The Uyghur Who Saved My Faith

Photo by Gabrielle Johnson, Chasing Horizons Photography

An Essay by Amanda Nowlin

It was a dark time for me. Everything I thought I knew, thought I believed in, felt like it was collapsing. Doubts choked me. Questions taunted me. Guilt suffocated me. I was in a fight for my life. Spiritually, yes, but the carnage had spilled over to the physical realm. Nasty habits and addictions snaked up from the past and tightened their claws, digging into my mind and flesh. 

I was on the brink of shipwrecking my faith. I was disillusioned with some of my so-called Christian brothers and sisters. They weren’t who I thought they were. Now, I wasn’t even sure Jesus was who I thought He was. If He was even real. Everywhere I looked, I saw only darkness. Questions and doubts rained down like flaming arrows. Cynicism seeped like cyanide through my veins.

How did a Christian, a ministry leader, a pastor’s wife, end up like this? That's a different essay for a different time. But one thing I want you to hear is that anyone can end up in the dungeons of Doubting Castle. Anyone can forget they hold the Key of Promise. That was me, and I almost gave in to the Giant Despair. 

But the Good Shepherd didn’t leave me there. 

What miracle would it take to break me out of that cold, dark prison?

 An Uyghur Muslim named Rabia.

She had recently moved from China to the United States, and she saw my husband at a coffee shop with a Bible. She had questions. He gave me her number. He knew the battle I was fighting; he had held me through many nights of crying and yelling. But he hadn’t given up on me, hadn’t given up on the Spirit that dwelled within me. 

I met with Rabia, trepidatiously at first. I felt like a fake, a fraud. But there was something that urged me to reach out to her. Day one, you want to know what she said to me?

“Please tell me, I want to know about Jesus.” 

A bit of a shock went off inside me, like flint sparking against the cold stone of my heart. It was as if the Holy Spirit was saying:  “Here you go. Tell her who I am. ”

A mental battle ensued. 

“But I can’t. I don't know what I believe anymore.  I am just a shadow of myself. I have nothing left to give….”

“That’s okay,” The quiet voice replied. “It's not about you. What I need you to do is to tell her about Me.”

So I told her what I knew. Rote words at first, things I could say by heart but no longer felt. I showed her the scriptures to answer her questions, but without the conviction I used to have when I read them myself. The demons inside hissed:  “What a hypocrite, what a fake, what a washed-up excuse for a Christian…”

But then something started to change, like a slow thaw after an ice storm. I started to remember all the ways I knew Him to be real. 

As I shared His stories from the Gospels, I watched Rabia’s growing excitement. And I began to hear this story, this amazing story of a God who loved His people so much He sent His Son.  This story, of a God-man who interacted with broken people. This message, that He welcomed all that came to Him: no barriers, no works, no perfection required. I saw how He pulled them to Himself; I remembered how He pulled me to Himself and had never let me go. 

As she asked questions, I began to answer for both of us, speaking truths out loud that I had let myself forget. Sharing hope that I had misplaced. 

The chains rattled and the door of my prison opened. I had woken up, a fire rekindling in my heart. 

A few months ago, Rabia asked if she could be baptized because she wanted to physically show that she had given her life to Jesus. The church leaders asked me if I could be the one to do this honor. I cried at the request, remembering what darkness surrounded me during those early months of my meetings with Rabia. I cried because I knew this new birth, this awakening in her soul that she wanted to celebrate, was nothing of my own doing, yet I was allowed in all my brokenness to be a part of her transformation. I cried because she had not been the only one transformed. Her awakening had been my re-awakening. 

Both of us were teary as she declared her faith before the crowd gathered around us, and as I lifted my Uyghur sister out of that water and heard those familiar words, “raised to walk in the newness of life,”  I again felt the fire in my heart burning bright. 

Rabia tells people that God used me to save her, that I am the one that told her about Jesus. In reality, she is the one that God used to do the saving. She reminded me of who Jesus is, sparking revival in my heart and keeping my fire from going out.

***

Pastor’s wife, homeschooling mom of 4, Florida girl. Literature,nature, adventure are my things. I struggle. I doubt. I make mistakes.I write about the grace and goodness of God that sustains me through it all.https://riversinthedesert.substack.com/