WaterBrook Multnomah, 2015, 240 pp., $25.99
She was not your typical teenage runaway. She made headlines, but not for the usual reasons for a girl her age. Perhaps you remember hearing about her—a 16-year-old native Sri Lankan growing up in a Muslim family in Ohio and running away in fear for her life.
Rifqa Bary has wisdom and strength of character that’s virtually unmatched, which readers will learn early in her memoir, Hiding in the Light. Having lost an eye during a squabble with her older brother, she subsequently was neglected by her mother. In time, abuse at the hands of family members escalated.
Having been invited to a prayer group by a young neighbor in New York and then to church with a classmate after her family moved to Ohio, Rifqa increasingly felt a call on her life that she could not deny.
“It’s been a long journey for sure,” she says. After running away, enduring a two-state custody battle in the court system and bouncing around in protective custody and foster care, she also was diagnosed with a rare uterine cancer. At each turn, she chose to live by faith.
“My fears really were solidified as I heard stories of other teenagers being beaten and killed for lesser reasons (e.g., becoming too Westernized). They could be beaten just for questioning—it didn’t matter.
“I was hurting, and there were no answers. I didn’t see any purpose for all of it and was hungry for something more, hungry for truth,” she says.
Though she misses her family, she admits she would have done nothing different with one exception: “Now that I’m older, there’s nothing I would change about leaving my family. But if I had known I never would see my family again, I would have enjoyed the good things about being in a family, like my mother’s cooking.
“I’m in college now, and seeing other moms send care packages makes me miss my family. The church can love and embrace me, but it’s never the same,” she says.
“I was leaving everything I knew. Following Christ has cost me that, and a lot of that has had to be grieved…I wish I could’ve conveyed to my baby brother how much I love him.
“I just can’t look at my story and think God does not exist—it’s all the grace of God. If there’s one message, it’s that Christ has been my Rock, and I’m able to know Him in a deeper way. I learned to pray because my life depended on it.”
After all she endured to gain her freedom, Rifqa took five years to heal, during which time she sought counseling, as well as went to India to work in an orphanage. Today at 22, she is a cancer-free college student, majoring in philosophy and minoring in political studies with the intent to pursue law school upon graduation.
“Experiencing the court system is gruesome—it hurts both parties—but I’ve always had a strong sense of justice. I can look at it now as such a gift my journey gave me and want to fight for others the way people fought for me,” she says.
“There was a point when I was being held in detention; it was like prison. I was in shackles and chained at my waist. I was so frustrated and kept thinking, ‘What did I do wrong?’ Then I felt the Lord say, ‘Sing to Me,’ and thought, ‘What? You want me to sing to You?’ So, I began singing Matt Redman’s ‘Heart of Worship.’ Suddenly my fear of death was gone, and I thought, ‘It’s all about Jesus, and I’ll be here for the next 20 years if I have to.’ God is with us no matter what. The thing I want to tell people is they are not walking alone.
“When I hid my faith from my family, I was very young. Age does not have to be a limitation. God is worth living for; and in America, it is so easy to follow Christ—but everything is through the strength of prayer. There is so much in Jesus. Someone else’s story may not look like mine…but there is a calling on their lives,” she says regarding today’s youth.
“At 18,” when she legally was free as an adult, “I really couldn’t write the book, and I didn’t know why, didn’t have any answers,” Rifqa says. “Then I realized I was traumatized, so I’ve had these five years to heal and look back, and now I see my story as something to be shared. My hope and prayer is that my voice shakes people and brings awareness to this issue.”
Right now, Rifqa’s hands are full with school, though she hopes to continue writing. “There may be more books,” she says, “because I don’t think my story ends here.”
