This year has brought me to my knees more times than I can count, but each time I’ve fought my way back up again. Broken, bruised, and hanging on by a thread and yet, Allāh ﷻ brought me back from the brink of my nightmares and considered me worthy enough to keep breathing life and light into.
In the past, I've made mistakes that have lain on two ends of the spectrum - 1) doing too much too soon, and 2) taking on such a graduated approach that I end up doing nothing at all. And now, I want to strike the right balance.
You’re the only one who can decide the direction you’re going in, and sometimes, just sometimes, it feels nice to know that Allāh ﷻ is out there watching your back in the sense that you will only go through what He wants you to grow through.
We tend to think someone isn’t listening if they don’t immediately respond, right? But, I’ve been trying really hard to unlearn this. To understand that Allāh ﷻ doesn’t give you what you want when you want it, but rather what you need in its due time, whether that’s in the next minute or the next 10 years.
We are all struck in that moment by just how lonely life can become when you have no-one to share it with. We are all a moment of stillness in this busy coffee shop. We are all a collective moment of realisation and reflection.
By synchronising your tongue with your heart in all aspects of your life, you free yourself from the box that others have/will put you in. You free yourself to exist. But most importantly, you free yourself to live. Take the time you need to understand who you are at your core, and I promise, it will make it all worthwhile.
The days are dark, and the light seems as though it will never shine upon us, but we’re going to power through anyway and hold on to the most powerful thing we have, hope. The tides will inevitably change, and our paths will too often stray from the linear one we’d hoped for it to stay on, but that isn’t always a bad thing; sometimes what we need is different to what we want and it is in the right timing and situation that all which is right for us will align and make its self apparent.
On the good days and the bad, I reached out for my comfort book and read it cover to cover until my little brain pleaded with me to change it up a bit and read something new. But, my goodness, that book changed me.
And that’s the biggest difference in this new year of life. For so long I have lived for everyone else that I forgot that I’m a person too, and I deserve to be cared for by me.
On some mornings I still stand in front of the mirror for a minute too long and have to fight the urge to knock all of these products off the sink, but I have to take a moment to remind myself that this is for me. It hasn't always been for me, but it is now. I owe it to myself to be kind to my body, mind, and soul.
