from a gunshot.

Time stopped.

The world tilted.

I couldn’t believe what I just heard.

My baby sister, the girl who used to cry when our pet birds died, who brought bread to feed stray cats behind the palace, who laughed louder than anyone I knew, had just chosen death.

My father stood slowly like a mountain rising.

When he spoke, his voice could have cut diamond.

Take her to the holding room.

No food, no water.

She has three days to come to her senses.

On the fourth day, if she does not recant, he turned to Shik Ibrahim.

Make arrangements.

We will handle this according to Sharia privately within the family compound.

No outside authorities.

No scandal.

The Al-Rashid name will not be dragged through public shame.

I understood what he was saying.

He was going to kill her, execute his own daughter in secret, bury her somewhere on our massive estate, and tell the world she’d died of natural causes or married abroad or simply disappeared into another royal family.

It happened more often than anyone wanted to admit.

Girls who dishonored their families had a way of vanishing.

Four of my uncles grabbed Ila by her arms, too rough, yanking her up like she was livestock, and dragged her toward the door.

She didn’t fight, didn’t scream.

She turned her head as they pulled her past me and whispered three words that would haunt me for days.

Don’t abandon truth.

Then she was gone and I was left sitting in a room full of men discussing the logistics of murdering my sister like they were planning a business meeting.

What method? What time? How to dispose of the body? Whether stoning was more appropriate than beheading? Shik Ibrahim argued for stoning more traditional, more biblical, ironically, more painful, more public, even if the public was just our family.

My father nodded slowly.

Stoning in the east courtyard.

All family members will attend and participate.

This is what happens to those who betray Allah.

I felt vomit rising in my throat.

Participate.

He meant we would have to throw the stones.

I would have to throw stones at my own sister while she died slowly, crushed under the weight of our family’s righteousness.

Amira, my father’s voice pulled me back.

You will be confined to your room until this is finished.

I saw how you looked at her with sympathy, with doubt.

If I discover you’ve been infected by her disease, he left the threat hanging, but I heard it clearly.

You’ll be next.

Two servants appeared at my elbows.

Guards now, not help, and escorted me to my bedroom.

I heard the lock click from the outside.

My golden cage had just become a cell.

I ran to my window, pressed my face against the Masherbia screen, and watched the sunset over Riyad.

Somewhere in this palace, my sister was locked in darkness, counting down her last three days of life.

And somewhere beyond these walls, there was a god she believed in enough to die for.

A god I didn’t know.

A god I was about to go searching for.

Because if I was going to watch my sister die, I needed to understand what truth was worth dying for.

3 days.

I had 3 days to find out if Jesus was real or if my sister was dying for a beautiful lie.

The call to prayer echoed across the city.

I’d heard it five times a day, every day for 23 years.

For the first time in my life, it sounded like a funeral durge.

That first night, I prayed harder than I’d ever prayed in my life.

I performed woo, the ritual washing three times, scrubbing my hands and face and feet until my skin turned raw and pink.

I unrolled my prayer mat facing Mecca, pressed my forehead to the ground, and begged Allah for clarity, for mercy.

for some sign that he was listening.

“Ya Alla,” I whispered into the carpet, my tears soaking into the fabric.

“Please show me the truth.

Is my sister insane? Is she demonpossessed? Or is there something real in what she’s found? Guide me.

I’m begging you.

Guide me.

” Silence.

Not the peaceful silence of divine presence.

the empty silence of a phone call where no one’s on the other end.

I stayed prostrate until my knees achd and my back screamed until the call to far prayer announced dawn and I realized I’d spent the entire night begging a god who didn’t answer.

Have you ever prayed to someone you weren’t sure was there? It’s like screaming into a cave and hearing nothing back.

Not even an echo.

Just the sound of your own desperation swallowed by darkness.

I opened the Quran, the gilded copy my father had given me when I turned 13, still pristine because I’d spent more time carrying it than reading it.

Now I tore through the pages, searching for what? Comfort, answers, some explanation for why my sister would choose torture and death over the religion we’d been born into.

I read about paradise, Janna, with its rivers of milk and honey, its eternal gardens, its 72 virgins for martyrs.

I read about hellfire janam where disbelievers would burn forever, their skin constantly renewed so they could experience eternal agony.

I read about submission, obedience, the importance of following the straight path.

And I felt nothing, no comfort, no peace, no certainty, just words on a page, beautiful calligraphy that might as well have been decoration for all the life it breathed into my suffocating soul.

By the second day, I was unraveling.

Um, Khalid brought food, lamb and rice, dates, and Arabic coffee, but it turned to ash in my mouth.

She set the tray down carefully, glanced at the guards outside my door, and leaned close.

“Your sister is strong,” she whispered, so quiet I almost didn’t hear.

“She’s been singing.

” “Sing?” The word felt foreign.

“What do you mean singing?” hymns, Christian songs.

Even with no food, no water, locked in darkness, she sings.

Um, Khalid’s weathered face was unreadable.

The guards say it’s unnatural, that she must be possessed by jin, but I heard her voice yesterday when I passed the corridor.

She paused, and her eyes, usually so carefully neutral, filled with something that looked like wonder.

She sounded free.

free.

My sister was 3 days from execution and she sounded free while I sat in silk and luxury and felt like I was drowning.

Um, I grabbed her wrist, desperate.

Do you believe in Allah, in Islam, in any of it? Do you actually believe? She pulled back like I’d burned her, fear flashing across her face.

Ya, don’t ask me such questions.

Don’t make me answer what could get us both killed.

But her non-answer was an answer.

Another crack in the facade.

Another person going through the motions, performing the rituals, mouththing the prayers, but not believing.

Not really, just surviving.

After she left, I did something I’d never done before.

I stopped praying the Islamic way and just talked out loud to whoever might be listening.

I don’t know if you’re there, I said to my empty room, feeling ridiculous and desperate and raw.

Allah, God, Jesus, whoever is real, whoever has power, whoever actually cares about humans and isn’t just a story we tell ourselves to feel less alone.

I need you to show yourself because my sister is going to die.

They’re going to crush her with stones until her bones break and her organs rupture and she drowns in her own blood.

And she believes you’re worth it.

She believes you’re real enough to die for.

My voice cracked.

Tears I didn’t know I had left spilled down my cheeks.

So prove it.

Prove you exist.

Prove you care.

Prove that she’s not dying for nothing.

The silence that followed was so complete it felt like the universe itself was holding its breath.

Nothing happened.

No burning bush.

No voice from heaven.

No miraculous sign, just me alone in a locked room talking to emptiness.

I thought about my mother spending decades in silent submission.

I thought about every woman I knew, aunts, cousins, friends, all of us locked in various cages, all of us performing rituals that promised paradise but delivered only more chains.

I thought about the public executions I’d seen from a distance.

The bodies that swung from cranes in Deer Square.

The women accused of adultery buried to their waists before the stones began to fly.

We called it justice.

We called it righteousness.

We called it the will of Allah.

But what if we were wrong? The thought was so terrifying I almost vomited.

To question Islam in Saudi Arabia wasn’t just doubt.

It was treason.

It was betrayal of everything and everyone you’d ever known.

It was choosing to become an orphan, an exile, a target with a price on your head.

But the question, once thought, couldn’t be unthought.

On the evening of the second day, I broke.

I pulled out the laptop they’d forgotten to confiscate.

I suppose they didn’t think I’d dare use it.

Didn’t think their obedient daughter Amira had enough spine for rebellion.

My hands shook as I opened a browser with VPN protection that Colid had installed years ago and forgotten about.

I typed six words that felt like jumping off a cliff.

Why do Christians believe in Jesus? The search results flooded my screen.

Hundreds of websites, testimonies, videos, articles.

I clicked on one, a testimony from a former Muslim woman in Egypt.

Her face was blurred for protection.

Her voice distorted, but her words were clear.

Islam gave me rules, she said.

Christianity gave me relationship.

Islam told me what to do to maybe earn paradise.

Jesus told me paradise was already mine because of what he did.

I spent 30 years trying to be good enough for Allah and failing every single day.

Then I met Jesus and he said, “I am enough.

You don’t have to be.

” Something in my chest cracked open.

a hairline fracture in a dam that had been holding back an ocean.

I watched another video and another former Muslims from Iran, from Pakistan, from Indonesia, from Somalia, all telling variations of the same story.

They’d been faithful.

They’d prayed five times daily, fasted during Ramadan, memorized Quran, followed every rule, and they’d felt empty, dead inside, going through motions that promised life, but delivered only exhaustion.

until they encountered Jesus.

Not religion about Jesus, Jesus himself.

In dreams, in visions, in supernatural encounters that shattered their carefully constructed worldviews and rebuilt them from the foundation up.

I was ready to blow myself up for Allah.

One former jihadi said, his face also hidden.

I thought martyrdom was the only way to guarantee paradise.

Then Jesus appeared to me the night before my mission.

He said, “I already died for you.

You don’t have to die for me.

Just live for me.

” And I felt love for the first time in my life.

Not approval I had to earn.

Love I couldn’t lose.

I watched until my eyes burned.

And the call to Isa prayer, the final prayer of the night, echoed through the palace.

I should have stopped, should have shut the laptop, should have returned to my prayer mat and begged Allah’s forgiveness for even looking at Christian content.

Instead, I searched for one more thing, differences between Allah and Jesus.

The article that came up was written by a former Islamic scholar.

He laid it out clinically, comparatively.

Allah is distant.

Jesus came close.

Allah requires perfection.

Jesus offers grace.

Allah might forgive.

Jesus guarantees it.

Allah demands you die for him.

Jesus died for you.

Allah’s love is conditional.

Jesus’s love is unconditional.

You can never be certain Allah accepts you.

Jesus says you’re already accepted.

I read that last line five times.

You’re already accepted.

Not maybe accepted if you pray enough.

Not possibly accepted if you’re good enough.

Not we’ll see on judgment day if you made the cut.

Already accepted.

The concept was so foreign, so impossible, so beautiful that I started crying again.

Deep wrenching sobs that came from somewhere I didn’t know existed.

All my life I’d been performing, trying to be worthy, trying to be good enough for my father, for society, for Allah.

failing constantly, living in perpetual fear that I’d never measure up, never be enough, never escape the scales where my good deeds and bad deeds would be weighed, and I’d probably be found wanting.

And here was someone, Jesus, saying, “You don’t have to earn it.

I already paid for it.

Just accept it.

” It sounded too good to be true.

It sounded like a trap.

It sounded like the most dangerous idea I’d ever encountered.

It also sounded like the only thing that made sense of my sister’s peace.

I closed the laptop and sat in darkness as the palace settled into sleep around me.

Tomorrow was day three, the final day.

After far prayer the following morning, day four, they would take Ila to the courtyard.

They would bury her to her waist in sand and they would throw stones at her until she stopped breathing.

Unless I did something.

But what? I was locked in my room, under guard, powerless.

Even if I could reach her, even if I could help her escape, where would we go? We had no money of our own, no passports we could access, no allies outside these walls.

We were women in Saudi Arabia.

We couldn’t even drive without permission, let alone flee the country.

Jesus, I whispered into the darkness, feeling foolish and desperate and somehow hopeful.

If you’re real, if you’re who my sister thinks you are, we need a miracle.

We need you to do something impossible because in 20 hours they’re going to kill her.

And I think I think I believe in you now.

I think I’m ready to believe, but I need you to prove yourself.

Please show us you’re real.

I fell asleep on the floor, still whispering prayers to a god I wasn’t sure would answer.

I didn’t know that he already had.

I didn’t know that the impossible was already in motion.

I didn’t know that in less than 24 hours, I would watch stones turn into flowers and everything I thought I knew about reality would shatter like glass.

I woke to the sound of something sliding under my door.

For a moment, I thought I dreamed it, that my exhausted mind was conjuring sounds that weren’t there.

But then I saw it.

A folded piece of paper, small and wide against the dark marble floor, positioned carefully where the guards outside couldn’t see.

My heart hammered as I crawled across the floor and grabbed it.

The handwriting was shaky, unpracticed, but I recognized it immediately.

Um, third storage room behind the winter abayas before far.

I risk everything.

Come.

I looked at my phone for 17 a.

m.

Far prayer was at 5:03.

I had 46 minutes.

The guards outside my door changed shifts at 4:30.

I’d been locked up long enough to learn their patterns.

For exactly 7 minutes during the transition, when the night guards left and the morning guards hadn’t yet arrived, the hallway was empty.

7 minutes.

That’s all I had.

I don’t know what made me do it.

Maybe desperation.

Maybe the prayers I’d whispered to Jesus.

Maybe I was just tired of being obedient.

Tired of being afraid.

Tired of watching my life happened to me instead of living it.

But when I heard the night guard’s footsteps fade down the corridor, I wrapped my abaya tight around me, cracked open my door, and ran.

The palace was a maze, but I knew every corner, every shortcut, every shadow.

I’d spent 23 years learning how to be invisible in these halls.

Now that training became survival.

I moved like smoke, silent, quick, barely there.

Past my parents’ wing, past the formal matchless, down the servant stairs to the lower level where storage rooms lined the walls like secret chambers.

Third room, winter abayas.

I slipped inside and pulled the door shut just as I heard voices approaching.

the morning guards arriving.

My lungs burned.

My hands shook.

I pressed myself against the wall behind rows of black fabric and waited.

“Um, Collet,” I whispered into the darkness.

A small flashlight clicked on.

There she was, crouched in the corner, her face drawn and terrified, but determined.

And in her hands, is that I couldn’t finish the sentence.

Your sister’s Bible, um, Khaled said quietly.

They didn’t burn it.

Not yet.

Shik Ibrahim wants to use it as evidence during the during the stoning to show the family exactly what corrupted her, but I have keys to the evidence room.

I’ve worked in this palace 40 years.

They forget I exist.

Forget I have access to everything.

She pressed the book into my hands.

It was smaller than I expected.

black leather worn at the edges, pages thin as tissue paper.

It felt warm, like it had been held recently, like it still carried my sister’s fingerprints.

Why? I asked, my voice breaking.

Why risk this? Um, Collid’s eyes filled with tears.

Because 60 years ago, I was your sister.

I found a Bible in the house where I worked.

I read it in secret.

I believed.

And then my family found out.

She pulled back her headscarf slightly, revealing a scar that ran from her temple to her jaw.

My father did this.

Said I was lucky he didn’t kill me.

Said if I ever spoke of Jesus again, he’d finish the job, so I buried it.

Buried him.

Spent 60 years in silence, serving a family, practicing a religion, living a lie.

She grabbed my hands, the Bible pressed between our palms.

Don’t be me, Amamira.

Don’t spend your life in cowardice.

Your sister is braver than I ever was.

She’s willing to die for truth.

The least I can do is help you find it.

Her voice dropped to barely a whisper.

You have until far.

Then you must get back to your room before they discover you’re gone.

read.

Decide.

And may the real God, the one who actually sees us, have mercy on us both.

She slipped out of the room like a ghost, leaving me alone with the most dangerous object in Saudi Arabia.

I opened it with trembling hands.

The pages were marked, underlined, annotated in Ila’s handwriting.

I recognized her script, those same round letters she’d used for school assignments, now applied to verses that could get her killed.

The book fell open to a passage marked with a dried flower pressed between the pages.

The Gospel of John, chapter 8.

I read by the dim glow of my phone’s flashlight.

Then neither do I condemn you, Jesus declared.

Go now and leave your life of sin.

Leila had written in the margin.

This is the difference.

Not condemnation, liberation.

I flipped through more pages, each one a revelation that felt like a bomb going off in my chest.

In Matthew, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

” Leila’s note, rest.

When did Islam ever offer rest? It only offers more rules, more requirements, more ways to fail.

In John again, I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the father except through me.

her annotation.

Not a religion, not a system, a person.

Jesus didn’t say follow my teachings.

He said follow me.

I was devouring the pages now, desperate, hungry for something I didn’t know I’d been starving for.

The words hit differently than Quran ever had.

They felt alive, like they were speaking directly to me, to my situation, to my suffocating existence in a golden cage.

in Romans.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

No condemnation.

I read it three times.

No condemnation.

Not maybe no condemnation if you’re good enough.

Not partial condemnation if you mess up too badly.

Just no condemnation.

Final complete done.

The contrast with Islam was devastating.

Every day of my Muslim life had been about condemnation, avoiding it, fearing it, wondering if I’d done enough to escape it.

The scales, the judgment, the uncertainty, the terror that on Yamal Kaima, judgment day, I’d be found wanting and thrown into hellfire forever.

And here was Jesus saying, “No condemnation.

” Just like that, because of what he did, not what I did.

I found the passage Leila had marked most heavily.

Pages practically falling open to it.

John 3:16.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Loved past tense already done.

Not might love you if you’re worthy or will love you if you perform correctly.

loved already completely.

Whoever believes.

I thought about Allah.

Distant, unknowable, impossible to please.

99 beautiful names, but father wasn’t one of them.

You didn’t approach Allah with intimacy.

You approached with fear, with submission, with terror that you might displease him.

The relationship was master, slave, ruler, subject, judge, defendant, never father, daughter.

Never lover beloved, never friend, friend.

But here was Jesus calling God Abba, daddy.

Here were passages about being adopted as children, about being called friends, about God literally incarnating as human to close the distance we could never cross ourselves.

He came close, I whispered, remembering the article I’d read.

Allah stays distant.

Jesus came close.

I found another marked passage.

This one in the Gospel of Luke, the story of the prodigal son, a boy who abandoned his father, wasted his inheritance, ended up eating with pigs.

When he finally came home expecting condemnation, his father ran to him, ran, embraced him through a party.

Leila had written in the margin, “This is the god I’ve been looking for my whole life.

The one who runs toward failures, not away from them.

The one who celebrates return, not punishes departure.

Tears blurred my vision.

I’d never heard a story like this in Islam.

The Quran had stories of prophets and punishments, rules, and warnings, but nothing like this.

Nothing this tender, this hopeful, this drenched in unconditional love.

I kept reading, lost in the words, lost in the revolutionary idea that maybe, just maybe, God wasn’t a distant judge waiting to condemn me, but a loving father waiting to embrace me.

Then I found the passage that changed everything.

It was in John 10, and Leila had drawn a star next to it, underlined it in three colors, written, “This is everything,” in capital letters.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.

Life to the full.

Not life of restriction.

Not life of fear.

Not life of endless performance and perpetual failure.

Life to the full.

Abundant.

Overflowing.

Free.

I thought about my existence.

The golden cage.

The silk chains.

The suffocation of luxury without liberty.

I thought about my mother’s dead eyes.

my sister’s upcoming execution.

Um, call it 60 years of silent terror.

I thought about every woman I knew, every girl I’d grown up with, all of us locked in various prisons, all of us calling our chains protection and our cages honor.

What if we’d been lied to? What if the thief, the one who’d stolen our freedom, killed our spirits, destroyed our souls, wasn’t Jesus? What if it was the system we’d been born into? The thought was too dangerous to think, too treasonous to contemplate, too ignore.

My phone said 4:58 a.

m.

5 minutes until far prayer.

I had to get back to my room immediately or risk discovery.

But I couldn’t put the Bible down.

I flipped to one more passage, desperate for just one more hit of this intoxicating hope.

My eyes landed on John 11.

The story of Lazarus, a man who died, was buried for 4 days, and then Jesus called him out of the tomb.

Back to life, resurrected.

I read Jesus’s words, “I am the resurrection and the life.

The one who believes in me will live even though they die.

And whoever lives by believing in me will never die.

” Never die.

Not physically.

Everyone dies physically, but spiritually, the real you, the eternal you, the soul that makes you, you never die.

I pressed the Bible to my chest and made a decision that would cost me everything.

Jesus, I whispered into the darkness of that storage room, surrounded by black abayas that suddenly felt like burial shrouds.

If you’re real, if you’re really who this book says you are, I want to know you.

Not just know about you.

Know you the way my sister knows you.

The way I’m Colid wishes she’d had the courage to know you.

I’m terrified.

I’m risking my life even speaking your name.

But if you can turn death into life, if you can call dead people out of tombs, then maybe you can resurrect whatever’s dead in me.

The call to far prayer began.

The muesan’s voice echoing across Riyad calling the faithful to worship Allah.

But I was praying to someone else.

I don’t know what I’m doing, I continued, tears streaming down my face.

I don’t know if I’m brave enough for what comes next.

But tomorrow they’re going to kill my sister for believing in you.

And I can’t watch her die for a lie.

So if you’re truth, prove it.

If you’re life, show it.

If you’re real.

I didn’t get to finish.

Because that’s when the door burst open.

Light flooded the room and I looked up into my brother Collid’s face twisted with rage holding his phone up with the screen showing security camera footage of me sneaking through the palace.

And in my hands, damning his murder weapon unmistakable as confession, my sister’s Bible.

“Well,” he said softly, his voice dripping with something that sounded like triumph.

“I guess we’ll need two stoning pits after all.

” They threw me into the room next to Leila’s.

Not the holding room, the actual cell, the one with no windows, no furniture, nothing but concrete walls and a metal door and darkness so complete it felt like being buried alive.

Khaled had dragged me through the palace by my hair.

The Bible clutched in his other hand like a trophy.

Servants and family members emerging from their rooms at the commotion.

My mother had seen me.

Our eyes met for one brief second.

I saw recognition, horror, and then something died in her face.

She turned away, closed her door, chose my father over her daughter again.

Now I sat in blackness, my back against a wall that felt damp and cold, and listened to my sister singing through the concrete.

Her voice was thin, weakened by 3 days without food or water, but clear.

So clear.

She was singing in English, a language we’d learned from tutors but never used except in secret away from my father’s ears.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

I pressed my face against the wall, trying to get closer to her voice.

I once was lost, but now I’m found.

Was blind, but now I see.

Ila, I whispered, though I knew she couldn’t hear me.

Ila, I understand now.

I understand why you wouldn’t recant.

I read it.

I read your Bible.

I prayed to him.

I think I think I believe.

Her song continued, “Unchanging, beautiful despite the horror of our situation.

Or maybe beautiful because of it.

Maybe faith sounds loudest in the darkest places.

I don’t know how long I sat there.

Time loses meaning in total darkness.

It could have been hours or minutes.

Eventually, exhaustion pulled me under and I fell into something between sleep and unconsciousness.

That’s when everything changed.

The darkness shifted.

That’s the only way I can describe it.

It didn’t lighten.

There was no physical light source, but suddenly I could see.

Not with my eyes, with something else, something deeper.

And I wasn’t alone anymore.

There was a presence in that cell with me.

Massive, overwhelming, but not threatening.

The opposite of threatening.

It felt like safety.

Like the moment you realize you’re not drowning anymore because someone’s pulled you out of the water.

Like the breath you take after holding it too long.

Like coming home after being lost in a foreign country where no one speaks your language.

Amira, my name spoken in a voice that sounded like it came from everywhere and nowhere from outside me and inside me simultaneously.

A voice that made my father’s coldest pronouncement sound like whispers.

Made the mues call to prayer sound like static.

This voice had weight, authority, but also tenderness I’d never experienced.

I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, could barely breathe.

And then he appeared.

Listen to me carefully.

I know how this sounds.

I know skeptics will say I was hallucinating from fear and stress and trauma.

I know Muslims will say it was Shaitan, Satan, deceiving me.

I know atheists will say it was my brain protecting itself from psychological collapse.

I don’t care what they say because I know what I saw.

I know who I met.

and I would die a thousand times before I deny it.

Jesus stood in my cell.

He wasn’t glowing, not the way art depicts him with cartoon halos and soft focus lighting.

He was solid, real, more real than anything I’d ever seen.

Like the entire world outside that cell was the dream, and he was the only waking reality.

He wore simple robes, white but not pristine.

They looked lived in, worked in.

His feet were bare.

His hands, his hands.

I could see the scars, not bleeding, but there permanent marks where nails had torn through flesh and bone.

He held them out toward me, palms up, and I understood without words what he was saying.

This is what I paid.

This is what you’re worth to me.

But it was his face that undid me.

I’d expected judgment.

Even in my desperate prayers, part of me still carried the Islamic understanding of God.

Harsh, exacting, quick to anger.

I expected disappointment in his eyes, or at least sternness.

Some cosmic, “You should have come to me sooner, or you’re in serious trouble, young lady.

” Instead, he looked at me with such love that I couldn’t hold his gaze.

It was too much, too intense, too unconditional.

His eyes were brown, deep, warm, ancient brown.

And when they met mine, I felt like he was seeing everything.

Every secret sin, every hidden shame, every moment of cowardice and compromise and comfortable lies I told myself.

He saw all of it.

And he loved me anyway.

Not despite what he saw, he just loved me.

Period.

Completely.

Irrevocably.

The way you love someone, not because they’ve earned it, but because love is simply what you do, who you are, how you exist.

I started sobbing.

Deep, body shaking sobs that came from a place I didn’t know existed.

Some locked room in my soul that was finally, finally opening.

I’m sorry I choked out.

I’m sorry I waited so long.

I’m sorry I was afraid.

I’m sorry I’m not brave like Ila.

I’m sorry.

I’m Amira.

He said my name again, and the sound of it in his mouth made me realize I’d never truly heard my name before.

I’m not here to condemn you.

I’m here to free you.

He moved closer, not walking, just suddenly nearer and knelt in front of me.

Jesus, the son of God, the one billions of people worship, kneeling in front of me in my filthy cell, getting on my level, meeting me in my lowest moment.

Do you know why your sister sings? He asked gently.

I shook my head, unable to form words.

Because she knows something your religion never taught you.

She knows that perfect love casts out fear.

She knows that nothing, not death, not execution, not her father’s rage, not hell itself, can separate her from my love.

She’s not brave, Amira.

She’s just certain.

And certainty makes the unbearable bearable.

I want that, I whispered.

I want to be certain.

I want to know you’re real.

That this isn’t just my mind breaking.

That I’m not dying for a beautiful delusion.

He smiled.

Actually smiled.

And it was like watching the sun rise after the longest night of your life.

You want proof, evidence, a sign? His tone wasn’t mocking.

It was almost playful, the way a father teases a beloved child.

Thomas wanted the same thing.

I let him touch my scars.

Peter needed to walk on water.

Paul needed to be knocked off his horse and blinded.

He reached out and touched my cheek, his hand warm and solid and undeniably real.

But Amir, you already have your proof.

You’re sitting in a cell facing execution, having lost everything comfortable and safe for a god you’d known less than 12 hours.

That’s not human logic.

That’s not self-preservation.

That’s me working in you, calling you, drawing you.

You couldn’t seek me if I hadn’t first sought you.

The truth of it hit me like a wave.

He was right.

Everything I’d done in the last 24 hours, the prayers, the questions, the reading, the decision to risk everything, none of it made sense unless he was real.

Unless he’d been pursuing me long before I’d started pursuing him.

“What happens tomorrow?” I asked, my voice small.

“When they take us to the courtyard? When they bury us in sand and the stones start falling, his expression grew serious, but not grim, purposeful.

Tomorrow, I’m going to show your family who I am.

Not through words, they’ve hardened their hearts against words.

Through wonder, through a sign so undeniable that even the most stubborn among them won’t be able to dismiss it, he paused.

Some will believe, most won’t.

Free will is a dangerous gift.

But those who have eyes to see will see and Amamira.

Yes, you’re not going to die tomorrow.

Neither is your sister.

I have plans for both of you.

Stories you’ll tell.

Places you’ll go.

People you’ll reach who would never hear my name except from someone who’s lived through what you’re about to live through.

Hope flared in my chest.

Painful, terrifying hope.

You’re going to save us? I already did.

2,000 years ago on a cross tomorrow.

I’m just going to make it visible.

He stood and the cell suddenly felt smaller and larger at the same time, like the walls couldn’t contain his presence.

But I need you to do something for me.

Anything.

When you stand in that courtyard tomorrow, when they ask you to recant, to deny me, to return to Islam and save your life, I need you to stand firm.

Not because you’re brave, but because you’re mine.

Not because you’re strong, but because I’m strong in you.

Can you do that? Terror and certainty ward in my chest.

I I think so.

If you’re with me, I’m always with you.

I was with you in the golden cage.

I was with you in the locked room.

I was with you in the storage closet reading Ila’s Bible.

I’ve been with you every moment of your life, waiting for you to notice me, call my name, reach for my hand.

He moved toward the door or through the door.

I couldn’t tell.

Reality seemed fluid around him.

Tomorrow, trust me, even when it looks impossible, especially when it looks impossible, that’s when miracles happen.

Wait.

I reached for him, desperate.

Don’t go.

I have so many questions.

I don’t understand the Trinity or salvation or why you had to die or how any of this works.

He looked back and his smile was radiant.

You’ll have a lifetime to learn theology, Amira.

Right now, you just need to know one thing.

I love you completely, eternally.

Nothing you do can make me love you more.

Nothing you’ve done has made me love you less.

That’s the gospel.

Everything else is commentary.

Then he was gone.

Not fading, just gone.

The presence lifted.

The supernatural light disappeared.

I was alone again in the dark cell, trembling and tear soaked and more awake than I’d ever been in my life.

But the darkness felt different now.

Not oppressive, just dark.

Because I knew I wasn’t alone in it.

I’d never be alone in it again.

I pressed my face back against the wall, listening for Ila’s singing.

It had stopped.

Probably exhaustion had finally claimed her.

But I started singing myself softly, the words coming from memory.

Even though I’d only heard the hymn once.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost, but now I’m found.

Was blind, but now I see.

And for the first time in 23 years, I knew exactly where I was.

I was found.

Tomorrow they would try to kill us.

Tomorrow, my father would pronounce sentence and my family would gather to watch execution.

Tomorrow stones would fly and blood would spill and everything comfortable and familiar would end forever.

But tomorrow Jesus was going to show up.

And when Jesus shows up, the impossible becomes inevitable.

I just didn’t know yet that the miracle wouldn’t just save our lives.

It would shatter my family certainty, challenge Islamic theology itself, and create a testimony that would eventually reach you reading this now, wherever you are.

Some miracles are just for you.

Others are for everyone watching.

Ours was about to be both.

They came for us at dawn.

I heard the locks turning, the heavy footsteps of multiple men, my father’s voice giving orders in that flat, emotionless tone that meant his decision was final.

No more deliberation.

No more chances, just execution.

Bring them both to the east courtyard.

It’s time.

The door to my cell opened and harsh sunlight flooded in.

I’d been in darkness so long that it felt like knives stabbing my eyes.

Two of my uncles grabbed me by the arms and hauled me out.

I couldn’t walk properly.

My legs had gone numb from sitting on cold concrete all night, so they dragged me, my feet scraping against marble floors that I’d walked on every day of my life, but never thought would be the path to my execution.

They brought Ila out at the same time.

Our eyes met across the corridor, and what I saw in her face made my breath catch.

She looked radiant.

That’s the only word.

Three days without food or water, bruises covering her face, hair matted and wild, but her eyes were bright, alert, burning with something that looked like victorious joy.

She smiled at me.

“Actually smiled.

” “You met him, didn’t you?” she whispered as they dragged us down the stairs.

“You met Jesus?” I could only nod, tears already streaming down my face.

Then don’t be afraid, she said, her voice but steady.

He told me what’s about to happen.

He showed me.

This isn’t our end, sister.

This is our beginning.

The guards yanked us apart before I could ask what she meant.

The east courtyard was one of the most beautiful parts of our palace compound, a space enclosed by high walls, gardens with roses and jasmine, a fountain in the center that sparkled in the morning sun.

My mother used to take tea there.

I’d played there as a child.

Now it had been transformed into an execution ground.

Two pits had been dug in the manicured lawn, each about 3 ft deep and 3 ft wide.

Beside each pit sat a pile of stones, not small rocks, but substantial stones, the kind that could break bones, crush skulls, destroy flesh.

They’d been carefully selected for maximum damage.

Shik Ibrahim stood beside them inspecting them like a craftsman reviewing his tools.

The entire family was there.

All my uncles and their wives, my aunts, male cousins over age 13, old enough to participate in execution under Sharia law.

Even some of my female cousins there to witness what happens to women who dishonor their families.

37 people all dressed in their finest clothes like this was a wedding instead of a murder.

My mother stood to the side, bailed completely, her body language screaming of collapse, held together by sheer force of will.

She wouldn’t look at us.

Couldn’t.

If she looked, she might break.

And broken women don’t survive in families like ours.

My father stood at the center beside Shik Iraim.

He looked at Ila and me the way you’d look at diseased animals that needed to be put down with cold necessity, without emotion, without recognition that we’d ever been his daughters.

“Neil,” he commanded.

The guards forced us to our knees in front of the pits.

The morning sun was already hot, and I could feel sweat mixing with tears on my face.

My heart was pounding so hard I thought it might explode.

Every instinct screamed to run, to fight, to beg for mercy.

But I remembered Jesus’s words.

Stand firm.

Not because you’re brave, but because you’re mine.

Shik Ibrahim stepped forward, unrolling a scroll.

Because of course, he had to make this official, religious, righteous.

His voice carried across the courtyard with the practiced authority of someone who’d pronounced many death sentences.

Leila bent Abdulaziz al-Rashid.

You have been found guilty of Ridda apostasy.

You have abandoned Islam for Christianity, a false religion of sherk and kafir.

You have brought shame upon your family and dishonored Allah.

Islamic law is clear.

The punishment for apostasy is death.

He turned to me.

Amir bent Abdulaziz al-rashid.

You have been discovered in possession of Christian materials and caught praying to Jesus, the false god of the Christians.

You two are guilty of apostasy and must face the same judgment.

He paused, his eyes scanning both of us with something that looked like satisfaction.

However, Allah is merciful.

Before sentence is carried out, you will each be given one final opportunity to recant.

To declare the Shiaa, there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger.

To renounce Christianity and return to Islam, to save your lives and restore honor to your family.

The courtyard went silent.

Even the fountain seemed to stop flowing.

Every eye was on us.

Shik Ibrahim turned to Ila first.

Do you recant? Do you return to Islam? My sister’s voice rang out clear and strong.

Stronger than it should have been after 3 days of starvation.

I will not.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

He is the way, the truth, and the life.

He died for my sins and rose again.

I belong to him and nothing, not torture, not death, not hell itself, can separate me from his love.

Gasts rippled through the crowd.

My father’s face turned to stone.

Shik Ibrahim’s mouth tightened.

He turned to me and you do you recant? This was it.

The moment Jesus had warned me about the point of no return.

I could hear my mother sobbing behind her veil.

I could feel my uncle’s rage radiating like heat.

I could see the stones waiting to crush my skull.

I thought about my golden cage, my life of comfortable lies, the silk chains I’d worn so long I’d forgotten what freedom felt like.

And I thought about Jesus in my cell, his scarred hands, his loving eyes, his promise.

You’re mine.

I lifted my head and looked directly at my father.

I will not recant, I said, my voice shaking but clear.

Jesus is the son of God.

He is my savior and my lord.

I’d rather die with truth than live with lies.

My father’s face didn’t change, but something flickered in his eyes.

Was it pain? Regret? It vanished so quickly I couldn’t be sure.

Then you have chosen death, Shik Irahim declared.

Place them in the pits.

The guards grabbed us, four men for each of us, as if two starved women posed any threat.

They lowered Ila into her pit first, then began shoveling dirt around her, packing it tight until she was buried to the waist, unable to move, unable to escape.

Then they did the same to me.

The dirt was cold and heavy, pressing against my legs, my hips, trapping me like a coffin I could still see out of.

I could hear my sister praying, not begging for rescue, but praising, thanking Jesus, worshiping even as she faced execution.

Her faith was a living thing, impossible to kill.

Shik Ibrahim raised his hand and my uncles moved forward, each selecting a stone from the pile.

My father took the largest one.

Of course, he did.

He would throw first, the head of the family, the ultimate authority, the executioner.

In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful.

Shik Ibrahim and toned.

Let judgment fall.

My father raised the stone above his head, aimed at Ila.

He would kill her first, make me watch, maximize the psychological torture.

His arm pulled back.

Time seemed to slow.

I could see every detail.

The veins in his arm, the texture of the stone, the morning light catching dust particles in the air.

Jesus, I whispered.

Now would be a good time.

My father threw.

The stone flew through the air.

I could track its path, arcing toward my sister’s head with enough force to crack her skull like an eggshell.

My eyes squeezed shut.

I couldn’t watch.

Couldn’t.

The sound that filled the courtyard wasn’t the sickening crack of stone hitting flesh.

It was the soft whisper of paddles falling.

I opened my eyes.

The stone, the heavy rock that should have killed my sister, was gone.

In its place, floating gently down through the air, was a white rose.

Perfect, fragrant, impossible.

It landed in Ila’s outstretched hand.

She looked at it, looked at our father and laughed.

Actual joyful laughter.

“He’s here,” she said.

“Jesus is here.

” The courtyard erupted in chaos.

My uncle shouted, confused and angry.

My aunt screamed.

Shik Ibrahim stumbled backward, his face drained of color.

And my father, my father stood frozen, staring at his empty hand like it had betrayed him.

Throw again.

Shik Ibrahim screamed.

It’s a trick.

Shit’s deception.

Throw again.

Three of my uncles threw simultaneously, their stones arcing toward both of us, and all three transformed mid-flight into flowers.

Red roses, pink roses, yellow roses.

They drifted down like petals at a wedding, landing around us in the pit, on our shoulders, in our hair.

What is this? My father roared.

What sorcery? It’s not sorcery, Ila said, her voice carrying over the pandemonium.

It’s Jesus.

He’s showing you who he is.

He’s showing you that your violence has no power over those who belong to him.

Throw all the stones you want, Baba.

They’ll only become beauty.

My father’s face twisted with rage and something else.

Fear.

For the first time in my life, I saw fear in his eyes.

He grabbed another stone larger than the first and threw it directly at my head with all his strength.

It transformed into a white dove mid-flight.

The bird circled once above our heads, then landed on the edge of my pit, cooing softly.

The entire courtyard watched, stunned into silence.

And then the presence I’d felt in the cell, that overwhelming, undeniable presence, filled the courtyard.

I couldn’t see Jesus physically, but I knew he was there.

Everyone knew.

The air itself seemed to shimmer with holiness, with power, with love so intense it was almost terrifying.

One of my younger cousins, Fatima, age 15, fell to her knees.

I see him, she whispered.

I see him standing between them.

He’s He’s real.

Jesus is real.

Silence.

Shik Ibrahim shrieked, but his authority had evaporated.

He looked terrified, diminished, like a man realizing he’d been worshiping the wrong God his entire life, and now the real one had shown up.

More family members tried to throw stones.

Every single one transformed into flowers, into doves, into butterflies that dispersed into the morning sky.

The piles of execution stones became piles of roses, their fragrance overwhelming the courtyard, covering the stench of fear and rage.

My father fell to his knees, not in worship but in defeat.

His certainty, his iron grip on reality, on religion, on his authority as patriarch, had just shattered.

He stared at the roses covering the ground, then at us, then at his own hands.

This isn’t possible, he whispered.

With man, impossible, I said, finding my voice.

But with God, all things are possible.

That’s what Jesus said.

And that’s what he just proved.

Shik Ibrahim tried one last time to salvage the situation.

Dig them out.

We’ll use swords instead.

We’ll You’ll do nothing.

The voice came from behind the crowd.

Um Khaled stepped forward.

ancient weathered dumb collid who’d been invisible for 60 years.

She walked straight to the pits and began digging us out with her bare hands.

“I’ve been silent long enough,” she said, tears streaming down her wrinkled face.

“60 years I’ve been a coward.

” “Not anymore.

Jesus is real.

He proved it.

And if you kill these girls now, you’ll have to kill me, too, because I believe.

I’ve always believed.

One by one, others moved forward.

Fatima, two of my younger cousins, a servant, another aunt who’d always seemed so devout.

They began digging us out, pulling dirt away, liberating us from our execution pits.

My father didn’t stop them.

He couldn’t.

He just knelt in the roses that should have been our death, staring at nothing, his entire worldview crumbling around him.

When we were free, Ila and I stood together covered in dirt and flowers, surrounded by family members who looked at us like we were either demons or prophets.

They couldn’t decide which.

We’re leaving, Ila announced.

Amamira and I, we’re walking out of this palace and you’re not going to stop us because if you try, Jesus will just do another miracle and another until you’re so terrified of his power that you can’t move.

No one argued.

No one moved.

They just watched as we walked barefoot, filthy, glorious, toward the courtyard gate.

This is your last chance, I said, turning back at the threshold.

All of you, you just witnessed the impossible.

You saw God intervene.

You watched stones turn to flowers.

Now you have a choice.

You can explain it away, rationalize it, call it mass hallucination or demonic deception.

Or you can ask yourself why the god of Islam didn’t protect you from the god of Christianity.

Why Allah didn’t stop Jesus from proving his power.

Why your religion couldn’t prevent a miracle.

Shik Ibrahim found his voice weak and desperate.

If you leave, you’re dead to this family.

You’ll have nothing.

No money, no protection, no home.

Ila smiled.

We already have everything.

We have Jesus.

Everything else is just details.

And we walked out.

Out of the courtyard where we should have died.

Out of the palace where we’d been prisoners our whole lives.

Out into Riyad streets.

Two women without male guardians without permission.

Without any earthly right to freedom.

But we had heavenly permission.

And that was all we needed.

behind us.

I heard Fatima’s voice calling out, “Wait.

Take me with you.

I want to know him.

I want to know Jesus.

” The miracle wasn’t over.

It was just beginning.

We didn’t get far before reality crashed back in.

Two blocks from the palace, maybe 300 m of freedom, Ila collapsed.

Her legs simply gave out.

Three days of starvation and dehydration finally catching up now that adrenaline was fading.

I caught her before she hit the pavement.

Her body frighteningly light in my arms, her skin burning with fever.

“Stay with me,” I begged, lowering her to the ground against a concrete wall.

“Lila, stay with me.

We just survived a miracle.

You can’t die on a riod sidewalk.

” Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused, but still carrying that strange joy.

Not dying, she whispered.

Just very tired.

Jesus didn’t bring us this far to let us die in the street.

Help is coming.

What help? We have no phones, no money.

No.

A car screeched to a stop beside us.

For one terrifying moment, I thought it was my father’s men come to finish what the stones couldn’t.

But the door flew open and Fatima jumped out, followed by um Khaled, followed by two people I didn’t recognize, a middle-aged Arab man and a Western woman with kind eyes.

“Get in,” the man said urgently in Arabic.

“Now before the Mukabarat arrive,” the Mukabarat secret police, of course, a miracle in a royal family compound wouldn’t stay secret long.

Someone would have called authorities, probably Shik Ibrahim, framing us as witches or heretics or threats to national security.

Um, Kalid and the western woman helped me lift Ila into the back seat.

Fatima squeezed in beside us.

The man floored the accelerator before the doors were even closed and we shot through Riyad’s morning traffic like demons were chasing us, which in a sense they were.

Who are you? I asked the strangers.

My arms wrapped protectively around my sister.

The woman turned from the front seat and her smile was warm despite the terror of the situation.

My name is Sarah.

I’m with an organization that helps people like you, people leaving Islam, people whose lives are in danger because of their faith.

Um, Khaled contacted us last night.

She glanced at our elderly helper with something like reverence.

She’s been our informant inside Saudi Arabia for 5 years.

feeding us information about women who need rescue, children being abused in the name of religion, converts at risk of execution.

I stared at um Khaled 5 years.

This woman I thought was just a servant, powerless and voiceless, had been running an underground railroad under my father’s nose.

Um Klet’s wrinkled face split into a smile.

I told you 60 years of cowardice.

I decided to make the last years count.

We need to get them out of the country.

The driver, whose name I learned was Ahmad, said Tursley.

Your father will have reported you by now.

Every airport will be flagged.

The borders will be watched.

We have maybe 6 hours before your faces are on every Macccabat database in the kingdom.

Where are we going? Fatima asked, her voice small and scared.

She was only 15 and she just abandoned her entire life on the basis of a miracle she didn’t fully understand yet.

To a safe house first, Sarah said, “We need to get Leila medical attention, get all of you cleaned up and in different clothes.

Then tonight we’ll move you to the border.

We have people who can get you across into Jordan, then to Lebanon, then.

Then where?” I interrupted.

Where do three Saudi women with no passports, no money, no documentation go? We’re fugitives, apostates.

There are fat was issued for people like us.

Bounties.

Even if we escape Saudi Arabia, there are Muslims everywhere who’d consider killing us a religious duty.

The car went silent because I was right and everyone knew it.

Sarah’s expression grew gentle but firm.

Then you live carefully.

You change your names.

You never post your face online.

You learn to look over your shoulder.

And you trust that the God who turned stones into flowers can keep you hidden from those who want you dead.

Ila stirred in my arms, her voice weak but certain.

We didn’t survive a miracle to live in fear.

Jesus has plans for us, testimonies to share, people to reach.

We’re not hiding.

We’re just strategic.

The safe house was actually a modest apartment in a workingclass neighborhood of Riyad.

The kind of area royal families never visited where our faces wouldn’t be recognized.

Ahmad pulled into an underground garage and we were rushed inside through corridors that smelled of cooking spices and poverty.

Such a stark contrast to our palace that it felt like entering another country.

Inside a Syrian Christian woman named Miriam was waiting with medical supplies, food, and clothes.

She took one look at Ila and immediately started in four drip, murmuring prayers in Arabic as she worked.

Severe dehydration, malnutrition, possible organ damage, she said clinically.

She needs a hospital.

She can’t go to a hospital, Ahmad said flatly.

They’d report her immediately.

Then I’ll do what I can hear.

Miriam’s hands moved with practice efficiency, checking vitals, administering fluids, treating Ila’s wounds, but she’s not traveling anywhere tonight.

Maybe not for several days.

Her body is shutting down.

My heart sank.

We couldn’t stay here for days.

Every hour we remained in Saudi Arabia increased the chance of discovery, arrest, execution.

Sarah must have seen the despair on my face.

Hey, look at me.

She grabbed my hands, her grip firm.

You’ve already seen one impossible thing today.

Don’t stop believing in impossibilities now.

Over the next 6 hours, we were transformed.

Miriam worked on Leila while Sarah helped Fodima and me wash three days of imprisonment off our skin, then dressed us in simple abayaza and nicabs, the fullface veils we’d always resented, but now would serve as disguises.

She gave us fake IDs with different names, fabricated histories, memorized backstories.

You’re from Jedha, visiting relatives, Sarah coached.

If anyone asks, you’re going to a family wedding in Okaba.

Your maram male guardian is waiting at the border.

Keep your answer short.

Don’t volunteer information.

And whatever you do, don’t let them see your eyes too long.

Fear is recognizable.

Um, Kaled sat with us through the transformation.

Her presence a comfort and a heartbreak.

She wasn’t coming with us.

Too old, she said.

Too tired.

And someone needed to stay behind to feed misinformation to my father about where we’d gone.

You’re going back? I asked horrified.

After what you did after you helped us escape, he’ll kill you.

She smiled serenely.

Maybe, maybe not.

I’m an old woman, invisible, beneath notice.

And if he does kill me, I finally get to meet the Jesus I’ve been worshiping in secret for 60 years.

Either way, I win.

I hugged her.

This woman who’d been braver than anyone I’d ever known, who’d risked everything for people who treated her as invisible for decades.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“Thank you for showing me that courage isn’t the absence of fear.

It’s choosing truth, even when fear is screaming.

By 400 p.

m.

, Ila’s condition had stabilized enough for travel.

Not ideal, but survivable.

Miam had worked a minor miracle of her own, flooding my sister’s system with fluids and nutrients and medications that brought color back to her face and strength back to her voice.

“I’m ready,” Ila said, though she still needed help standing.

“Let’s go.

” The plan was audacious and terrifying.

Ah mod would drive us to the Jordanian border about 8 hours north in a van marked with a catering company’s logo.

We’d be hidden in a concealed compartment typically used for smuggling alcohol or drugs into the dry kingdom but today repurposed for smuggling apostates out.

Sarah would follow in a separate car running interference if needed.

If we made it across the border we’d be met by Christian contacts in Jordan who’d begin the long process of getting us asylum somewhere.

Europe, America, anywhere that wouldn’t extradite us back to Saudi Arabia and certain death if we made it.

At 6:00 p.

m.

, we said goodbye to um Khaled and Mariam, two women who’d given everything so we could have a chance at freedom.

Then we climbed into the hot, cramped compartment under the van’s floor, designed for three people, but holding four now with Fatima adjoining us.

Ahmad sealed us in, and I heard his muffled voice through the metal.

Don’t make a sound.

Don’t move.

Don’t even breathe loud.

The border guards sometimes use dogs, sometimes use mirrors to check under carriages.

If they find you, I’ll say, “I didn’t know you were there.

That you must have hidden yourselves.

I can’t protect you once they discover you.

” Then darkness, complete, suffocating, worse than the cell, because at least there I could move.

Here we were pressed together like corpses in a coffin.

The van’s engine rumbling beneath us.

Exhaust fumes seeping through cracks.

The heat oppressive and airless.

Ila’s hand found mine in the darkness.

“He’s with us,” she whispered.

“Even here, especially here.

” The drive was 8 hours of torture.

Every stop made my heart seize.

“Was this it? Had we been discovered?” Every time I heard voices, I was certain they were guards ordering a mod to open the compartment.

My body screamed for movement, for air, for space.

Fatima was crying silently.

I could feel her shoulders shaking.

Ila was praying continuously under her breath.

Her voice a lifeline in the darkness.

Somewhere around hour five, I felt my faith wavering.

Jesus, where are you? You turn stones to flowers.

Can you not get us across one border? Are we going to suffocate in this metal coffin after everything? And then I heard it, not audibly, but in my spirit.

The way you hear your own thoughts, but knowing they’re not yours.

I parted the Red Sea for my people when they fled Egypt.

You think a Saudi border is more powerful than Pharaoh’s army? Trust me.

Tears streamed down my face.

He was here.

In this suffocating darkness, in this impossible situation, he was here.

Finally, eternally, the van stopped and I heard Ahmad speaking to someone in the clipped formal Arabic used with authorities.

Routine inspection, a guard’s voice said.

Open the back.

My blood froze.

This was it.

This was where the miracle ended and harsh reality resumed.

I squeezed Ila’s hands so tight I must have hurt her, but she squeezed back just as hard.

I heard the van doors opening.

Heard footsteps.

Heard the thunk of boxes being moved around in the cargo area above our heads.

What’s this compartment? The guard asked.

My heart stopped.

Storage for equipment? Ahmad said smoothly.

It’s welded shut.

See no access.

Silence.

Eternal silence.

Was the guard checking? inspecting, calling for tools to pry it open.

Then fine, you’re clear.

Go.

The door slammed.

The engine started.

We began moving again.

We’d crossed into Jordan.

Ahmad drove another 30 minutes before pulling over and opening the compartment.

We spilled out onto Jordanian dirt, gasping for air, crying and laughing and praising Jesus in a mixture of Arabic and English and incoherent gratitude.

Sarah’s car pulled up beside us.

And she emerged with bottles of water and actual tears on her face.

You made it.

Oh my god, you actually made it.

We stood on foreign soil for the first time in our lives.

No longer Saudi princesses, no longer royal family, no longer even legally who we’d been.

We’d left behind titles, wealth, family, everything we’d ever known.

But we’d gained something infinitely more valuable.

We’d gained freedom.

We’d gained truth.

We’d gained Jesus.

And as the sun set over Jordan, painting the desert in colors God must have mixed personally, Ila turned to me with tears streaming down her face and said what we were all thinking.

We lost everything we had and we gained everything we needed.

The cost of following Jesus had been total.

But standing there under that foreign sky, breathing free air for the first time, I understood something my old life never taught me.

Some things are worth dying for.

And the same things are worth living for.

That was three years ago.

Three years since stones turned to flowers in a Riyad courtyard.

3 years since we walked out of a palace and into freedom.

3 years since Jesus proved he was real in a way that no debate, no argument, no theological discussion ever could.

I’m sitting in a small apartment in Germany now as I record this testimony.

It’s nothing like the palace.

one-bedroom, cramped kitchen, furniture from charity shops.

But it’s mine.

Truly mine.

Not my father’s.

Not my families.

Not given conditionally based on my obedience.

Mine because I work for it.

Because I earned it.

Because I’m free.

Leila lives two floors down with her husband.

Yes, husband.

A Lebanese Christian man she met at the church that sponsored our asylum.

They married last year, and I watched her walk down the aisle in a white dress, smiling whiter than I’d ever seen, choosing her own husband instead of having one forced upon her.

She’s studying nursing now.

Says she wants to heal people the way Miriam healed her.

Fatima is in university in London studying human rights law.

She wants to defend women like us, women fleeing religious persecution, women brave enough to choose truth over comfort.

We video call every Sunday after church.

Yes, church.

That word that would have been death sentence in our old life.

Now just a normal part of our week.

The journey here wasn’t easy.

Nothing about leaving Islam ever is.

We spent 6 months in Jordan living in a refugee center with others fleeing persecution.

Ex-Muslims from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Somalia.

Each of us carrying stories of what we’d lost, who we’d left behind, what it cost to say Jesus’s name out loud.

We learned quickly that we weren’t alone.

There’s an underground network of former Muslims scattered across the world.

All of us bearing the same scars.

All of us knowing the same terror.

All of us clinging to the same Jesus who proved himself real when our previous religion proved itself empty.

The nightmares came.

They still come sometimes.

dreams where I’m back in that courtyard, buried in the pit, but this time the stones don’t turn to flowers.

They hit, they crush.

I wake up screaming and Ila has to remind me, we’re in Germany.

We’re safe.

Jesus kept his promise.

We applied for asylum, went through endless interviews where we had to prove our conversions were genuine, prove we’d face death if deported, prove we weren’t just economic migrants using religion as excuse.

We showed them photos of the courtyard miracle.

Yes, Fatima had secretly filmed part of it on her phone before fleeing.

The shaky footage showing stones transforming midair into roses.

The immigration officials watched it 12 times.

Some believed, some called it CGI, but eventually they granted us protection.

We haven’t spoken to our family since the escape.

Can’t.

It’s too dangerous.

But we hear things through the network.

Um, Khaled is alive, still working in the palace, still feeding information to Christian rescue organizations.

My father never recovered from the miracle.

Sources say he’s become obsessed with debunking it, with finding rational explanations, with proving it was mass hallucination or demonic deception.

He can’t accept that Jesus overpowered Allah in his own courtyard.

His certainty died that day and he spent three years trying to resurrect it.

My mother divorced him or he divorced her depending on whose story you believe.

She lives with her sister now, rarely speaks, reportedly spends hours staring at the roses in the east courtyard that still bloom unnaturally thick and fragrant where execution pits once were.

Some say she’s losing her mind.

Others say she’s finally finding it.

Khaled, my brother, has doubled down on Islam, became more extreme, more rigid, more violent in his rhetoric.

He posts online about honor killings being necessary, about apostates deserving death, about how our family shame can only be washed away with blood.

There’s a price on our heads, unofficial, but real.

€50,000 for information leading to our location.

Some Muslim communities in Europe know we’re here.

We’ve had to move four times in three years.

But Jesus keeps hiding us, keeps protecting us, keeps fulfilling his promise that nothing can separate us from his love.

The Western church doesn’t always know what to do with us.

We’re too intense, too urgent, too aware of what faith actually costs.

They sing worship songs about surrender, and we think about execution pits.

They talk about taking up your cross and we remember what it felt like to actually face death for Jesus.

Sometimes the comfortable Christianity of the West frustrates us.

People who’ve never risked anything for their faith advising us about what real disciplehip looks like.

But we’re learning grace.

Learning that everyone’s journey is different.

Learning that Jesus didn’t save us so we could judge Christians who’ve never faced persecution.

He saved us so we could love them.

Challenge them.

remind them that faith is worth everything because Jesus is worth everything.

We started a ministry 6 months ago, Ila, Fatima, and me.

It’s small, mostly online, targeted at Muslim women questioning their faith.

We share our testimony, answer questions, provide resources in Arabic, Ordo, Farsy, Turkish.

We help women escape when they’re ready.

We connect them with safe houses, with asylum lawyers, with churches that understand.

We’re part of a growing movement.

Thousands of former Muslims coming to Christ every year, despite the danger, despite the cost, because once you encounter the real Jesus, the counterfeit gods lose their power.

The emails we receive break our hearts and fill us with hope simultaneously.

I’m in Iran.

I had a dream about Jesus.

I think I believe.

But if my family finds out, they’ll kill me.

What do I do? I’m in Pakistan.

I’ve been reading the Bible in secret for 2 years.

I know Jesus is real, but I have children.

How do I leave without endangering them? I’m in Saudi Arabia in a palace trapped in a golden cage.

I read your story and I’m crying because it’s my story.

Please tell me there’s hope.

and we write back, “There’s hope.

His name is Jesus.

He specializes in impossible situations.

He turns stones into flowers.

And he will make a way when there seems to be no way.

Three people from our ministry have been killed, discovered, executed, murdered by family members who considered it righteous.

We attended their funerals when there were bodies to bury.

And we wept and we raged and we asked Jesus why he saved us but didn’t save them.

We don’t have full answers but we know this.

They’re with him now.

They traded 70 years on earth for eternity in paradise.

And their death sparked more conversions because when Muslims see someone willing to die for Jesus, they start asking what makes him worth dying for.

Martyr’s blood is still seed.

So why am I telling you this story? Why am I risking exposure, risking the bounty hunters finding me, risking everything to share this testimony? Because someone watching this right now needs to hear it.

Maybe you’re Muslim, born into Islam, trapped in Islam, suffocating under rules and rituals, and the crushing burden of trying to earn paradise.

Maybe you pray five times daily and feel nothing.

Maybe you fast and follow every law and still wonder if Allah will accept you.

Maybe you’re terrified of judgment day because you know deep down that your good deeds don’t outweigh your bad ones, that you’re not worthy, that you’ll probably fail.

I was you.

I understand.

And I’m telling you, there’s a better way.

Jesus isn’t another prophet.

He isn’t just a good teacher.

He’s God who became human, who lived the perfect life you couldn’t live, who died the death you deserved, who rose from the dead to prove he conquered sin and death and hell itself.

He doesn’t ask you to earn salvation.

He offers it as a gift.

Free undeserved based on his performance, not yours.

The Quran says Jesus is coming back on judgment day.

Did you know that? Surah 4361.

But it doesn’t say Muhammad is coming back.

It doesn’t say any other prophet is coming back.

Just Jesus.

Doesn’t that make you wonder? Doesn’t that make you question? If Jesus is the one returning to judge humanity, maybe, just maybe, he’s more than what Islam says he is.

Or maybe you’re atheist watching this and thinking it’s all fairy tales and wishful thinking.

You believe we invented God to cope with mortality? That miracles are myths? That there’s no evidence for anything supernatural? I used to wonder about that, too.

But then stones turned into flowers.

Physical stones thrown by real hands transformed mid-flight into roses.

Dozens of witnesses.

Video footage.

Impossible according to natural law.

Either I’m lying along with everyone who saw it or something supernatural happened.

And if something supernatural happened, you have to ask which god did it? Allah who we were serving or Jesus who we’ just chosen to follow? The miracle answered that question pretty definitively.

But maybe you don’t need a miracle.

Maybe you just need hope.

You’re depressed, anxious, addicted, broken.

You’ve tried everything.

therapy, medication, self-help, positive thinking, and nothing fills the void.

You’re functional on the outside and dying on the inside, and you’re wondering if this is all there is.

Jesus sees you, the real you behind the masks and performance.

And he loves you, not the version of you that has it together, the actual you with all your mess and failure and secret shame.

He died for that you.

He rose for that you.

He’s pursuing that you right now, using this video, this moment, this testimony to whisper, “I’m real.

I’m here.

I’m enough.

” Or maybe you’re Christian, born into church, comfortable in your faith, but you’ve never really risked anything for Jesus.

You sing worship songs, but you’ve never actually surrendered.

You call him Lord, but you’ve never let him actually be Lord.

Your faith is cultural, inherited, intellectual, but not lifealtering.

I’m not judging you.

I’m challenging you because Jesus isn’t safe.

He isn’t comfortable.

He isn’t a spiritual accessory you add to your otherwise normal life.

He’s a consuming fire, a revolutionary, a king demanding total allegiance.

And if following him hasn’t cost you anything, you might need to ask if you’re actually following him or just a domesticated version you created.

Leila says it this way.

Western Christianity treats Jesus like a life coach.

Eastern Christianity, Christianity under persecution, treats him like the life itself.

So here’s what I’m asking you to do right now.

If you’re Muslim and you’ve been questioning, if you’ve had dreams about Jesus, if you’ve wondered if there’s more than what Islam offers, pray with me right now.

It doesn’t have to be eloquent, just honest.

Say this, “Jesus, if you’re real, show me.

I’ve been taught you’re just a prophet, but maybe you’re more.

I’m scared of what believing in you will cost, but I’m more scared of living my whole life for a lie.

Show me the truth and give me courage to follow it wherever it leads.

If you’re atheist and something in this story resonated, if part of you wants to believe but your mind won’t let you, pray this.

God, if you exist, I need you to prove it.

I can’t believe based on feelings or tradition.

I need evidence.

I need encounter.

I need you to show up the way you showed up for Amira and Ila.

I’m willing to believe if you’re willing to reveal yourself.

If you’re Christian but you’ve been comfortable.

If you know your faith is shallow, pray this Jesus, I’ve been calling you Lord but not treating you as Lord.

I’ve been following you at a safe distance, keeping one foot in the world, hedging my bets.

Forgive me.

I want real faith.

The kind that costs something.

The kind that changes everything.

Make me dangerous for your kingdom.

And if you’re ready, truly ready, to surrender your life to Jesus, to accept him not as prophet or teacher, but as savior and lord, pray this with me.

Jesus, I believe you are the son of God.

I believe you died for my sins and rose from the dead.

I believe you’re the only way to the father, the only truth that matters, the only life worth living.

I’m sorry for living for myself.

I’m sorry for serving other gods, whether Allah or money or success or my own ego.

I choose you today, right now, completely.

Come into my life.

Transform me.

Make me new.

I’m yours, totally.

Finally, forever.

If you prayed that, if you meant it, welcome to the family.

Your new life just started.

It won’t be easy.

It might cost you everything, but Jesus is worth it.

I promise you, he’s worth it.

Let me tell you what happens next.

Find other believers.

You can’t do this alone.

You need community, accountability, support.

If you’re in a Muslim country or dangerous situation, connect with underground churches.

They exist everywhere.

We can help you find them.

Get a Bible.

Read it.

Start with the Gospel of John.

It’s written specifically for people like us.

For people who need to know who Jesus really is.

Let his words reshape your thinking, your worldview, your entire life.

Tell someone.

Yes, it’s dangerous.

Yes, there will be consequences.

But faith that stays secret eventually dies.

You need to confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord.

Find one safe person and tell them.

Let your faith become real by becoming verbal.

Prepare for cost.

I’m not going to lie to you.

Following Jesus will cost you, maybe relationships, maybe job opportunities, maybe family, maybe in extreme cases your life.

Count the cost.

Jesus did.

He warned his followers that taking up your cross was part of the deal.

But also remember, he provides.

He sustains.

He never leaves.

And what you gain infinitely outweighs what you lose.

Never give up.

There will be days you doubt, days you’re terrified, days you wonder if you made a mistake.

There will be persecution, loneliness, moments where the old life looks appealing again.

Don’t quit.

Jesus didn’t turn stones into flowers just to abandon you later.

He who began a good work in you will complete it.

Hold on.

Keep believing.

Keep trusting.

Keep following.

I’m not going to see most of you.

I can’t follow up personally with everyone watching.

But Jesus can.

He’s with you right now.

He’ll be with you tomorrow when your family asks why you’re different.

He’ll be with you next week when the fear gets overwhelming.

He’ll be with you years from now when you’re telling your own testimony to someone else who needs hope.

This is my story.

Amira al- Rashid, though that’s not my name anymore.

I’m new creation.

Old things passed away.

Everything became new.

And the same Jesus who transformed me wants to transform you.

The stones are still flying.

The persecution is still real.

The cost is still total, but Jesus is still turning stones into flowers.

And if he can do that in a Saudi courtyard, he can do miracles in your life, too.

Don’t wait.

Don’t delay.

Don’t think you’ll do it later when it’s safer or easier or more convenient.

Tomorrow might be too late.

Choose Jesus today.

Right now, this moment.

Your stones are about to become flowers.

And your death sentence is about to become resurrection.

Trust me, I know.