This young Pakistani woman, Julie Aftab, was attacked in her office by a Muslim man incensed at the cross she wore around her neck.
It was June 15, 2002, two weeks into her new job, when the customer spotted her silver cross, a gift from her grandfather. She wore it despite knowing it branded her as Christian, a tiny minority in the Muslim-majority country.
You are living life in the gutter, the Muslim man told her.
She tried to ignore him, remembering what her mother had taught her since she was a child: "You are no one to insult someone's religion. If someone is insulting religion, they have to answer to God."
You are going to hell, the man told her. You are living in darkness.
"I am living in the light," Aftab replied.
So you think Islam is in darkness? the man demanded.
Aftab was frightened. She knew Christians had been accused of violating Pakistan's strict blasphemy laws in the past when others had twisted their words, to make it sound as though they had attacked Islam.
"No, you said that," she replied. "Not me."
But the man was enraged and returned with the battery acid and his friend. When she finally broke away from them, the acid searing her skin and throat, she ran down the street. As she screamed, teeth fell from her mouth and hit the ground.
Her struggles only worsened when hospital after hospital was threatened not to treat her, for the men insisted that she was a blasphemer. The men were briefly held, and then released without charges. Her family was persecuted and their home burned down. She was in physical and spiritual anguish, wondering why God allowed it.
Now she is in Houston, having been taken there for sugeries -- she endured 31 -- and there found kindness, therapy, and a whole new world that included education and and a home with a generous couple, Lee and Gloria Ervin.
She found a path through it all with forgiveness.
Over time, she became part of the fabric of the Ervin family, standing at the center of the group portrait shot at the couple's 50th wedding anniversary. She still lives in the couple's spare bedroom, and calls them "Auntie Gloria" and "Uncle Lee." She says she is unspeakably grateful for them, for their kindness.
She stopped wearing all black, and now calls her scars "my jewel, my gift from God."
"You don't even see the scars anymore," said Lee, 71. "You see so much beauty."
"We are very proud of her," said Gloria, 72. "We're very proud of all of our kids."
Aftab works at Lowe's in the mornings and takes classes at UH-Clear Lake in the evenings. She plans to someday become a pastor, and raises money for a safe house for persecuted girls in Pakistan.
"There is a reason God gave me life," she said. "I don't want to miss one second of it."
The Suburban Banshee has a lovely thought concerning the story:
When the Emperor Constantine called for a council of all the bishops in the Church, to resolve the problems tearing the Church (and his Empire) apart, they say he hosted the meeting, paid traveling expenses for the bishops, and made himself available to greet them. Many of the bishops had been terribly injured in the persecutions before his reign, but had survived people trying to martyr them — a status the Church called being a “confessor”, because they had continued to confess and affirm Christ despite pressure. So when each one of these confessors arrived for the council, the Emperor treated them with extra respect, and kissed their mangled body parts and scars.
This was the way ordinary early Christians often greeted confessors of any age or state in life, because their scars were holy, their advice was wise, and their prayers were favored by the Lord.
I would kiss her scars in a heartbeat, and rejoice that she has found them to be the treasures that they are.
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