Yusraa

  Something changes as you are hammered into pieces again and again. To pick up the broken pieces after each disappointment or fall,sometimes makes the heart more empty. But things change when you reach the threshold of what you can bear. I've always heard, " Allah does not burden a soul beyond what it can bear. " As life's falls break you multiple times, to a point that it exhausts you and the pain becomes unbearable to an extent that it renders you immobile, with the thought I can't do this anymore. I'm too tired. I've reached my limit.  And as the tears seep through the prayer mat in salah, somehow as you get up, you find yourself pieced together,almost perfectly,  yes there is a memory of the scar, but it's not like just roughly placing the broken pieces together but rather a healed set of broken pieces -new with a new kind of strength. And with that you tred on with life. I guess that's the stage when hope felt crushed, that perhaps you'd ...

     There are times when it feels like a burnt iron rod is being driven into your soul. And from its fire, parts of the soul withers away. And you can witness the remnants fading into ashes. You barely heal before another rod gets driven into you and it repeats again and again, sometimes you cry out, it never escapes and it doesn't stop burning. As the fire spreads and burns your soul, you drag your feet to salah. It sounds so bitter when you call upon God, it tastes like you're being made to eat mud and be thankful. There's an angry voice at the back of your mind, which keeps telling " If He was that Merciful, He'd have spared me the pain, at least granted me death, He doesn't hear me. I called upon Him day and night to be only met with a deafening silence." And the mind tells you it's hopeless, it's not real when your heart still prays for miracles. And through those moments that break us, and from the deafening silence, you kind of understand p...

Do this. Don't do that. Don't wear that dress. Don't wear perfume. You can't go for trips. Do,don't, do, don't, do, don't. Growing up, I always thought of Islam as a set of rules and regulations, this box you draw around yourself, so that it would get you a ticket to heaven. But as I grew older, the box started suffocating me, resentment started crawling into my heart. If everything was just a set of do's and don'ts, why was I created as a human being and not an angel?      I was always told that Allah (swt) created the humans and jinns with free will, and the angels do whatever that is commanded of them. It didn't make sense that He would create a human being with desires, and expect him/her to give them all up and restrict themselves to the box or else they'd end up in Hell. Why would God create in such a way? Why would God put us in that situation? Why would He create us, take our memory of Him away from us, and expect us to comply with th...