She had college to finish.

She had college to finish. How would they pay for it? No. No. But as time went on we could see they were going through with it, approval or not. It was the first of May and I was out of town on a work assignment. As I viewed a video in preparation for the weekend workshop I was to conduct, I watched a segment about a missionary to India. The missionary told about walking miles in rough terrain and hot weather to reach a village. His feet were blistered and sore.

When he reached the village, he sat on a tree stump. An old lady of the village came to him with a pan of water, removed his shoes and socks, and bathed his feet. As he looked into her eyes, he said he saw the light of Jesus in those eyes. As I heard the story, I fell on my knees. "God, I have not tried to see anything in Reza. I have only resisted. I will look for your light in his eyes and find acceptance." When I saw him again after my return, I looked at Reza in a different way.

His beautiful dark eyes reflected love, gentleness, and light, and I was overwhelmed with a feeling of acceptance. My husband, Joe, also had come to accept him, so the wedding was planned for the first of August. Reza was a good man. We would share the gospel with him and, perhaps before long, he would become a Christian. How familiar the feelings and emotions are for many of us whose children are young adults. They make choices that we don't agree with.

We think we are raising them to take on our values and make the decisions which would fit our lifestyle. But somehow it doesn't work. They have options, and they often choose lifestyles different from the ones we hoped they would choose. In my collection of stories of American-born women who had converted to Islam, the overwhelming majority described growing up with a religious commitment either because the family required it or because the girl herself wanted to be involved.

Only two respondents said religion was not important in their formative years, and one had never been a Christian. Several had dropped out of church because they felt they couldn't get their questions answered, or when they left home, they no longer "had to go" to church because of parental demands. Some of these women were daughters or granddaughters of ministers. They came from fundamental as well as more liberal denominations.