God Transforms Our Caterpillars Into Butterflies: Yvonne Orji & Naghmeh Panahi
Content Warning: This episode mentions violence and may not be suitable for all listeners.
Yvonne Orji: The seed was sown very young, but not a seed that I ever thought would be planted into a tree. God will do what He says He will do. The Bible says, “Blessed is she who believes that what the Lord said about her would be accomplished.”
God Transforms Our Caterpillars Into Butterflies: Yvonne Orji & Naghmeh Panahi – Episode #391
Narrator: Welcome to the Jesus Calling Podcast. Do you find it difficult to believe that you have a life that could be used for good in the world? We tend to minimize the gifts and talents God gave us, wondering how we—just one individual—could ever make a difference. Nature gives us a beautiful example in the way a small, unassuming caterpillar is eventually transformed into a colorful, winged butterfly. When we believe in ourselves and the unique abilities God has given us, and open ourselves up to sharing those gifts with the world, we create impact in a way that might touch lives for years to come.
Actress and comedian Yvonne Orji was raised in a Nigerian family, and she was shaped by traditional views on family life: a hard drive for pleasing people, and a fear of failure. When her dreams of becoming a doctor didn’t pan out, Yvonne began looking at her own unique gifts and leaned into those, which led her to becoming an actor, writer, and producer. Advocate Naghmeh Panahi made headlines when her husband, Saeed, was arrested in Iran for his Christian beliefs. As a missionary herself, Naghmeh had seen many of her friends persecuted for their faith, and was determined to get her husband released—despite the abuse she faced in their marriage. Naghmeh found herself with a huge platform she had dreamed about as a child, and the opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives all over the world.
Let’s start with Yvonne’s story.
Yvonne: Hi, everyone. My name is Yvonne Orji. I’m an immigrant woman from Nigeria, but I grew up in America. I love Jesus and I am a comedian, actress, writer, producer, and budding director, amongst other things.
Nigerian culture is very male-dominated as a lot of other cultures, even American, but there is a specific emphasis on what a woman can do and how a woman should be raised. She should be demure and cook and be subservient and all that. And I was not at all that.
When my mom would try to get me to cook, I’m like, “Oh, are the boys also going to help out? Because I see them outside playing super soakers.” I was like, “Guess who’s also not going to be in the kitchen? Uh, me.” I would always kind of question things. And it was always like, “Oh, please, Yvonne, a woman should be seen and not heard.” And I just didn’t love it.
When my father would be holding court, it would be him and all his friends and they’re outside either at the lounge or the polo club, laughing. And I would sit on his lap and I wanted to engage with the men in that way because women weren’t invited. And even my dad was like, “Are you enjoying senor jokes?” You know, like, “Why are you here?” But I was just like, “I want to hold court.” I didn’t know that I wanted to be a comedian. I just wanted to be the center of attention, like that thing that I wasn’t allowed to do because that was such a man thing to do. I was the outlier.
And whenever people say, like, “Oh, you’re a pioneer, you’re a trailblazer, you’re ahead of your time,” I think they mean it as a compliment, but it’s actually triggering for me because it just emphasizes how lonely the process is. Like, all of those people are often misunderstood. All of those people are often demonized. All of those people are often isolated. So there is a version of me that still carries that high bar of achievement and performance. But at the same time, I’ve learned in the last year or two to give myself grace.
An Unexpected Path to Comedy Success
I quickly realized after I didn’t get into George Washington University medical school sophomore year of college, I was like, “Ooh, I don’t know if this is it for me. I just don’t know what else I can be.” So I entered the Miss Nigerian American pageant.
Two weeks before, they come back and they say, “What’s your talent?” I don’t have one. My talents are getting straight A’s, but I can’t perform that on stage, you know? And so they’re like, “Well, so sorry, everyone who competes has to have a talent.” I go to pray like, “Hey, Jesus, what’s up? Me again. I need help. They tell me this is where You come in. I need a miracle because I’ve got nothing, it’s two weeks.” And I hear, “Do comedy.”
And being as though I’m the one that came to Him for advice, I was like, Could it be that God sees something in me that I don’t even yet see in myself? So I spent the next two weeks walking around my house being inspired, like, What is it that I find funny? Having this duality of being both Nigerian and American. And to my surprise, I get enough material for a five minute set. I perform it, people laugh, and I’m astounded.
“I was like, Could it be that God sees something in me that I don’t even yet see in myself?” – Yvonne Orji
A couple of months later, I applied for the funniest college student competition. I [used the] same materials, all I have is five minutes. I win for GW. And part of winning is you get to perform at the DC Improv. So it’s me and fifteen other comics. I’m the only girl. I don’t end up winning the whole shebang. But at the end of the show, I’ll never forget it—an Asian guy and an Indian guy come up to me and they say, “You are so funny. You remind us of our moms just with a different accent.” And that was the first time that I felt my specificity actually had universal appeal.
The seed was sown very young, but not a seed that I ever thought would be planted into a tree. God will do what He says He will do. The Bible says, “Blessed is she who believes that what the Lord said about her would be accomplished. [Luke 1:45]”
Breaking Through Fear of Failure
Failure, or potential failure, or just submitting to the potential of failing, you learn so much about you in the process. One thing I talk about is how God “tricked” me into the life of my dreams. I had an experience where an agent pushed me to do something that I didn’t feel I was ready for. And the anxiety that ensued was because for the first time in my life, somebody was giving me the luxury, the privilege, of potential failure. And that’s not a thing that I was accustomed to.
“For the first time in my life, somebody was giving me the luxury, the privilege, of potential failure. And that’s not a thing that I was accustomed to.” – Yvonne Orji
I contacted Heidi, my agent, and I was like, “Hey, can you get me a twenty minute set or something small, like nothing crazy.” And she was like, “Oh, let me see what I can do.” And then she called back and was like, “I got you your first headliner.”
My fear was rejection. My fear was the one thing I had been trying to avoid in my adult life, God is placing me directly in the eye of the needle to potentially receive it. And it scared me so much. But I also, in addition to perfectionism, I also had people pleasing. I don’t want to disrespect [Heidi’s] hard work. And so then I was like, “Okay.” But immediately, the sweat, the bullets, all the things. And then in my mind, I was like, How does this get sabotaged? You know what? They won’t sell tickets, and they will have to cancel the show. They sold out in like a matter of days.
Like food poisoning, fear is one of those things where if you push past it, you might throw up, you might move about, it doesn’t feel good in the moment, because you are not on the other side of it to see, What if God has something? But then you do it and you overcome it. And now you can’t see yourself without it.
“Like food poisoning, fear is one of those things where if you push past it, you might throw up, you might move about, it doesn’t feel good in the moment, because you are not on the other side of it to see, What if God has something? But then you do it and you overcome it. And now you can’t see yourself without it.” – Yvonne Orji
Narrator: To learn more about Yvonne, check out her book, Bamboozled by Jesus, from your favorite retailer.
Stay tuned to Naghmeh Panahi’s story after a brief message.
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Our next guest is Naghmeh Panahi, who made national news when she advocated for her husband, Saeed Abedini, to be released from prison in Iran. The complexities of her relationship with her husband came to light later, as she admitted that she had suffered abuse at his hands. She walks us through that difficult and troubling time and how she turned to God for help to do the right thing.
Naghmeh Panahi: My name is Naghmeh Abedini Panahi. A lot of people knew of me as Naghmeh Abedini when I was advocating for my husband, Saeed Abedini. Currently, I am the executive director of a ministry that helps women who are going through abuse. It is called the Tahrir Alnisa Foundation, TAF.
I grew up in a very strong Muslim family. Two years after I was born, in 1979, the Islamic Revolution happened in Iran. Iran had already been a Muslim country for 1400 years, but in 1979, it became an Islamic Republic, which meant Islam became the law of the land.
When I was three, in 1980, Iran entered an eight year war with Iraq. So all I really remember from my childhood was a lot of chaos and bombs and tires burning, whether it was for the revolution or soon after the war. I could hear bombs and missiles. Seeing a lot of my friends from school dying, seeing them in the rubble, and hearing the sirens.
At an early age, seeing a lot of death and war really made me and my twin brother… we were really questioning who God was. And that’s where our journey of trying to wrap our minds around God and suffering and war and death really started when we were really young.
We came to the U.S. when I was nine years old, and I remember going to school. One of the most confusing things to me, or interesting things to me, was in elementary school when they asked me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Which is a normal thing that children say to each other. And I remember thinking, Wow, I’ve never thought about this. Growing up in war and revolution, you don’t really think about growing up.
“One of the most confusing things to me, or interesting things to me, was in elementary school when they asked me, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ Which is a normal thing that children say to each other. And I remember thinking, Wow, I’ve never thought about this. Growing up in war and revolution, you don’t really think about growing up.” – Naghmeh Panahi
When we came to America, we were still Muslim. Within a few weeks or few months—I don’t know exactly how long—of us coming to America, my brother… I had seen his emotions through the war and through all the chaos. He didn’t cry very much, but he came to me crying and said, “Naghmeh, I found the God we’ve been looking for. His name is Jesus.” And I was really shocked by his emotion. I was really shaken. And I said, “What are you talking about? Who’s Jesus?” And he said, “I had a vision, I saw Jesus, and we need to know who this Jesus is and we need to follow Him.” And that is what put us on a journey of becoming followers of Christ at nine.
Someone gave us a Bible, the person that shared about who Jesus was. We were running around our neighborhood, asking people who Jesus was. Someone told us, and they baptized us in the swimming pool in that townhouse.
Returning to Iran as a Missionary
I had left Iran as a Muslim. I went back in my twenties as a Christian. My prayer was, “God, I want to see nations get saved, especially those in the Middle East, especially the Muslim nation, especially Iran, the country I was born in.”
There were a lot of stories coming out of Iran of people getting martyred for their faith, that they were being killed. Some people that I knew were actually found dead because of their Christian faith, because of the threats they had on their life.
Almost everyone in our church at some point was either detained or arrested or in prison. Some people that were close to me were tortured and going through solitary confinement and all of that. I got to see the plight of the persecuted church for the first time, and the fear of gathering in homes just to pray together, just to worship together, just to read the Bible together. The fear of being caught with a Bible, it carries the death penalty. And I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.
“I got to see the plight of the persecuted church for the first time, and the fear of gathering in homes just to pray together, just to worship together, just to read the Bible together. The fear of being caught with a Bible, it carries the death penalty. And I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.” – Naghmeh Panahi
And I think that was the seed, that the blood of the martyrs is a seed of the church. I think that’s what started the revival, because Iran had been Muslim for 1400 years with no revival. And as I went back in 2001, God allowed me to see thousands and thousands of Muslims get saved and see revival, see the Holy Spirit move, and just get to see for the first time what was happening in Iran. And right now, Iran is one of the fastest growing nations in the world for Christianity. So that’s pretty exciting to have been part of that.
And years later, almost a decade later, is when I was given a platform to address this and call out Iran on their persecution of Christians.
Meeting Saeed
I went back to Iran in 2001, I think I was twenty-three at that time, and I was invited to go to a building church.
This is no longer the fact, but at that time, there were still building churches in Iran where the government allowed for buildings to exist. And so the church wasn’t underground. And so I was first invited to go to a building church, and I was afraid. I knew a lot of the martyrs that came out of that church. It was heavily persecuted, and I was afraid of being found out. So I didn’t go to the building church. I kind of started my own Bible study with cousins and friends, and within a year, five came to know Jesus.
And as I was about to leave Iran and come back to the U.S. and finish my medical studies, one of my cousins who was a recent convert convinced me to come to the building church. And I said, “You know what? I’ll do it because I’m leaving, and I’m not coming back.”
And that’s when I saw Saeed for the first time, he was in worship. He was very charismatic. He was up on the pulpit, on the stage. He was worshiping with all his might and his charisma and passion for Jesus really drew me to him. We ended up getting married in Iran, we were leading one of the largest, if not the largest, house church movement in Iran. Within two years, we had planted churches in thirty-three cities that had no churches in 1400 years. And so it was growing very rapidly and we were constantly arrested.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards made us leave Iran towards the end of 2005. And then Saeed and I landed in the U.S. in 2006. My daughter was born in 2006, my son was born in 2008, and then Saeed really felt that time had passed, he could go back to Iran.
Following God’s Guidance
So he went back in 2009, and he signed an agreement with the Iranian government that he wasn’t going to touch house churches anymore, but he would help with humanitarian efforts, such as helping orphans. So he was going back and forth from 2009 until 2012. In 2012, he got arrested.
I prayed and fasted and wanted him to be released. I was a full time working mom with two young kids. I had little money in the bank, maybe a few hundred dollars. So how was I going to get my husband out of one of the worst prisons in the entire world, in one of the most radical countries in the world? I didn’t know. The only way I knew was to get on my knees and pray.
“How was I going to get my husband out of one of the worst prisons in the entire world, in one of the most radical countries in the world? I didn’t know. The only way I knew was to get on my knees and pray.” – Naghmeh Panahi
And after four months of prayer and fasting, right around November, is when God confirmed to me, “You need to go to the media and I will use it for the Gospel. I will use it for your good.” And I couldn’t understand why, I had never been in the media. I was afraid of it. And a lot of people don’t know the subtle ways of having been caught up in an abusive marriage.
There were definitely physical beatings. Later, I found out there were multiple [instances of] adultery and cheating in our marriage, but I didn’t know at that time. I had become a shell of a person. What I wore, how I dressed, my makeup, how much I weighed, who I talked to, family members I saw, everything was being controlled by Saeed. I’d kind of come under his complete control. It was a very hard marriage. And so when I went to the media, I was not confident at all. I felt I was not pretty. I was not well-spoken.
I remember my first media interview, I stepped out in faith, and I saw God telling me to do that as I was reading His word and I was praying, God was encouraging me and building up my confidence to step out.
“I stepped out in faith, and I saw God telling me to do that as I was reading His word and I was praying, God was encouraging me and building up my confidence to step out.” – Naghmeh Panahi
From there on, it exploded. I was on Fox or CNN, all the major medias you can think of, from the New York Times, The Washington Post, to Christian media, non-Christian media. And that led to the open doors of meetings with Presidents Trump and Obama.
As a nine year old, all I prayed was, “God, give me the nations.” And one day soon after Saeed’s arrest, maybe not even a year, I was at the United Nations in Geneva looking at the U.N. President. Next to him was the secretary, and all around were all these ambassadors. And above me was this glass circle of all the interpreters. As I shared about Jesus, as I shared about, “Saeed is in prison because he believes that Jesus Christ came to this Earth and died for our sins,” and as I gave the full gospel, I became very emotional because I remembered that prayer as a nine year old. And here were all these nations hearing the gospel in their own language. That was pretty emotional. I got to be a voice for the persecuted church. The people I had seen get arrested and beaten and killed because they simply follow Jesus, I got to advocate for them and be a voice for them. And that was encouraging to me.
“I got to be a voice for the persecuted church. The people I had seen get arrested and beaten and killed because they simply follow Jesus, I got to advocate for them and be a voice for them. And that was encouraging to me.” – Naghmeh Panahi
God Will Set You Free
Something else that was happening in the midst of all of this that I didn’t know, but God knew, was that God was setting me free. I was trapped in a very abusive marriage and I was dying. I was dying inside. My relationship with God was really bad. In the back of my mind, I thought maybe God wanted this for me. And so my relationship with God had gotten to a place where I rarely read the Word, I rarely prayed, until Saeed’s imprisonment when I cried out to God and said, “God, what are you doing? My life’s already hard. You’re making my life harder.” But I didn’t know at that time that what God was doing was He was setting me free. He was separating me from my abuser so that the fog of confusion, of abuse, was lifting and He was setting me free as His daughter.
“I cried out to God and said, ‘God, what are you doing? My life’s already hard. You’re making my life harder.’ But I didn’t know at that time that what God was doing was He was setting me free. He was separating me from my abuser so that the fog of confusion, of abuse, was lifting and He was setting me free as His daughter.” – Naghmeh Panhi
It’s like a caterpillar fighting through the cocoon. And it becomes a butterfly as it bleeds through that struggle. I was fighting to get Saeed out of prison, but God was setting me free from the prison of abuse. Even some of the letters he was writing, I was thinking, Wow, he’s changing. He’s going to be a new man. It’s going to be a new marriage. I’m going to go around the world and tell people, “Hey, if you love your husband enough, if you lay down your life enough, you can save your marriage.” And God didn’t let me do that.
My husband came out. He was supposed to be there for eight years. I got him out after three and a half by the help of God, by grace of God.
He divorced me. That divorce was so devastating to me. But for God to bring us out of that and revive us with His love and refresh us something that could crush and destroy anyone into a deep place of darkness and depression and anxiety through Christ… to actually survive that.
The old me did not survive. The way I was thinking before, even in my understanding of who God was, of my thinking that He wanting me to stay under oppression, that He wanted submission into abuse and corruption. I changed as I read the Word of God. It transformed me and I [went] from a caterpillar to a butterfly.
And so that’s what we have in Christ, is all of the ups and downs and twists and turns and the shattered dreams and the heartaches and the loss. All of that, we come out victorious. We come out full of hope. We can come out full of joy and peace and be rid of all the darkness and anxiety because of Christ alone. The outside world doesn’t have that, but we have it. But it requires striving. It requires seeking and knocking and asking and not letting Him go, holding on to His cloak and saying, “I’m not letting you go.” And pursuing God, the joy and peace can be there in any of our lives as His children, no matter the situation, no matter the loss.
“The joy and peace can be there in any of our lives as His children, no matter the situation, no matter the loss.” – Naghmeh Panahi
To come out refreshed and full of joy and peace, let me tell you—the peace I have, no matter what circumstance comes to me, the everyday anxieties of life and pressures of life and struggles, I know where to go. I know I go immediately to the source, and He fills me with peace.
Narrator: To learn more about Naghmeh, check out her book, I Didn’t Survive: Emerging Whole After Deception, Persecution, and Hidden Abuse, at your favorite retailer.
If you’d like to hear more stories about radical transformation in Christ, check out our interview with Damon West.
