HI! My name is Mary. I am just a seventeen-year-old girl from Myanmar. Today, I am going to tell you about my Lord, my Father, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is amazing; he is kind; he is loving; and he is patient.
I was born as a Christian, but I felt like I didn’t really know Jesus. But one thing I can tell you for sure is that he knew me even before my birth. He is the one who delivered me to this earth. He gave me a chance to become a human and to live according to his will. It is sad for some people who don’t know the purpose of their life; when I say purpose, it doesn’t mean their own pleasures, it means the purpose of living for Jesus.
Jesus is the one who lifts me up from any situation, and I thank him for everything. I love him, and I fear him. I love him as my father because he has promised me that he will become my father when my biological father has already passed. He chose me, he saved me, he taught me, and he loves me. He is the reason why I am alive right now; he is the reason why I got the understanding; he is the reason why I am free of my ancestors’ and my sins; and he is the reason why I agree there is love.
Jesus saves me every day, of course, yet I want to share the four unforgettable savings he made in my life. The first saving is related to everyone on earth. He saved me for the first time, knowing that I am not even a particle yet, which means he saved me when I wasn’t even born yet. That saving changed the whole world, the whole population, and generation after generation.
Yes, the first saving act was when he chose to die for us on the cross, despite knowing that he was afraid. He chose to die brutally on the cross to take away our sins, my sins, so that we could have a chance to spend our whole lives serving him and meeting him one day. He prayed to his father before going out to die, and his prayer,
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
broke me. He was afraid, yet he knew if he didn’t die on that cross, on that day, the sins of humanity would remain forever, and we would go straight to hell because of our wicked characteristics since birth. Just think about this: I was screaming when I was just tripping onto the floor, but imagining Jesus getting nailed on his hand is something we humans cannot do for others. What hurts me the most is that he chose to die on the cross, not because he didn’t have any other ways to live, but because he knew he needed to do this for humans.
He died for others, and that is what I call ‘love’. No matter how much I love someone, for me, it would still be very hard to die for them, but what Jesus did was something that came out of his love for humans. He lets me understand this when I was struggling with loads of questions in my life, and he lets me know that there is love in the world. As a child who grows up with such a mixed environment and internet, the cases of cheating, violence, and a lack of maternal and paternal love are often seen or heard. So, I always thought, There is no love, and it was all just an excitement to become something in life.
But Jesus proved to me I was wrong. There is love from him, which no one on earth cannot imitate. He is the love; he is the life; and he is the law. Just to think, if he doesn’t love us, he wouldn’t choose to die for us and be made free from our sins. His death was not peaceful: he was humiliated, he was insulted in front of many people, and he was criticized for trying to save people.
He taught me about the true love that he has for everyone. Then he rose up from death and took away all of our sins to show that we are free from our sins. That was the first time he saved me. I am very thankful to Jesus, as he taught me a lot about him and his unconditional love for us. But every time I commit such sins again, I feel guilty because of what he taught me about his death. I thank Jesus for reminding me every time to go against what he doesn’t like. And that shows that after the major saving in my life, he still saves me for every little treat in my life. Thank you, Jesus, for letting me understand this before it gets too late, and thank you, Jesus, for letting me know your unconditional love for me.
Then he saved me for the second time, and this saving is so precious to me and my parents. This saving means a lot to me as it is related to my life. When I was born, I almost died. Yes, I was having jaundice at that time, and it was all about emergencies. The situation is that if I don’t change blood (that is what I understand), I am dead. I was dying, and my parents were crying and praying.
My mother had to rush to the hospital right after I was born because it was urgent. She was running for me with her stitches, and my father suffered a lot because his wife just gave birth, and now his daughter is in the emergency room. I didn’t understand anything, but now Jesus has made me realize how blessed I am.
He chose me. He has saved me since my first breath; he saved me just right after I was delivered into the world. Without his miracle, I wouldn’t be sitting here sharing my stories, or I wouldn’t be a girl named “Mary.” For me, I was chosen by people. I didn’t get love from my grandparents like other kids do, and some of them hate me as well. I wasn’t chosen to participate in my school events because there are a lot of kids better than me. I was rejected by teachers, and I wasn’t the one who was always academically smart. And, I am not even sure whether my father loved me or not till his death because, of course, there was a family problem.
But, Jesus, he sees me, he sees my weaknesses, my true self, and still he chose me. He saved me, and he gave me a life. One thing that is intriguing is that I am the only child in the family, and it is not because my mother and father are done with having kids. It was because, medically, their blood types are not suitable to bear another child in their lives, which means I am the first and last child they could get. If I die, there is no chance for them to bear another child.
My parents prayed so hard that my father even cried out in the hospital, asking for help from Jesus to save me. I thank my parents for not giving up on me, and above all, I thank Jesus for giving me a chance to live. He showed his miracle. Not only did he let me live, but he even gave me healthy organs and body functions.
From that time on, my father gave me another name, “Ywar Eh Poe ” (a dialect name), which means “A child the God loves”. I feel very blessed to have been chosen by Jesus since the second day after his birth. And that is the second time he has saved me. I will never forget what he has done for me, and I am very thankful that he reminded me of what he did for me; otherwise, I would be just busy thinking about my own life and how to spend my youth, only thinking about my desires.
The third time he saved me was when I was at my lowest point in life. I was sixteen at the time, and two years ago, my father passed away. I guess I still haven’t recovered from that event because, as I mentioned above, my father loves me so much (for some reasons, I don’t feel like it sometimes), and he worked his whole life to support the family.
I was out of control when I heard he had died. It got worse when he died at home, and I was there when he took his last breath. Yes, I chose not to stay beside him, and my mother told me that maybe he wanted to see his daughter for the last time before the time came. Why I didn’t go to the room where my father is lying is because I knew that if I saw my father taking his last breath, I wouldn’t be able to do anything in life again, or I wouldn’t be able to lift myself up again. I know I was wrong because Jesus is always there for me, and I didn’t see it.
I distanced myself from Jesus and just worried about my father; in another way, I was losing faith at that time. And after my father’s death, things got more intense. Unexpected things happened; my father’s relative came and asked to give them back his possessions, and of course my mother refused it.
Mother is a kind of short-tempered person, so in their eyes, they might see she wanted to start the fight. I have seen them fighting multiple times, shouting, cursing, and hating each other. We went through several courts because it has also been done within the lawsuit, but the case hasn’t even been settled yet. I lived with my fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen, watching them argue over almost all the little things. Yes, we are living in the same house, so it is never the end of the battle.
Because of this case and my father’s death, I had to move to that house in that town and got stuck for years. I isolated myself from people in the town and only socialized with my old friends, probably only five of them. I was struggling mentally as I thought I was romanticizing and craving for older and opposite-sex love. I guess that is what they called the “daddy issue.” I became a short-tempered person, and I couldn’t control myself from sinning again and again.
But one day, I felt like the Holy Spirit started talking to me directly. It was the month of July, and I started to pray again, read the Bible again, and talk with Jesus again. Then, I decided to do something. At that time, I was praying to Jesus to give me my seventeenth birthday present, as I repented and asked for his forgiveness in every prayer. I knew that he would answer me, so before I even knew what birthday gift I would get from him, I wanted to thank him.
It all worked, but only because of God’s mercy, and he even gave me a chance to wash away all of my sins again. That time, he prepared a trip for me to go back to my hometown to get baptized at my hometown church. I was so amazed because that was exactly what I asked for, and he was giving me it. And it is also a chance to fight back my loneliness, as I got a chance to go back to my friends. All was fine until my stupidity ruined his special gift. I lived my life like before again; I was out of control again, and even right after the baptism, I still went back to my old life.
But at that time, he gave me the foundation for how to communicate with him and to have him in everything I do in life. I was disappointed in myself, then I distanced myself from him again. However, I would say it was his third saving grace for me, because if it weren’t for him, the situation would get worse and I would probably just be living my life inside a cave.
I thank him for all the things he has done in my life. I thank him for feeding me every single day with different meals. I thank him for giving me peace. I thank him because he is the reason I can sleep peacefully every night.
Although the civil war is happening in the country, Jesus is keeping me and my family in a safe place. I thank him for the air that I breathe every day. I thank him because I don’t have to worry about water and food every day, and I thank him for giving me a good education. I thank him for the brain that he gave me and the wisdom that he put into my heart. I thank him for my family, for giving me such amazing parents; I thank him for my friends, my cousins, and my pets. I thank him for letting me have dreams in my life and for being with me. He will guide me and then show me the best path for my life. Amen!
Amen to your prayers Mary. Our Lord is always with us to love us.