Hardship, worship and imaan

[Salikah Muslimah]

Asalamu 'alaikum wa rahmatullah,

I am writing this post in order to seek advice. If I mention any good, it is solely from Allah and all of the bad is from myself.

Al hamdu lillah, this year has been a tough year for me. You could say it was my year of grief...but I have some concerns that I really wish to raise. My problems started actually straight after ramadhan , which was amazing, but true. I fell ill with a bad flu and started to become really inconsistent with acts of worship (not obligatory though al hamdu lillah) because I was deprived of energy. Even my qada prayers suffered, I tried to, but I was even just barely managing to pray my fard and sunnah prayers. May Allah forgive me. Then I had a little respite, maybe just a month...Afterwards, the closest friends I had started to neglect me and it started to cause tension etc and when I found out the truth, it hurt even then. We had a minor seperation for 2 days, then it was normal again. Then again after about a month's respite, it was me who did a mistake and that cost my valuable relationship. This was the greatest hardship, al hamdu lillah 'ala kulli haal. I was left without any close companion, but I still praise Allah, al hamdu lillah. I tried to remain patient, I knew it was a test from Allah...there was nothing I would want to take from this life to the next, except these friends (closer than blood sisters)...so I saw that one of the most precious things to me was taken away, al hamdu lillah, Allah gives and takes as He pleases. The lonliness was at first really scary and in a sense painful.

What the objective of my discussion is, is what happened to me spiritually...I knew this was a test, I tried to calm myself down etc. However, I went into a lot of grief regardless. It affected my worship (again not necessarily the faraid), it was like energy sucked out of me and sometimes when I wanted to worship like I used to, I would try and try, then just burst into tears...I would raise my hands in dua and cry and cry. I knew and still know that Allah would alleviate my condition, so I put my trust in Him. Yet sometimes, during study, the memory would come to me, I would lose concentration and all I wanted was to go and pray. So the time for fard salah would come, I probably wasted so many tissues...but I needed to have a few tissues or a whole tissue box next to my musallah when it was time to pray. The time of salah was the time with my only friend Allah...I could only cry in front of Him. When I was with people, I tried to make it hidden that there was something wrong with me. My family have no idea that I have had a hard year.

I found that I just couldn't pray my qada salahs though, I was saddened more because of this. I wanted to, I did, but again I would burst into tears and end up making du'aa. I have never really wanted, al hamdu lillah, for a musibah to go away...I wouldn't mind being in hardship if it were not for the decrease in worship etc. So I would supplicate to Allah that "I don't mind being hardship, just bring me back to strong imaan" (paraphrased), I would also continously supplicate to Allah to give me energy to pray my qada prayers...I still do. Later on, al hamdu lillah, Allah listened to me and I regained energy regardless to pray my qada. Due to my lacking on the qada prayers, I vowed to Allah that I would never stop praying qada salah until death...unless I lacked energy. So I daily pray one day worth qada and I pray that I never will stop. Al hamdu lillah, I took the advice of the prophet sallAllahu 'alaihi wa sallam, to say those du'aas he mentioned to Umm Salamah upon her loss. Life became much better, my tears started to dry and slowly slowly the Fajr problem that I gained (waking up late, or at times missing it) has started to fade. Those sisters, I still love for the sake of Allah and yes it hurts at times...but it doesn't interfere with my life anymore as much. I have grown into lonliness and I spend some of my time talking to different sisters, advising them if needed or just getting to know them briefly and trying to form sisterhood with them...although it will never be the same again.

Two issues that come from this: 1) Was I patient during my hardships? All of that grief etc, falling back on worship, where did that come from? 2) Has anybody experienced this kind of deep love for much greater reasons and how did it feel etc...

Sorry for any mistakes,
jazakum Allahu khair.

[Anonn]

Walaikum Assalaam dear sis,

I think this a sisters problem

May Allah (swt) always protect us from hardships and give us istiqaama in our deen. Ameen

A similar situation happened to me when I was in school... but it was the other way round. I didn't used to be very practising at school and had the 'wrong' type of friends, nonetheless was very close to them.. and gradually Allah (swt) started to put a distance b/w us such that I also became 'isolated'. But it was in this period of down mood/sadness that Allah aza waj'al guided me to His deen. So alhamdulillah, there might be something that we dislike, but in it is a lot of khayr.

Secondly, this deep love problem... been there also. When i started to practise more, I met a really wonderful sister. Anyhow we got talking for the sake of Allah (swt) and became really close. I had such a deep love for her that it started 'distracting' me from the dhikr of Allah (swt). Hence in this situation, I felt it was best if I distanced myself from her. It was hard but once again, i picked up in my Deen.

Anyhow I'm not sure if what i've said is relevant to your situation. The most important thing is our deen and good company helps. One thing we need to always keep in mind is that we need to be deeply attached to AL KHAALIQ not AL KHALQ, that's the only way we can attain true happiness and sukoon.

Allahuma habbib ilaynal imaan, wa zayinnaho fee quloobina.

[Salikah Muslimah]

May I ask one question sis, how do you know that it starts distracting you from dhikr etc? I am human and cannot really tell, if it did or not...

[Anonn]

Like your focus totally becomes your friends. In tasawwuf terms it's called 'waqoof e qalbi' i.e. your heart gets fixated on something and all you do is think about that thing, talk about it etc. We should ONLY be in this state with Allah (swt), where we are totally absorbed in His rememberance, not in the rememberance of creation and created objects. Hope that makes some sense.

[Salikah Muslimah]

Aha, I see al hamdu lillah. I have heard of wuqoof yes Al hamdu lilah. When I was very spiritual alhamdu lillah, actually trying to imitate a mureed of a particular tariqah, I remember I would start doing dhikr within our gatherings if I wasn't being included...infact one thing that contributed to the killing of our friendship was that all I could want to talk about was Allah etc and this probably scared them a little- all praises are due upon Allah, it wasn't due to me... And when I got into weak imaan, that is when all of these problems started to occur...ssubhanAllah...please pray that I re-attain that state inshaa Allah and better.