NRB Chronicles 2023 - Trafficked As A Child - Jon Heymann and His Book -AGONIZING PEACE: Powering Through Traumatic Experiences

Well, it's a continual feast here on the NRB floor with the convention in 2023. As I get a chance to see so many amazing things that God's doing, so many neat ministries. And one of my favorite things to always talk about has been how, you know, it says in 2 Corinthians that God comforts us with a comfort so that we can comfort others with a comfort we are comforted with.

And I think I have the poster child for that today as we have John Heyman. Am I saying it right? And he wrote a book that's obviously based on his life story of an agonizing peace. Yes, correct, Robbie. But there was a lot of agony that went into that peace it looked like.

Yes, absolutely. It sure was. It would have been a lot easier to write a children's book. But my wife encouraged me to tell the story of my early childhood experience in Athens, Greece of being trafficked. Literally given up by somebody.

I do not know who my parents are. And they dumped me off at an asylum inside of a bread box. So New York Times called us bread box babies. And from that experience of being trafficked, if anybody has watched the movie Slumdog Millionaire, they know exactly what I'm talking about. That's how we were treated as little kids. We had to beg up on the Parthenon, that very famous building in Athens, Greece.

And if we didn't bring back enough money from the tourists that we tried to either beg from or steal from, we got beat up and beat up pretty bad. So that's my early childhood experience. My book, Agonizing Peace, was written not just about me, but about people that have had agonizing, traumatic experiences and how to gain the peace of God back in their life again. So it's not your story. Well, it's my story. Yes, but it's not a full memoir of my story.

So I tell... Go ahead. No, no, you were saying there are other stories? Yeah, there's other stories. Stories of, you know, anybody who has gone through something traumatic, such as the loss of a child or a soldier that doesn't come back from war or a car accident or a husband that takes off with another woman. Things that really rip at your soul and makes you question not only the existence of God, but whether God exists and loves me. And can I have peace with God through this traumatic experience? So yeah, I wrote the book for people that have been burned by other people who have given silly reasons of why they're going through what they're going through.

Yeah, that's a challenging topic as well. So how did God get a hold of John? Well, through the American Mission to the Greeks, which is AMG International these days, back then it was simply for the Greeks. And a Greek scholar, Spirit Zodiades, and my mother, who volunteered for his mission group, was the first to adopt children from Greece post World War II, when Hitler had decimated the country of Greece. And it was tremendous poverty. So again, why we children were given up, I don't know.

I don't know who my parents are. I don't know who dumped me off in that bread box of that asylum. That asylum building is still there.

It still looks as disgusting and crazy as it did when I was a little kid. But I have to be clear here, Robbie. I'm not angry at Greece. I'm full-blooded Greek. I'm not angry at Greece.

I'm not angry at Greeks. I'm angry at the people who did that to children. And Jesus was too. He said, you do this to children, there'll be a special place in hell for you.

And he said, and for the children, there'll be a special place in heaven for them. And so yes, trafficking still goes on today. It is still awful. But I'm here to say God still loves people through the most traumatic experiences that you can go through. He doesn't decree these things.

He doesn't want these things to happen. But they are clearly an example of the sinful world that we live in. And until God redeems this beautiful earth for His honor and glory, we're still going to have awful things happen. People will do awful things to people. Yeah. It's a dark world and lost people do. They have their father, which gives them information that they shouldn't follow. And it's a very, very tragic thing. So obviously there was a missionary that came and got a hold of your mother?

Yes. My mom adopted me and my sister. She was not my blood sister. She just came over on the plane with me. Was she from Greece as well? She was from Greece, the same asylum, but she was a little baby.

She has no memories like I do. So we were both on the same plane. We got off. And my American family, my Greek name is Ponderlamon Kudinos, but my American name is John Heyman, J-O-N-H-E-Y-M-A-N-N, hence the author of the book, Agonizing Peace. But when I got off the plane that night in New York City, my family here in America are very huggy people and I didn't want them to touch me. Because when adults touched me in Greece, they hurt me. So it was two years before I would ever let my mother hug me in the kitchen of our Teaneck, New Jersey house. And I put my, just like it was yesterday I remembered, I put my arms to my side.

I was stiff as a board. I did not hug her back, but I did let her hug me for the very first time. And the Bible talks about the power of love. You know, love covers a multitude of sins. And once you are loved, and I mean that not in a corny way, because everybody has a blood family, the family you were born to, and some people have a love family. And my book is about bringing the two together. You hope that your blood family loves you, but sometimes that's not the case.

It wasn't for me. And I love hearing stories of people that were born and, you know, brought up in wonderful Christian homes and their blood family is their love family. But I was blessed to be adopted into a love family. And the Bible talks about adoption. That we are adopted by God into His love family.

And that's part of the purpose of my book is to draw people back to the peace of God. How old were you when your mom hugged you for the first time? Seven years old. Yeah, I was five years old when I was adopted. Seven when I let her hug me. And the, you know, trauma doesn't go away that fast.

I wish it would. My nightmares lasted until I was ten, and they were very vivid nightmares. I'm glad I don't have them anymore. As you can tell, Robbie, sitting across from me, I'm not ten anymore. However, they went away after about ten years old. I do not know why. I wish, I mean, one of my master's degrees is in psychology and I can't even figure myself out.

But I don't know why they went away. And Robbie, honestly, I start my book by saying, if we knew everything about God, He wouldn't be much of a God. I mean, I don't even know everything about my cat. And yet we know enough about God to trust Him, to know that He loves us through traumatic experiences.

We know enough about Him for all those reasons. And I give illustrations in the book even of Elton John's song where in The Lion King he sings that song where he says, Some people soar to the stars and some live with the scars in the circle of life. It's a cool song, but he offers no answer to that.

So in my faith in God through Jesus, I believe in God and I get some of the answers while the atheists and agnostics have none of the answers. So it's really cool that your wife talked to you about writing this book and you were faithful and you began to write it. Often when you are obedient to what God has put on your plate, I find, especially with authors, that God sneaks up on you and blesses you with something you did not see coming. I didn't see that coming at all. So I'm very curious, in your case, John, what was it you didn't see coming?

Oh my gosh, you mean just recently through the book? Robbie, one night my wife and I put out on a big dining room table three huge pieces of paper. One was book, one was speaking, one was consulting.

Heymanconsulting.com. People will see that. Speaking, I've spoken all over the place. 300,000 people. And we put the three and realized, okay, nobody's biting at the book.

So we're going to put that aside because we believe that perhaps God only wants me to center in on those two other things after I left the nonprofit world. And 1030 at night one night, she had already gone to bed or her sister was visiting, and I get an email. 1030 at night from Carice Publishing saying, we're very interested in your book. We're a traditional publisher.

You don't have to pay for anything. I was very enamored with that because self-publishing, nothing wrong with self-publishing. So that came back on the table again, and I finished it. I have been writing it. I finished it in three months, which I've never written a book before in my life.

They published it three months after that, which usually it takes about 18 months. And plus all the edits? Oh, all that. Oh, my gosh. We went through about six, seven edits.

Yeah. So again, God bless both my ability to write it because I've never written a book before. I gave it to my wife, who is an English language arts teacher, who's very critical of my writing, rightfully so. And she just looked up at me one day and said, John, this is your voice. And I did not expect that. I thought she was going to say, this is awful.

You need to. And I went, wow, this is God speaking. I need to finish this book. And that was just chapter one. There's 11 chapters in the book. And she was an incredible encouragement and my biggest editor.

I did have a professionally edited as well. So, yeah, that was my biggest surprises. Ten thirty at night, a traditional publisher said, we want to publish your book. So that was clearly of God because we had put it aside. Isn't that how it works?

I mean, I mean, it really, really is. So how did you end up here at the National Religious Broadcasters? There is somebody that is helping promote the book through interviews.

So I have been interviewed from Cyprus, the island of Cyprus, all the way to L.A., Detroit, all over the country through the Greek Orthodox Network. And then also through Corice as well, the publishing and through people that I'm I'm very familiar with. So I've been very blessed as far as putting the knowledge of the book out in the public eye. And I really would love people to obviously look at the book. I think it would be a tremendous encouragement.

I talk to that. I talk in the book about surrendering your life to God, not just some kind of a corny walk up walk. And I don't mean this corny if you were saved this way.

I was saved by walking up the aisle at nine years old. But I'm talking about a true surrender, just like Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane when when he said, not my will, Father, but yours be done. That's true surrender. When we surrender, we do not lose. We gain with God. We gain power, love and a sound mind. That's what he said in Second Timothy one seven.

Oh, it does. And you get all that. And in spite of the trauma, if if if you walk with him, he'll he'll bring back like joy for all that. Our peace in the race for agony, peace that passes understanding, rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice.

Both of those were spoken by a man, the apostle Paul in prison, falsely accused. Beautiful. Yeah, it is. Well, John, God bless you. And thank you for, you know, taking that journey and sharing with a lot of folks who I'm sure need to need that need the message. Thank you, Robbie.

And they can find the book on Amazon, Books a Million, all those outlets. Yeah. Yeah. By all means. Again, the name of the book is Agonizing Peace, Amazon, all those places. Thank you, John. Thank you. God bless.