Hillsong Melbourne East

I felt like I had reached the end. I had spent all my life with a loving family—so much so that when I lost most of them, back to back, in less than two years, it felt like my world had ended.

My name is Maryam. In my home country, Iran, I was a pharmacist. Now in Australia, my husband and I own a café. We have a daughter who is 18. In 2017, my husband, daughter, and I moved to Melbourne.

In 2019, everything fell apart. My dad passed away, and only a few months later, in 2020, my mother passed away too. When I thought it couldn’t get worse, my older brother passed away from COVID the following year. I felt like I could never be happy again. I was deeply depressed for five years.

It was hard, but I knew I had to become strong again for my husband and daughter—they needed a stable wife and mother. One day, my husband encouraged me to join the church. The church ran Alpha, and it was there I learned the basics of Christianity. The videos had Farsi subtitles, so I could understand everything in my own language.

One of the first things I heard was that God loves us all and that we are His children. That sentence deeply moved me.

From there, my understanding of God and Jesus grew—and with love, I found Jesus. After five years of sadness, I felt joy for the first time.

Since then, I’ve been going to church every week. Step by step, I’ve found my way back to the joyful person I used to be. God helped me become a good wife again and be there for my daughter the way my mother was there for me.

Now, every week when I attend church and see the sign that says “Welcome home,” I feel exactly that—at home. A home filled with peace, love, and kindness.