Here I am

Your calling My name is My reply.

Your longing for Me is My message to you.

All your attempts to reach Me are in reality My attempts to reach You.

Your fear and love are a noose to catch Me.

In the silence surrounding every call of "God" waits a thousand replies of "Here I am."

- Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi

Supplication for the sinner's heart

My God is sufficient for me, o Allah the All Sublime

None other in my heart but Allah

The light of Muhammad, peace and greetings for him

The light of Muhammad, peace and greetings for him.

Allah's promise

People in love never want to admit that human promises are temporary. They promise each other faithful love, a good and easy life...they promise "forever." But we are only human.

People break their promises all the time, sometimes out of ill-will, and sometimes simply out of their fragile humanness. It is only Allah (swt) whose promises are never broken and whose promises are eternal.

"Allah has promised the believing men and believing women gardens beneath which rivers flow, where they abide eternally, and pleasant dwellings in gardens of perpetual residence; but approval from Allah is greater. It is that which is the great attainment" (9.72).

Allah promised believers Jannah, and His approval and satisfaction with us. When Allah (swt) promises us something, it is not like a promise of a human being. His promises are not contingent on other people or circumstances or a short lifespan. He is the Ever-Living and His promises are absolute.

We also promised something to Him. We made a covenant with Allah (swt) when He first gathered all the souls that would ever come into existence. We all recognised and testified to His Oneness, acknowledging that no being is worthy of worship except Him. That was our covenant, our contract, our promise. Most of humanity has broken this promise.

But still, He gives us blessings and He grants us all that we ask and He promises us something far better than what we have. There's something better waiting for us than the broken pieces of this life that we are desperately trying to glue back together. He promises us forever. On the condition that we fight against our fragility and selfishness to uphold our promise to Him, too.

"So be patient. Indeed, the promise of Allah is truth" (30:60)

- Asmaa Hussein

Like a dandelion, I sway in the wind, struggling everyday to be Your better servant Ya Allah, Ya Rahman, Ya Raheem.
O Ya Allah, forgive me for all my broken promises to You. Please forgive me.

Spring break in DC

It is finally Spring. And does time pass by so quickly these days. It is already the second week of April. Temperatures are rising though there have been sunny days but terribly cold due to the wind.And believe it or not, we had snow on the first day of Spring. What a way to celebrate Spring eh!  Today is Sunday and boys will be back in school tomorrow after about one and a half week of Spring break. We went to DC last Friday evening for the weekend and was home by Sunday evening. Could not get away longer as the other half could not get any doctors to replace him at the clinic, thus leaving for DC at 8pm that Friday. Well, alhamdulillah, it was better than nothing. Boys had a chance to see most of what DC is known for. In short, we spent the whole of Saturday at the National Mall. For those who are not familiar with DC, the National Mall is not a shopping mall. It is basically a stretch of area where you have all the monuments and museums on your left and right, and at one end is the Lincoln Memorial while the other end is the Capitol Building. So here is where you find the Smithsonian castle, the Air and Space museum, the Natural History Museum, the Art Gallery, the Sculpture Garden, The Korean War Veterans Memorial, the Museum of American History, the Washington Monument aka the Big Pencil, among others, and I mean many others. Trust me, one day is not enough to cover everything. Especially when there is a long line for the museums. One end to another is about 2 miles/ 3.2km walk and did we walk, haha. Thank God the boys were good with all the walking we did. They used to complain when we had to walk a lot but this time, they were really good about it. 

The gorgeous Smithsonian Castle

We did not manage to cover everything, just the Smithsonian castle, the national art gallery, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, the Korean War memorial and a few gardens that we walked through, and the Air and Space Museum after the second try (we walked away after the first try due to too many people with the longest lines ever). We only sat outside the Natural History Museum as there were also lines. But Thaqif had gone there mid last month as he was in DC as one of his school's representatives to the Model United Nations Conference in Washington DC area. So he was not complaining about not being able to get in. And Ruiz was like, "oh we can always come back". Hmmm...

We meet again Mr President

Anyhow it was a very very windy day that Saturday. Wind aside, it was actually a beautiful sunny day. There was a pillow fight taking place at the park between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. Not too sure what the pillow fight was for but it got bigger each time with more and more people joining in. I believe most of them were students and as we walked back to the Smithsonian area, we met young adults carrying pillows heading for the park. Some others were there, flying kites so it was a pretty good and colorful sight. There were many food trucks and that caught my attention and my tummy's attention. Long lines there too and most of the food trucks had 'Halal" written on them, so it was way easier for us. We had lamb on rice and lamb gyros picnic style, sitting in the park, on the grass under a shady tree, scrambling to cover our food each time the wind blew like crazy.

The Washington Monument

All in all, it was a good getaway for us despite it being just a short weekend. The other half drove around the Embassy Row the next afternoon before we left DC and the areas around Dupont Circle. The houses and surroundings there reminded me of the suburbs of London. It was like stepping into suburbs like St. Albans (which I had dreamt of staying at once upon a time, many many years ago) and it was simply beautiful. I said aloud that maybe when Thaqif  goes to George Washington University if he is actually and truly interested in political science (since he is into all this UN stuff), we could probably move there and have a house there in that particular area, in one of those gorgeous looking London suburb look-alike houses, and get a chance to keep an eye on Thaqif's progress. And he quickly quipped  , "I thought you said you want to camp outside West Point because Ruiz will be there and you need to keep an eye ON him." I rolled my eyes. Yes, ok, thank you for reminding me that.

Statue of Gandhi at the Embassy Row

As life moves on, death comes knocking

Been too long. The last time I wrote was almost a year ago. What can I say? Well, I can say that I was too busy, that I had for a time lost my passion to write, that the day was passing by too quickly and that I had too much to do that writing on this blog had to pass, put aside for another day. Another day became weeks, months and almost a year. And I am back now. Wanted to for a while but never finding myself in front of the laptop. Always an errand to run, the boys to attend to, a cake to bake, clothes to fold, house to dust, floor to mop, a book I had been hoping to finish a month ago to catch up on... always something that needed more attention than my writing.

I can say that I actually missed writing. Maybe even found my passion back which had been kind of lackluster in the months that had passed. I want to be able to do this as often as I can, just like I wish I can read as often as I can. But then, again, there is always something else that needs my attention more than this, so we will see. Take it a day at a time, no promises, no guarantees.

This was in the morning.

Since I last wrote, summer had come and went. Fall too. And now winter is in its final days. Spring is already in the air. Temperatures rising to a nice cool breeze even though the wind today is so strong that I refused to go out for my run or I will end up frozen. My neck cannot stand the cold, it goes all tight and stiff but that is a story for another day. Anyhow the snow is melting now. This morning I went "ooh I can see the grass again." We had a good battering last week with an 8-inch snow. It snowed in the wee hours of the morning at about 5 am and went on until the evening and I had a gala time shoveling, and ended up with sore shoulders. Signs of aging perhaps?

Where the front steps should be.

Snow all over and inching up.

Finally, the snow is melting away.

A book from Lincoln a number of years ago

It's been a sad week too. On Monday morning, got a call from the ex that a friend of ours Lincoln, an Aussie residing in Jakarta had passed away. He was a guy who was full of warmth, great charm, lots of kindness and he was so funny, you  are guaranteed to be laughing away when you are with him. He was first introduced to the boys and I by the ex. And he was so good to us, referring to himself as Uncle Supermodel Lincoln and the boys were very fond of him. He had cookies and snacks for them each time they were at his apartment, and he was also the one who got the boys the chance of a lifetime of swimming with the dolphins. The last time I met him was three years back when he came down for a short visit to KL. He came to the house and I had made some pecan pie and we had always caught up on Facebook, a short note, always a loving note from him for me and the boys. It was so sudden. He was supposed to be back in Sydney, so close to his mom and always talking about his mom to us. But it seems that he fell in the bathroom about a week or so after his birthday in February, short of a week or two before he was supposed to leave for Sydney. The whole story is still unclear as I have yet to hear from the ex who is now in Jakarta attending Lincoln's cremation and staying till the weekend. But I know he was admitted and discharged last Thursday. And on Sunday started vomiting and was taken to the hospital by close friends, and passed on that night after 10pm. The news caught me by surprise and I just felt so very sad. It was surreal to hear and acknowledge that he is now gone. The world is less funny now without him, that is for sure.

And that same day in the evening before I went to bed, read on Facebook that a course mate who had been in coma for the last three weeks had too left this world. Mutual friends said that she went to the dentist and had a tooth pulled out a few weeks ago. A day or two later, she developed fever and fainted and was brought to the hospital. Blood tests revealed that she had acute leukemia, stage 4 and she quickly fell into a coma soon after. What is sad is that she never woke up, and family and friends never had a chance to say goodbye to the conscious her.

Death makes you think of your own mortality. It makes you sad to hear of friends who had passed, friends whom you did not have a chance to say a last goodbye. But it also makes you think about your own death. Makes you think about how fragile life is on this earth. Makes you think about your relationship with Allah and if you are anywhere close to ready of returning to Him for He is the Ultimate One and with Him is the ultimate destination.

Death makes you  wonder if God considers those who had done good in life but had not followed His path. You pretty much think you know the answer to that but at the end of the day, you don't have the answers. You cannot tell for sure. It is a mystery to us all. We will only find out when we have "stepped" over to the other side. By then, it will all be too late to blog it down. Ah... my attempt at making things light.

Mysteries, Yes

Today, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity,
while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always,
from those who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their head.

- Mary Oliver

Farewell Lincoln.  Al-Fatihah Kay-Own.