Love Thursday & things that made me weep
Or, on love and pain…
Often I find myself wondering why love is so powerful. How it manages to make us feel every possible emotion all at once. But mostly how empty we feel without it.
Some days I wake up with headaches so bad that I wonder if I even slept at all. Most of those days I lay in bed pondering the point of my life, but I almost always find something waiting for me that confirms what I already know is true, that there is a larger purpose to life, that my hardship is a test, and that love, no matter how painful, seems to be worth it.
Yesterday morning, I woke up to a very unexpected email. I’ll share some of it with you…
I also wanted to say that your post today about being kind to people – I loved it. I realized that my empathy/sympathy/kindness/compassion levels are at its most acute when I feel pain myself; I guess then I project the kindness I wish I was receiving… or something like that…I also wanted to say – even though we’re not in contact, or friends, or even email buddies. I love your blog, I make duah for you, and my mom, who is on hajj at the moment, has a list of names for duahs I requested her to make on my behalf (I don’t even know if that’s permissible; well, the duas will come from her anyway, so that’s also okay!), and know that your name is being called out in the holy city. Just because…
And I cried. Because somehow someone who doesn’t even know me is praying for me while on hajj.
I thanked her for her duas, and then she floored me with her beautiful words. I got her permission to share them with you…
Now you’ve gone and made me cry
Kheir, dear. If we can recognize our tests for what they are, that in itself is a blessing. I pray you derive the wisdom, strength, beauty and growth from your experience, and your new journey. Inshallah.
Yeah, life is complicated. Each and everyone of us are complicated. It’s there just beneath the veneer of ‘normality’ – our true roughed up selves.
(There’s that Jack Nicholson movie called ‘As Good As It Gets’ where one character says she just wants ‘normal’, and her eavesdropping mother in all her wisdom interrupts her by shouting “It doesn’t exist!”)It takes courage to be honest/truthful with ourselves, to stop ignoring our true voices, to live our lives with integrity. Alhamdulillah that He has given you the chance to do that. But you know this.
And He knows, and we do not.
And there’s beauty in our pain, isn’t there? The way it can soften/toughen us in turns, the way it makes us seek Him, the way it makes us feel like a child again for His love, affection, pleasure, approval, the way it makes us depend on Him… The way it can open our eyes to the Truth.
Surely only love can make us want to prayer for people that we’ve never met, only love can make us want justice for strangers suffering unfairly, only love can make us see beauty in things that on the surface look completely disastrous.
