The story of Ico Abis
‘Your past doesn’t have to determine your future’
When I scroll through my Facebook timeline in the morning, I often come across a post from Ico Abis. Together with his wife, Andrea, he shares daily reflections on his life with God. While many people do that, Ico’s story is different. It touches me more deeply. He is seriously ill, and unless a divine miracle occurs, his earthly life may soon come to an end.
I have profound respect for him and for his wife, who faithfully stands by his side every day. His unwavering faith makes a deep impression on me. That inspired me to ask if I could interview him, so that his testimony might bless others as well.
Ico’s response was heartwarming, but also honest. ‘Good morning Wim, thank you for your reaction to my daily writings,’ he wrote. ‘If the miracle from heaven does not happen on earth, my time here will be short. I am trying to spend that time – when I have enough energy – with my loved ones. Because of this, I’m not taking on any “new” contacts. I think what you do is beautiful, many blessings to you. I will send you a link to my testimony. Warm regards, Ico.’
I understood him completely. ‘Hello Ico, I get it,’ I replied. ‘I’ve had cancer twice myself in the last five years, so I know that at such moments, especially when there’s no more medical hope, there’s very little energy left. Of course, you make the choice you’ve made regarding new contacts. Please send me your testimony, and I’ll find a way to process it. Strength and blessings from our Lord to you. Regards, Wim.’
Ico sent me links to two videos, one from an EO program and one from Xpedition Glory. I used the stories from these videos to tell Ico’s story anyway, without having spoken to him personally.
Who is Ico Abis?
Ico Abis is a man who, confronted with cancer and his approaching death, is living out the final phase of his life with remarkable dignity and faith. In his personal reflections, he shows himself to be someone who looks honestly at his past—he admits to having lived without faith for 27 years—but above all, he radiates what drives him now: a deep gratitude for the small things, unconditional love for his wife Andrea and their family, and an unshakable trust despite intense physical pain.
His body is getting weaker and sometimes he sleeps for up to 20 hours a day, yet his mind remains clear and his heart warm. He sees miracles in friends who spontaneously come to tend to his garden, cherishes the simple act of praying together with Andrea, and still attends his church as long as his body allows.
Ico is a man without illusions about his condition, but with a remarkable inner peace. He speaks openly about his “final move” to heaven, worries about the world his grandchildren will grow up in, and emphasizes the importance of peace and forgiveness until the end. His story is one of human vulnerability and spiritual strength, of consciously saying goodbye while there is still room for love, gratitude, and hope.
A youth full of darkness
But Ico’s story begins much earlier, in a childhood that wasn’t really a childhood at all. If you end up in boys’ prostitution behind Central Station in Amsterdam at the age of fifteen, a lot has already happened in your life.
‘I haven’t had a childhood,’ Ico himself says. ‘My childhood was a life full of abuse. So, no childhood.’ It started when Ico was around three or four years old. His father had come to the Netherlands and met his mother. In the mid-sixties of the last century, they left for Italy, where his father, together with his grandfather, started a cattle transport company. But there was a lot of heavy drinking, and when his father was drunk, he became very aggressive.
‘Every four days it was your turn, and you just knew you were going to be beaten up,’ Ico recounts. Often they would sit at the table, their teeth chattering from fear, thinking, “Oh dear, how will Daddy come home?” The hitting and abuse of Ico didn’t really need a reason—if his fork was just a little crooked next to his plate, that was enough reason to hit the small boy hard.
The darkest secret
But that wasn’t the only thing Ico experienced. After he had taken the beatings from his father during the day, the misery began again at night. That’s when the abuse started. From the age of five, this little boy was regularly sexually abused by his oldest brother. For more than ten years, Ico lived in fear—during the day afraid his father would come home drunk and beat him, at night afraid his brother would molest him again.
‘I was jealous of a friend of mine who had died. So that’s when you’re talking about a very young age that I already had a death wish,’ Ico confesses. A death wish—yes, as a child. To whom could he turn? No one. Perhaps he tried to tell someone, but that person told his father. There was always a kind of threat: if this gets out, all hell will break loose.
The flight into further depravity
When Ico was fifteen, the family returned to the Netherlands. His father had stopped drinking, the aggression was gone, and his brother had stayed behind in Italy because he was in the army. For Ico, the abuse and beatings stopped, but he couldn’t cope with it. He had such a sense of unrest that he simply couldn’t live at home anymore.
‘I couldn’t look my father in the eye anymore, nor my mother,’ he says. So he decided to run away from home. He took the train and didn’t really know where he could go. He ended up in Amsterdam. The first night in Amsterdam, he was taken, drugged, and abused. He got into drugs, gambling, and drinking. The addiction had begun. He fled from home but ended up in the same kind of hell, here in Amsterdam.
Ico became addicted to drugs, used a lot of alcohol, became addicted to gambling, and prostituted himself to get money. ‘Anything just to not have to feel,’ as he describes it himself. And that went on for years—years of prostitution, of using drugs, of sinking ever deeper into grief, misery, and pain.
Despair and the turning point
At 27, Ico was so far gone that he said: it’s really over now, I’m going to end my life. The sorrow was too great, he couldn’t take it anymore. ‘With that feeling, I walked outside—I’m going to put an end to it.’
But at that very moment, something special happened. Ico did have a sense of God—in Italy, the very Catholic country, he had been taught by nuns in school and had been an altar boy. And so Ico cried out to God to intervene if He wanted Ico to live.
‘If there was still a God, He had to intervene now,’ Ico thought. And that’s what happened. ‘God found it worthy that I lived. He didn’t think it was worthy that I should die.’ How did he notice that? ‘I felt peace. And I had never experienced peace. I heard birds chirping, I could smell nature, as it were, I saw joy in people. It was suddenly a kind of revelation. And the need for that addictive substance was gone.’
The road to healing
Ico sometimes walked past an evangelical church where he always heard singing. One day he stepped inside. In the church, he was approached by someone to whom he quickly told his story. This man guided Ico to get help—he went to a Christian psychiatrist and started therapy.
After many months of intense therapy, Ico discovered an important key to releasing his pain and fear from the past. ‘I experienced that healing only took place for me at the moment that I could also forgive.’ He realized: if I ask God for forgiveness for what I have done, how can I not forgive my biological father and my brother myself?
‘After I forgave my father, I no longer felt the pain and the abuse. You know they happened, but I consciously entered into a new relationship with him.’ In the last month of his father’s life, Ico watched by his bedside for a month. He arranged the funeral and spoke at the service—only saying good things. The same happened with his brother. He was also able to forgive him, and he was also allowed to arrange the funeral. ‘What did that give you?’ the interviewer asks. ‘Peace,’ Ico replies. ‘Peace and peace.’
A new life
God gave Ico seven years of peace, and then one morning he woke up from a dream in which God literally said to him: ‘What I have done for you, you can keep it to yourself, but you can also tell it to people.’
Ico applied for a job at De Hoop in Dordrecht, a rehab clinic, and was hired there. Later he worked at the Addiction Care Foundation and started his own rehab clinic. To this day, he helps people in an outpatient setting. ‘God has used the evil and the things I’ve experienced again to be able to help people later, to be able to encourage people, as it were, also to show them: even if you’ve been abused, even if you’ve been mistreated, don’t let your past determine what your future will be.’
The final phase
And now, in the final phase of his life, confronted with cancer, Ico continues to bear witness to God’s goodness. His wife Andrea is by his side daily, and despite his illness, his faith remains unshakable.
When I think of Ico, I see a man who has walked through the deepest valley a person can experience, but who, through God’s grace, was not only pulled out of that depth but also became a blessing to many others. His story shows that no life is too damaged for God’s love, no past too heavy for His grace, and no future too dark for His light.
‘Your past doesn’t have to determine your future’—that is the message Ico leaves us. A message born of unbearable pain, but carried by unwavering faith.
@Wim van Putten