A Troubled Home
Whack! Her father’s backhand caught Samrita on the cheek and sent her flailing to the ground. Again. Her nose began to bleed.
“You are worthless to me, Samrita,” he said in a Malaysian dialect slurred by drink. “You are worthless to everyone. Like your twelve brothers and sisters.”
It was the mid-1990s, and her family was imploding—splintered by fists, alcohol, and words that cut like knives. Her father drank. Her mother cowered in fear, refusing to intervene. And who could blame her?
Samrita tried to keep the peace, tried to hold her family together. “Papa, you don’t know what you’re saying,” said Samrita after he hit her another time. “You don’t mean that.”
“Oh, poor Samrita,” he mocked, “but I do.” He laughed, shoved a chair at her that bruised her knee, then staggered away to sleep off his night at the bar.
A Failed Search for Peace
At age eighteen, Samrita started seeing a young Muslim man named Uda. She viewed him as a way out of her father’s house, and they married in 1999.
Samrita embraced Islam in order to marry, but things did not go well for her. Uda slipped into using drugs and beating her up just as her father had.
“It is as if I am jinxed,” she told her friend Aisha. “You must be more diligent in your devotion to Islam,” Aisha replied. So, Samrita began praying five (5) times a day, dressed modestly, recited the Quran, and even planned a pilgrimage to Mecca; but none of these gave her the inner peace she so desperately sought.
An Unexpected Encounter
Then, one day in 2006, a most unlikely change happened.
It began with a visit from her father. Seeing her father jolted Samrita. She opened the door gingerly, warily, fearful memories of her past searing her soul. It had been a long time since she had last seen him. “What do you want?” she asked in a staccato burst of skepticism.
“Only to say one thing to you,” he replied.
“And what is that?” she asked. His eyes glistened. Samrita had never seen this look before. Something had changed.
To be continued…
Date: 28th June 2025
Martyr: Samrita (Part 1)
Location: Malaysia
Source: Tortured for Christ (The Voice of the Martyr)
Author: Richard Wurmbrand
Suffering Saturday 149
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