My name is Yamina.

I’m 28 years old and on January 7th, 2017, I should have died.

I was the third daughter of a Saudi prince living in unimaginable wealth and privilege in our palace compound.

But that morning, I knelt before an executioner’s blade for reading the Bible.

Growing up as the third daughter of a Saudi prince meant living in what most people would consider paradise on Earth.

Our palace compound stretched across hundreds of acres with gardens that rivaled anything you might see in movies about Arabian knights.

I had my own wing of the palace complete with marble floors imported from Italy, gold fixtures that caught the desert sunlight, and servants who anticipated my every need before I even knew I had one.

When I was 12, I counted my jewelry collection and stopped at 300 pieces.

I had closets filled with designer gowns from Paris, shoes handcrafted in Milan, and perfumes blended exclusively for our royal family.

Every morning, I would wake to the sound of the fountain in my private courtyard.

My personal maid would bring me breakfast on silver platters, always featuring exotic fruits flown in fresh from around the world.

Mangoes from Thailand, strawberries from California, dates stuffed with almonds and honey from our own groves.

I had private tutors for every subject imaginable.

Mathematics from a professor who had taught at Cambridge, literature from a woman who spoke seven languages fluently, art instruction from painters whose works hung in European galleries.

My Arabic calligraphy teacher was considered one of the finest masters in the entire kingdom.

But here’s what I want you to understand about that life of unimaginable privilege.

Despite having everything money could buy, I felt like I was slowly suffocating.

Ask yourself this question.

Have you ever felt wealthy yet spiritually bankrupt? That was my existence for 25 years.

I lived behind walls that were meant to protect me, but felt more like a beautiful prison.

The same gates that kept danger out also kept me from experiencing real life, real relationships, real purpose.

My religious education followed the strictest Islamic traditions.

Five times a day, I would perform my prayers on a silk prayer rug that had been in our family for generations.

I memorized verses from the Quran in classical Arabic, understanding the words, but never feeling them touch my heart.

Our family imam was a stern man who taught religion through fear rather than love.

He would tell us about Allah’s judgment, about the punishments awaiting those who strayed from the path, about the importance of absolute obedience to religious law.

When I asked questions about mercy or grace, he would silence me with reminders that questioning was dangerous for young women.

The isolation was perhaps the most suffocating aspect of my royal existence.

My contact with the outside world was carefully filtered and controlled.

I could watch certain television programs, always with a guardian present to change the channel if anything inappropriate appeared.

My internet access was monitored and restricted.

The few friends I had were daughters of other royal families, and our conversations never went deeper than fashion, jewelry, or gossip about arranged marriages.

We were all living the same gilded cage experience, none of us brave enough to admit how empty we felt.

Speaking of marriage, my future had been planned since I was 15.

My father had arranged for me to marry the son of a powerful prince from a neighboring kingdom.

This marriage would strengthen political alliances and increase our family’s influence in regional oil negotiations.

I had met my intended husband twice, both times in formal settings with our families present.

He seemed kind enough, but there was no love between us, no real connection.

We were simply two people whose lives had been arranged for political convenience.

The wedding was planned for my 26th birthday, a lavish affair that would cost more than most countries spend on education in a year.

But despite all this luxury and careful planning, I found myself lying awake at night staring at the painted ceiling of my bedroom, feeling completely hollow inside.

I would look out my window at the stars and wonder if this was all there was to life.

Expensive clothes, formal prayers, and an arranged marriage to produce royal heirs who would live the same empty existence I was trapped in.

I started having strange dreams around this time.

Dreams about light so bright it made me feel warm from the inside out.

In these dreams, I would hear a voice calling my name with such love and tenderness that I would wake up crying, not from sadness, but from a longing I couldn’t explain.

The emptiness grew stronger as my wedding date approached.

I would sit through formal dinners with foreign dignitaries, listening to men discuss oil prices and military contracts, while women were expected to remain silent and decorative.

I would attend charity gallas where we donated money to causes we never personally visited or understood.

Everything felt like performance, like we were all actors playing roles in a play that had been written by someone else.

My days became a routine of beautiful meaninglessness.

Morning prayers, breakfast with my sisters where we discussed nothing important, lessons with tutors who taught me facts but never wisdom, afternoon tea with other royal women who spoke in careful phrases that revealed nothing real about their hearts, evening prayers and formal dinners, where I sat silent while men made decisions about kingdoms and businesses and wars.

I remember one particular evening sitting in our family’s private mosque for evening prayers when I realized I had been going through the motions of religion my entire life without ever experiencing God.

The prayers felt like empty words echoing off marble walls.

The rituals felt mechanical, devoid of any real spiritual connection.

I was spiritually starving in the middle of religious abundance, dying of thirst while surrounded by an ocean of formal worship that never satisfied the deepest longings of my soul.

That growing hunger for something real, something that could fill the god-shaped void in my heart was about to lead me to a discovery that would cost me everything I thought I valued and give me everything I never knew I needed.

The discovery that changed everything happened during the renovation of our palace’s east- wing library.

Workers had been updating the electrical systems and moving centuries old books to temporary storage.

As the third daughter, I often retreated to this library when the weight of my empty existence became unbearable.

Books had always been my escape from the suffocating routine of royal life, even if most of them were carefully selected by our religious advisers to ensure they contained nothing that might corrupt young minds.

On a particularly restless afternoon in March, I was helping catalog books that needed to be moved when I noticed something odd behind one of the massive oak bookcases.

The workers had pulled it away from the wall, revealing a small space that had been hidden for who knows how many years.

Wedged into this narrow gap was a cloth bundle, dusty and forgotten.

My curiosity overcame my usual caution, and I carefully extracted the mysterious package.

Inside the weathered fabric was a book unlike anything I had ever seen in our Islamic library.

The cover was worn leather, soft from years of handling, with golden letters embossed on the front that spelled out words in English.

Holy Bible.

My hands literally trembled as I held this forbidden book in our kingdom.

Possession of Christian materials was not just illegal, but could be considered an act of treason, especially for someone of royal blood.

Yet something about this book drew me like a magnet.

I quickly rewrapped it and smuggled it to my private chambers.

my heart pounding with fear and excitement.

That first night, I waited until the entire palace was asleep before unwrapping my dangerous discovery.

I lit a single candle and opened the Bible with the same care I might used to handle an explosive device.

The pages were thin and delicate, marked with notes in the margins written in a careful feminine hand.

I realized this must have belonged to one of our Christian servants from years past, someone who had risked everything to keep God’s word close to her heart, even while serving in a Muslim household.

I began reading from the book of Matthew, and from the very first chapter, I encountered something I had never experienced in all my years of Islamic study.

The words seemed to leap off the page and speak directly to my starving soul.

When I read about Jesus saying, “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” I felt something crack open inside my chest.

For 25 years I had been laboring under the heavy burden of trying to earn God’s favor through perfect prayers, flawless behavior, and rigid adherence to religious law.

Yet here was someone offering rest, offering peace as a gift rather than something to be earned.

Night after night, I would wait until the palace was silent before continuing my secret reading.

I would blow out all the lights except one small candle, wrap myself in a dark shaw, and lose myself in the pages of this forbidden book.

The sermon on the mount changed everything I thought I knew about God.

Instead of the distant, angry deity I had been taught to fear, Jesus spoke of a loving father who cared about the smallest details of our lives.

He talked about God clothing the liies of the field and knowing when even a single sparrow falls to the ground.

The parables confused me at first because they were so different from the rigid legal teachings I was accustomed to.

But gradually I began to understand that Jesus was revealing truths about God’s heart that went far beyond following rules and regulations.

When I read about the prodigal son, I wept into my silk pillowcase because I recognized myself in that story.

I was the child who had everything materially but was spiritually lost.

And here was a father waiting with open arms to welcome me home.

Something was awakening in my soul that I couldn’t control or hide.

The emptiness that had haunted me for years was slowly being filled with something I could only describe as liquid love.

When I read Jesus’s words, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” I felt like I was hearing truth for the first time in my existence, not religious truth designed to control and restrict, but liberating truth that set my spirit free to soar.

I began having conversations with Jesus during my mandatory prayer times.

While kneeling on my family prayer rug facing Mecca, I would silently pour out my heart to this man who had lived 2,000 years ago, but somehow felt more real and present than anyone in my current life.

I told him about my loneliness, my fear of the arranged marriage, my hunger for purpose beyond wearing beautiful clothes and producing royal heirs.

And in the silence that followed these prayers, I felt responses in my heart that brought peace I had never experienced.

The dangerous question started small but grew bolder as I continued reading.

If Jesus died for everyone’s sins, did that include mine? If God’s love was unconditional, why had I spent my whole life trying to earn it through perfect religious performance? If Jesus said the truth would set us free, why did I feel more trapped by religion than liberated by it? These questions terrified me because I knew they were crossing lines that could never be uncrossed.

I began searching for more Christian materials, which was incredibly dangerous in our monitored environment.

I would ask careful questions of our foreign guests, hoping to find someone who might have access to Christian books or could answer my growing list of theological questions.

I started paying attention to the Christian servants in our household, watching their faces during their work to see if I could detect the peace that seemed to radiate from the pages of my hidden Bible.

The more I read, the more convinced I became that I had found the truth I had been searching for my entire life.

But I also knew I was walking toward a cliff that would require me to choose between the life I had always known and a truth that could cost me everything.

When I whispered my first real prayer to Jesus, asking him to reveal himself to me and show me what to do with this newfound faith.

I had no idea that someone was listening at my door and that my secret was about to become the death sentence that would change everything.

For 3 months, I managed to keep my dangerous secret hidden from everyone in the palace.

I thought I was being careful, but love has a way of transforming people from the inside out.

And apparently, my transformation was more visible than I realized.

My personal servant, a woman named Fatima, who had served our family for 15 years, began noticing changes in my behavior that I thought were invisible.

I had started humming while getting dressed in the morning, something I had never done before.

The chronic sadness that had shadowed my eyes for years was being replaced by a light that I couldn’t hide, no matter how hard I tried.

When my sisters made their usual complaints about palace life, instead of joining their bitterness, I found myself suggesting we look for things to be grateful for.

During family prayer times, while I was supposed to be reciting traditional Islamic prayers, I was silently talking to Jesus and apparently the peace on my face was noticeable.

Fatima had always been loyal to our family, but she was also devoutly religious and deeply suspicious of any deviation from Islamic orthodoxy.

She began watching me more closely, noting that I seemed distracted during prayer times and that I had developed a habit of staying awake late into the night.

One evening, she commented that my face had changed, that I looked different somehow.

When I asked what she meant, she said I looked like someone who was keeping a secret.

The trap was set on a December evening when Fatima told me she needed to retrieve something from my chambers while I was at dinner with my family.

I thought nothing of it, trusting her as I had for years.

But instead of whatever errand she had mentioned, she conducted a thorough search of my private rooms.

She found my hidden Bible wrapped in silk scarves at the bottom of my jewelry chest, along with pages of notes I had written, copying verses that had particularly moved me.

When I returned to my chambers that night, Fatima was sitting on my bed with the Bible open in her lap and my handwritten pages spread around her.

The look of horror and betrayal on her face will haunt me until the day I die.

She held up the Bible and said, “Princess Yamina, what is this poison you have brought into your father’s house?” I knew in that moment that my life as I had known it was over.

I tried to explain to help her understand that I had found truth and peace in those pages, but she was beyond listening.

In her mind, I had committed the ultimate betrayal, not just of our family, but of our faith and our culture.

She told me she had no choice but to report what she had found to my father, because allowing such corruption to continue would make her an accomplice to apostasy.

That night was the longest of my life.

I sat on my bedroom floor reading my Bible one last time, knowing it would probably be confiscated within hours.

I prayed to Jesus, asking him to give me strength for whatever was coming and to help my family understand that I hadn’t rejected them.

Only found something better.

As dawn broke over the palace walls, I heard heavy footsteps approaching my chambers.

The palace guards arrived first, followed by my father and our family’s religious adviser, Imam Hassan.

My father’s face was a mask of rage and heartbreak that I will never forget.

This man who had given me everything money could buy, who had protected me from every physical danger, now looked at me like I was a stranger who had invaded his home and stolen his daughter’s identity.

The imam picked up my Bible with two fingers, holding it like it was contaminated, and began reading aloud from my handwritten notes.

When he came to a page where I had copied Jesus’s words about being the way, the truth, and the life, he stopped reading and looked at my father with an expression of pure disgust.

“Your daughter has not only betrayed Islam,” he said.

“She has blasphemed by accepting the Christian claim that Jesus is divine.

” “My father demanded to know how long I had been reading Christian materials and who had given them to me.

” When I explained that I had found the Bible hidden in our library and that no one else was involved, he seemed relieved that the corruption hadn’t spread to other family members, but devastated that his own daughter had chosen what he saw as spiritual suicide.

The religious trial was a formality that lasted less than an hour.

I was brought before a council of Islamic scholars who asked me three questions.

First, did I renounce the Christian faith and accept that Muhammad was the final prophet? Second, would I burn the Bible and beg Allah’s forgiveness for my apostasy? Third, would I submit to additional religious instruction to purify my mind from Christian contamination? My answers sealed my fate.

I told them I could not renounce Jesus Christ because he had revealed himself to me as the truth I had been searching for my entire life.

I said I would not burn the Bible because it contained God’s word and had brought me the peace I had never found in Islam.

And I explained that my mind didn’t need purification because for the first time in my life, I could think clearly about God’s love and grace.

They offered me one last chance to deny Jesus and save my life.

The lead scholar, a man I had known since childhood, leaned forward and said, “Princess Yamina, you are young and have been deceived by Western propaganda.

Renounce this Christian nonsense.

Marry the prince your father has chosen for you and live the blessed life Allah has provided.

Ask yourself what you would have said in that moment facing the choice between earthly life and eternal truth.

I looked at my father, saw the tears in his eyes, and felt my heartbreaking for the pain I was causing him.

But I also felt Jesus standing beside me and I knew I couldn’t deny the one who had saved my soul just to preserve my physical life.

I said, “I cannot and will not renounce Jesus Christ.

He is my Lord and Savior, and I would rather die as his follower than live as his denier.

” The sentence was immediate and final.

Death by public beheading for apostasy and corruption of the royal bloodline.

I would be executed in one week, giving me time to reconsider and giving my family time to arrange for the public ceremony that would demonstrate their commitment to Islamic law despite their personal heartbreak.

As they led me away in chains, I heard my father sobbing behind me, and I knew that in choosing Jesus, I was losing everything I had ever known about family, security, and earthly love.

The prison cell, where they held me for those seven days, was nothing like the luxury I had known my entire life.

It was a concrete box, barely large enough for me to lie down, with a single small window near the ceiling that let in just enough light to remind me whether it was day or night.

The walls were stained with the despair of previous prisoners, and the floor was cold stone that seemed to leech warmth from my body.

No matter how I positioned myself, those seven days felt like seven years of darkness pressing down on my soul.

The physical discomfort was nothing compared to the psychological warfare that began almost immediately.

Every few hours, different members of my family would visit, each one begging me to reconsider my decision and save my life by renouncing Jesus.

My oldest sister came first, weeping as she described how my execution would bring shame upon our entire lineage for generations.

She painted vivid pictures of the disgrace my choice would bring to my younger cousins, how they would grow up marked by my apostasy.

My mother’s visit was the most devastating.

This woman who had carried me in her womb, who had sung me laabis and bandaged my childhood scraped knees, sat across from me in that cold cell and begged me to choose life over what she called my religious delusion.

She brought photos of family celebrations, reminding me of all the joy I would miss, all the grandchildren I would never have, all the love I was throwing away for a foreign god who couldn’t even save me from an executioner’s blade.

The Islamic scholars took turns visiting as well, each one using different approaches to try to break my resolve.

Some came with theological arguments, trying to convince me that I had misunderstood Christian teachings and that Islam was the more complete revelation.

Others brought stories of Christians who had converted to Islam, painting pictures of the peace I could find by returning to the faith of my fathers.

The most manipulative ones brought tales of other apostates who had recanted at the last moment and been forgiven, living full lives of restoration and blessing.

But the voices telling me to recant and save my life weren’t just coming from my visitors.

In the darkness of that cell, doubt began attacking my newfound faith like vultures circling wounded prey.

Had I really heard from Jesus, or was I just a lonely princess who had romanticized a foreign religion? Was the peace I had felt while reading the Bible genuine spiritual experience? Or simply the psychological relief of rebellion against my restrictive upbringing? Maybe my family was right and I was throwing away a real life for an imaginary salvation.

The physical deprivation made these mental attacks even more intense.

They fed me only bread and water, just enough to keep me alive until the execution, but not enough to maintain my strength.

Sleep was nearly impossible on the cold stone floor, and the lack of rest made it harder to think clearly or remember the verses that had once brought me such comfort.

I found myself starting to recite Islamic prayers simply because they were more deeply memorized, then feeling guilty for falling back into old patterns.

By the third night, I was crying out to Jesus in desperation, begging him to give me a sign that I hadn’t been deceived.

The silence that followed my prayers felt deafening, and I began to wonder if he was really there or if I had been talking to myself all along.

I remembered the peace I had felt while reading the Bible in my palace chambers.

But here in this concrete tomb, that piece felt like a distant memory that might have been a dream.

On the fourth night, something changed.

As I lay on that stone floor, weaker than I had ever been in my life, I began to remember specific words Jesus had spoken that I had copied into my hidden notebook.

In this world, you will have trouble, but take heart.

I have overcome the world.

I realized that he had never promised to spare his followers from suffering, but he had promised to be with us through it.

The peace I was looking for wasn’t the absence of trials, but the presence of God in the midst of them.

That night, Jesus came to me in a dream so vivid, it felt more real than my waking hours.

I saw him sitting beside me in that cell, and his presence filled the concrete box with warmth and light.

He didn’t promise to rescue me from the execution, but he showed me that death was not the end of my story, only a doorway into the fullness of the life I had been searching for.

When I woke up, I was no longer afraid of the sword.

The fifth and sixth days brought a supernatural peace that I couldn’t explain to anyone who visited me.

When my father came for his final attempt to change my mind, he was shocked to see that I was no longer the frightened girl who had been dragged to prison a week earlier.

I was able to tell him calmly that I loved him and would miss him, but that I had found something worth dying for, and more importantly, something worth living for, even if that life was cut short.

Ask yourself where you find peace in your darkest hour.

Because that’s where you discover what you really believe.

In that prison cell, stripped of every comfort and facing certain death, I found that my faith in Jesus wasn’t dependent on my circumstances or my family’s approval or even my own understanding.

It was rooted in his character and his love for me, which no executioner’s sword could touch.

On my final night, I refused the last meal they offered me, choosing instead to fast and pray.

Using my fingernail, I scratched a final testimony onto the stone wall of my cell.

Words I hoped might encourage some future prisoner who found themselves facing similar darkness.

I wrote, “Jesus Christ is Lord, and his love is stronger than death.

” January 7th, 2017.

Princess Yamina.

Then I spent the remaining hours in complete surrender to God’s will, ready to meet my Savior face to face or to witness whatever miracle he might choose to perform.

The morning of January 7th, 2017 began before dawn with the sound of heavy boots echoing through the prison corridor.

I had not slept during my final night, choosing instead to spend those precious hours in prayer and meditation on the verses I had memorized from my hidden Bible.

When the guards came to escort me to the execution ground, I felt a supernatural calm that could only have come from heaven itself.

They dressed me in a simple white garment, the traditional clothing for those about to be executed for apostasy.

As they bound my hands with rough rope, I thought about Jesus’s hands being bound before his crucifixion, and I felt honored to share even this small similarity with my savior.

The walk from the prison to the public square seemed to take forever, yet also passed in what felt like moments.

With each step, I was acutely aware that I might never take another.

The execution ground was located in the center of Riyad’s main public square, a place where thousands of people could gather to witness the justice being carried out.

As we approached, I could hear the murmur of the massive crowd that had assembled.

Word had spread throughout the kingdom that a Saudi princess was being executed for converting to Christianity, and people had come from hundreds of miles away to witness this unprecedented event.

When I emerged from the covered walkway and stepped into the square, I was overwhelmed by the site before me.

There had to be at least 5,000 people packed into every available space.

Some had climbed onto rooftops and balconies to get a better view.

Television cameras were positioned around the platform, broadcasting this execution live across the Middle East as a warning to anyone considering abandoning Islam.

The execution platform itself was a raised wooden structure about 10 ft high, designed so that everyone in the crowd could see the justice being carried out.

As the guards led me up the stairs, my legs felt weak, not from fear, but from the physical toll of a weakened prison with minimal food.

Each step required conscious effort, and I found myself leaning on the guard’s arm just to make it to the top.

I had never felt so alone, yet somehow so close to God at the same time.

Looking out at the sea of faces, I saw anger, curiosity, satisfaction, and in some cases, what looked like sympathy.

My own family members were seated in a special section near the front, and seeing them nearly broke my resolve.

My mother was weeping openly while my father sat stone-faced, fulfilling his duty as a loyal Muslim, even as his heart was breaking.

The executioner was a large man dressed entirely in black, his face covered except for his eyes.

He had performed dozens of executions, and his movements were efficient and practiced.

The sword he carried was a traditional Arabian blade, polished to a mirror finish, and sharp enough to complete its work with a single stroke.

As he took his position beside me, I could feel the weight of his presence and the finality of what was about to happen.

The religious official stepped forward to read the charges against me one final time.

His voice carried across the silent square as he detailed my crimes of apostasy, corruption of royal bloodline, and rejection of Islamic faith.

When he finished reading, he asked if I had any final words or if I wanted to recant my Christian faith and save my life.

This was my last opportunity to choose earthly survival over eternal truth.

I looked out at the thousands of faces staring up at me and felt Jesus standing right beside me on that platform.

In a voice that carried further than it should have, I said, “I die as a follower of Jesus Christ who gave his life for me and for all of you.

I pray that my death will not be in vain and that others will seek the truth that I found in God’s word.

” The crowd’s murmur grew louder, with some shouting for the execution to proceed, and others seeming moved by my words.

They forced me to kneel on the wooden platform, and I felt the rough boards against my knees as I assumed the traditional position for execution.

The executioner moved behind me, and I could sense him raising the massive sword above his head.

In that moment, I closed my eyes and began reciting the 23rd Psalm, one of the passages that had brought me the most comfort during my secret Bible reading sessions.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” I whispered, feeling the blade poised above my neck.

The crowd fell completely silent, that eerie quiet that comes just before something momentous happens.

I could hear my mother sobbing in the distance and my father’s ragged breathing as he watched his daughter about to die for her faith.

Just as I reached the words, “Yay, though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, the earth began to shake beneath us.

At first it was just a tremor, the kind of minor earthquake that occasionally rattled buildings in our region.

But within seconds the shaking intensified until the entire platform was swaying violently.

The executioner stumbled and his sword clattered to the wooden floor.

Then the sky began to change.

Dark clouds rolled in from nowhere, blocking out the morning sun and casting the entire square into an unnatural twilight.

The crowd began to panic as the shaking grew more violent.

But I remained perfectly calm, somehow knowing that this was not a natural disaster, but divine intervention.

Suddenly, a light brighter than the desert sun at noon descended from the darkened sky, focused directly on the execution platform.

The light was so brilliant that everyone in the square had to shield their eyes.

Yet somehow, I could look directly into it without being blinded.

In that supernatural radiance, I felt the presence of angels surrounding me, and I knew that God was about to demonstrate his power in a way that would leave no doubt about his reality.

The executioner’s sword, that perfectly crafted blade that had ended so many lives, suddenly shattered into a dozen pieces as if struck by an invisible hammer.

The guards who had been standing around the platform collapsed to their knees, not from the earthquake, but from an overwhelming sense of the divine presence that was manifesting before their eyes.

In the chaos that followed the supernatural intervention, I felt the ropes binding my wrists simply fall away without anyone cutting them.

The thick cords that had been tied by experienced guards unraveled as if they were made of smoke rather than hemp.

I stood up on that shaking platform, surrounded by collapsed guards and broken pieces of the executioner’s sword, feeling more alive than I had ever felt in my 28 years.

The earthquake continued for what felt like hours, but was probably only minutes.

And in that supernatural chaos, I saw figures moving through the crowd toward the platform.

They moved with purpose and calm despite the panic surrounding them, and somehow I knew they had come for me.

Later, I would learn they were part of an underground Christian network that had been praying for my deliverance and had somehow known to be in position at exactly the right moment.

One of them, a woman who spoke Arabic with a slight accent, reached the platform and helped me down through the confusion.

She wrapped a dark cloak around my white execution gown and guided me through the panicking crowd toward a waiting vehicle.

The earthquake had created such chaos that no one was paying attention to one more person moving through the square.

Guards were trying to restore order.

Officials were shouting commands that no one could hear over the rumbling earth.

and thousands of spectators were fleeing in terror.

God had prepared a way of escape before I even knew I needed one.

These Christians had been watching and waiting, praying for an opportunity to help me.

And when the miracle occurred, they were ready to act.

The woman who led me to safety told me later that their network had been alerted to my situation by other believers who worked in various capacities throughout the kingdom and they had been planning rescue attempts that seemed impossible until God opened the door himself.

The journey to the embassy compound took 3 days of traveling through back roads and safe houses that I never knew existed in my own country.

I discovered an entire hidden community of Christians who had been living their faith in secret, supporting each other through persecution and maintaining hope for the day when they might worship freely.

These believers, most of them former Muslims who had found Christ at great personal cost, welcomed me with a love that demonstrated the family of God transcends bloodlines and nationalities.

During those three days of travel, I had time to process what had happened and what it meant for my future.

I was no longer Princess Yamina of the Saudi royal family.

That identity had died on the execution platform, and I was being reborn as simply Yamina, a follower of Jesus Christ.

I had traded an earthly crown for an eternal one.

And while the loss of my family and former life grieved me deeply, I felt a freedom I had never experienced behind palace walls.

The Western Embassy that granted me asylum did so based on credible threats to my life for religious conversion.

The story of my miraculous escape had spread throughout the Middle East with many interpretations of what had actually occurred.

Some claimed it was a natural earthquake with fortunate timing.

Others whispered that God himself had intervened to save his faithful servant.

Regardless of how people explained the events, everyone agreed that a Saudi princess had been sentenced to death for becoming a Christian and had somehow escaped.

Learning to live as an ordinary citizen after a lifetime of royal privilege was more challenging than I had anticipated.

Simple tasks like grocery shopping, using public transportation, or managing a household budget were completely foreign concepts to someone who had always been surrounded by servants.

But these mundane challenges were also beautiful opportunities to experience the normal human life I had always been curious about from behind palace walls.

The hardest part of my new existence was the complete separation from my family.

I knew that any attempt to contact them would put both them and me in danger.

So I had to accept that the relationships that had defined my first 28 years were permanently severed.

Sometimes I would dream about my sisters or wonder how my parents were coping with the shame they felt my conversion had brought upon our house.

These moments of grief were the price I paid for following Jesus.

But they never made me regret my choice.

Within 6 months of my escape, I began sharing my testimony in churches and Christian conferences.

Speaking about God’s miraculous intervention in my life became a way to honor what he had done and to encourage other believers who were facing persecution for their faith.

Each time I told my story, I saw faces in the audience light up with renewed hope and determination to trust God even in impossible circumstances.

My ministry gradually expanded to include helping other Christians escape religious persecution in various parts of the world.

The network that had saved my life became a family that welcomed me into their ongoing work of supporting believers under threat.

I learned that my story was not unique in its persecution.

Though the miraculous escape was certainly unusual and that thousands of people around the world were paying similar prices for following Christ.

Look inside your own heart right now and ask yourself what God might be calling you to surrender for the sake of following him completely.

For me, it was the surrender of wealth, family, security, and social position.

For you, it might be something entirely different, but the principle remains the same.

True disciplehip costs everything, but what we receive in return makes every sacrifice seem small by comparison.

I often reflect on the moment when the religious scholar offered me one last chance to save my life by denying Jesus.

In that instant, I had to choose between temporary safety and eternal truth, between earthly relationships and heavenly citizenship, between a comfortable life and a meaningful death.

Every day since then has confirmed that I made the right choice.

Not because my new life has been easy, but because it has been real in ways my old life never was.

If Jesus can save a Saudi princess from an executioner’s blade and transform her into a living testimony of his power and grace, imagine what he wants to do in your life.

Whatever prison you may feel trapped in, whatever execution you may be facing, whatever impossible situation surrounds you, remember that our God specializes in making a way when there seems to be no way.

He is still in the business of performing miracles for those who trust him completely.

And he is waiting to demonstrate his power and love in your story just as he did in mine.