A Beautiful Time of Life

Today is the beginning of a new journey, in a sense. Today is my first official day working full-time from home. It is also the first day of my husband’s new job. The timing couldn’t be better between the two, because with both of us working now again we have managed to avoid childcare costs since I no longer have to commute.

I will be returning to the office sometime after my maternity leave, but I don’t expect to do it all at once. Perhaps I will start going half-days first, and when Shukurah is closer to 6 months old in shaa Allah I can do full days there again. By that time we should have enough budgeted for any childcare needs for her and Jabiyr, since the older two are now at the age to be able to be home after school without an adult.

I never planned on working from home, but the truth is my pelvic symphysis problem was getting worse. The pain started at 8 weeks gestation, but at that time it was only uncomfortable and annoying. As the weeks progressed my ability to do certain things became more limited. Over the past month, it’s gotten to a point where my husband has had to help me bathe, get up the stairs, and he basically has assumed all the housework. Too much going up/down the stairs hurts me. Too much sitting (which is what I couldn’t avoid working in the office) hurts me. Too much walking hurts me. There are so many things that aggravate the condition, and I knew that the only way to more easily finish the rest of the pregnancy (which I am not yet halfway through) was to stop doing as many of those things as possible. So I talked to my manager yesterday after what had been one of the worst weeks of chair-sitting pain, and he approved me to telecommute for the remainder of my pregnancy. I will get whatever paperwork I need from my doctor at my Monday appointment.

So for now, I spend the majority of my time laying on my side (making sure to keep my legs parallel) in bed. I do get up for small things and I try to do some light cleaning/organization when I can, but when it starts to hurt I stop. I imagine I will be spending a lot more time online in the coming months because of this, and I suppose there’s not going to be a better time to write the story that has been percolating in my dreams either.

This also gives me more time to reflect on things and thank Allah for the blessings that have been coming. Like I said, my husband started a new job today. He will be making authentic Puerto Rican food on a food truck. He has been talking lately about wanting to get a food truck and do something like this, but at least now he gets the chance for some experience with someone who he vibes well with. That doesn’t always happen in the restaurant business. Plus he gets to learn some cooking from his heritage, as he is half Puerto-Rican himself but missed out on so much when his dad passed away during his early childhood.

The biggest blessing this week was of course finding out I was pregnant with our daughter. It’s been such a momentous thing for both Bashir and I. I think in some ways, the way losing our first daughter Nadhiyrah had hit him so hard, he lost hope in himself. The grief has been so deep all these years that it’s been hard for him to talk about her at all. I think he believed that when Allah took her away, it was like He was telling Bashir that he wasn’t good enough to raise a daughter, and that just made him give up on himself in a lot of ways. Now, having Shukurah is like a second chance, and Bashir is showing energy and hope I didn’t know he was capable of having. Something special is happening in him, and it gives me hope for us too. I’ve been making dua for weeks that Allah help him with his 3 biggest character flaws, and there have been improvements. Shukurah is making these changes worthwhile, I can tell.

And I’m not exempted either. I carried around a lot of incompleteness all these years that is now being filled knowing that I will raise Shukurah in shaa Allah. One of the biggest things for me, when I was going through the painfulness of the polygamy, was wondering how things might have been different (read less difficult) if somehow Bashir and I had not been put back together, and I had managed to move on eventually with someone else. Of course I had thoughts that if that could’ve happened, I might have had the daughter I always wanted with whoever that would’ve been. Yet, now that it is Bashir and I having this little girl, there is a “rightness” that can’t be matched about it. Only he and I went through Nadhiyrah’s loss together. Only he and I have longed for her and felt an emptiness where she should be in the years since then. Only he and I could appreciate what it would mean to hold another little girl in our arms again. And masha’Allah, that’s exactly what we’ve been given. I can’t imagine any other outcome with any other person feeling this blissful, and for that I’m so thankful for the way everything has gone- despite the hardships it came with.

And that’s another reminder that we really don’t know what’s coming, especially when things are looking bleak and hopeless and too heartbreaking to bear. We want out, we want ease, and we think we know what’s best for us. But time and again Allah shows that those who persevere, who turn away from the illusion of the circumstances and back to Him, and who nurture sabr, those are the ones who are ultimately gifted with outcomes that could never be imagined or matched. Alhamdulillah!!!

Finding Strength in a Question Mark

I was searching the internet the other day for articles on how to find out what motivates oneself. I wanted to know what motivates me because quite honestly, regarding my last post, I have a preference for a particular outcome. What I don’t know is whether that preference is from my nafsani, selfish desires, or from a loving guidance outside of myself (and no, I’m not going to indicate what exactly my preference is here). I’m the type of person to get lost in ideas like “you might love what’s bad for you and hate what’s good for you”, or seeing things in too much grey and not enough contrast or color, and so I mistrust a lot of what I think is coming from me and work very hard to keep my intentions and motivations under constant scrutiny.  I am fearful that my own subjectivity will mislead me or misguide me.

So out of boredom and lack of meaningful search results I took this short quiz that was supposed to tell me what motivates me. I originally didn’t expect much, but the answer was surprisingly helpful and I was astonished I never thought about it before: I am motivated (in part, I’m sure) by curiosity.

I’ve always known I’ve been extremely curious.  In fact, it’s been something that has outweighed any sense of fear that most people have in many situations the majority of the time.  I’ve also been relentlessly accused by friends, spouses and teachers of asking too many hairsplitting questions, so I know how extreme it can get. It’s also gotten me into trouble because snooping is a too-huge temptation, and has led me to engage in what was arguably obsessive and stalkingish behaviors when I’ve had crushes on others in the past.

But curiosity, I’ve realized, is the foundation to any resilience I might have.  I’ve had people tell me I’ve gone through things and come out of them in ways that astonish them. Some of my friends have told me that they keep expecting me to break (as I guess most people would) when certain experiences came my way, but I never did. Now I certainly don’t have that idea of myself, in my own mind when I find myself feeling desperately depressed I think I am breaking. In my mind I would never get that low, so I am not that fantastic. But I can’t deny that after the crises are over, I find my way back to a stasis that even I never thought I would arrive at…and the whole reason is because my curiosity buoyed me.

I remember when I was about 5, my grandparents went on a road trip across country in their vintage Chevrolet Malibu convertible (we were towing a trailer behind it). I will never forget when we drove through Oklahoma, because I had never seen mud so red or so many oil wells looking like wingless birds slowly plucking worms from the ground. The highlight of that road trip was being able to get a new smurf figurine at every gas station stop.

One night we stopped at a KOA campground somewhere in OK.  We were all sound asleep in the trailer when this huge explosion woke us up. I didn’t know what it was, but of course my grandparents hurried to find the source and before I knew it my grandmother was scurrying me off to the primitive restroom to urinate before we escaped right away. As we were making our way there, I saw one of the nearby birdie-oil wells engulfed in flames not far in the distance, and I realized that must’ve been the source of the explosion. I remember my grandmother trying to help me get dressed in one of the bathroom stalls while I was shaking, and she told me not to be afraid. I thought this was silly, because in my mind I wasn’t afraid at all….I was actually wondering what caused the fire to begin with and whether or not it would spread or exactly what would happen.  So I told her, “Mama, I’m not scared, it’s just my bones are shakin’”.

And ever since then it seems that’s been the way my cranks turn.  When I faced the potential pain of delivering my first child, the curiosity about what it would be like outweighed my fear of labor.  When tragedies and trials came my way, my curiosity about how they would turn out staved off the worst of the pain.  Even with the polygamy -arguably the most tortuous thing I’ve gone through emotionally- the curiosity of what it would be like living with that or how it would play out kept me going through it all.  After all, how can you know what the ending of the story looks like, if you give up before you reach it?  And I can’t stand not to know how things end or finish.

While all of that insight gained was helpful and interesting, I’m afraid it hasn’t done much to show me where my “preference” is stemming from. There is just as much curiosity about what life would be like (despite the challenges) if we were in fact divorced and I had to raise an infant on my own, as there is about what Bashir will be like with a new baby and going through other significant changes that are coming up in our lives as the older children finish school and we get an opportunity to move out of Georgia in a few years. The curiosity for both makes me willing and open to go down either path.  Yet, the preference I have is clearly because some questions already have answers, and they aren’t the ones I like.

In the meantime, I keep my ever-present curiosity trained on something that I will find out in a couple weeks in shaa Allah: is twinkles a boy or a girl?

Ten Years…Maybe?

Tomorrow will mark the 10 year anniversary of my nikkah (wedding) with Bashir. I took today and tomorrow off from work to relax and enjoy remembering the time we met and married with him, and plan some nice way to celebrate it.

But, I am haunted (well actually, he and I both are) by something that remains unresolved. Something that would not have even come up on our radar if it weren’t for a dream I had about a month ago.

In the dream, another brother wanted to marry me. I kept telling him I was already married to Bashir, but this brother kept insisting I wasn’t. This brother reminded me that Bashir had given me two previous talaqs years ago, and since the most recent was the third we would be irrevocably divorced. The dream went on with this brother and Bashir and I trying to resolve the dilemma, until finally the brother gave up out of sheer exasperation and I awoke.

Because the dream did allude to true facts I had since put out of my mind (as Bashir had given me two separate talaqs in the early years of our marriage at my request), I told Bashir about it. He became very concerned about it and ever since then, we’ve been trying to sort out the truth: Are we married or not? Is the baby I’m carrying even legitimate?

In a sense, the whole situation seems comedic to me because I was NEVER the type of person to put myself in a situation where I could be at risk of having a child out of wedlock. Yet, that may be where I wind up.

The reason Bashir and I never thought about those two old talaqs is because back then, he told me they didn’t count because they were said while he was angry and we were arguing. We also “reunited” within 24 hours of them being given. I believed what he said when he showed me a hadith about slaves not being freed or divorce not being given while in anger, so since those years I never even thought about them with any significance.

Then I had this dream.

Bashir wrote to his shaykh to try to get clarity, since neither one of us remember clearly what exactly was going on so many years ago when those talaqs were given, or how angry he was, etc. We had tried looking up other hadith and evidences online but most of what we found seemed to indicate that even if given in anger, those divorces would still count. Yet that one hadith that he originally told me seems to say otherwise.

At any rate, Bashir was not able to fully explain the situation to his shaykh. He was advised to give a brief account, so he thought the best thing to do was ask for the dream to be interpreted. The shaykh’s response after all that was, “I don’t know”.

So I have been keeping the confusion inside, waiting and praying for clarity to come soon. I have made istikhara and try to remain patient. Bashir wants to take a trip to see his shaykh in person to tell him more thoroughly what’s going on, and get a clearer answer. Whatever the shaykh says is what he will go with.

I guess it’s gotten now to a point where I just didn’t want to feel alone anymore while dealing with this, and that’s why I posted it here. I can accept whatever the case may be. I can accept if we are in fact married, or if we are not I can accept that I will be a single mother to an newborn baby. There are pros and cons to either outcome, and I am willing to rise to the challenges that may come with either path.

If it’s not too much to ask, I would like to ask you all to pray that Allah brings a resolution to this matter sooner than later. I trust His time and judgment, but I’m human and don’t like the feeling of not knowing where I stand in important matters like this one. And for those of you that do pray for me, thank you.

Life After Lifelessness

After everything that’s happened in the last couple months, I finally feel like parts of the core me are regenerating. I think my hope and reckless idealism may even eventually return in some shape or form!

Last time I talked a lot about my pain, my ghosts, the bottom of my ocean. I had a speck of belief that perhaps the extent to which I was being tortured by those things would finally cause a healing I hadn’t been able to find before. I thought maybe I needed to go through the polygamy, because it was the only thing that could make me face my past in such a deep way and finally find some sort of peace with it. Maybe it was the only way.

One of the things I came to realize about myself was about some beliefs I had. I believed, when it came to material things like money, goods, jobs, etc….I believed all of those aspects had been pre-determined for my life to be portioned out a certain way. So whether I had a little or a lot, I rarely stressed because I really believed Allah picked the perfect portion to meet my tangible needs and was satisfied with that.

But when it came to emotional needs, I never believed anything like that. I always believed I had an inner deficit that I needed to find a filling for. Supplementing the “lack” of love in my life became my crusade, my purpose for existing. No matter what love I got, it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t what I was satisfied with. I had to find more, no matter what extremes I had to use to get it. And there were many times I went to extremes, even with my husband who was probably the most reliable source of any love I got in life.

Being in polygamy showed me that love and attention is portioned out just like rizq. I thought about other polygamous wives who had to share their husband with not only one woman, but two or three others. The portion of their husband’ time, affection, or intimacy was as much as it was going to be, and no more. Allah never said this was unfair, so why was I living my life like it was?

Even after Coco got her talaq, I saw that whatever my husband gave to me of his love was fixed. Though I might have hoped all the extra time he was no longer spending on her would be intensely focused on me, it wasn’t. He spent time with the kids, or with himself (he didn’t have ANY time to himself in polygamy, unless you count sleep). I saw clearly, for good, that the love I get in life is my perfect portion from Allah. It’s not out of balance or lacking, and once that really sunk in the giant hole inside decided to get with the program and shrank to fit what I was actually getting, instead of demanding something huge enough to fit in it.

I hope that is healing. I feel it is. I have a peace about that aspect of my life that I never had before. I used to worry and go crazy about the idea of being single and alone while I was parted from Bashir, because of the lack of love I would have then. I realize now if that were to ever be in my destiny, it’s perfectly fine. It’s what’s appointed for that time, and it’s not going to kill me any more than going three days without food did. Or going a couple months with no income did.

And the truth is, it’s not a given that won’t come to me someday. Just as much as I hoped the polygamy would help me rise above challenges I had been struggling through my entire life, I hoped Bashir would find a way to put his own demons to rest. And indeed, being in polygamy kept him insanely busy. He didn’t have time or energy to get angry, or to worry about what little slights the kids did. He was so preoccupied with trying to keep everything fair between his two wives with time and attention, that he rarely went online or watched TV.

But when the polygamy ended, the familiar routines returned slowly. Bashir understandably has wanted time to catch up on his own interests, but I see how those pursuits end up taking up hours, every afternoon, day after day. Even if nothing “bad” has happened, there is a part of me in the back of my mind that wonders how much of the “old” Bashir will return, and feels it needs to be ready for anything….even with me being pregnant. Actually, especially with me being pregnant.

For the time being, though, I am going to focus on getting back into my own life more. I’ve been offline too long, and that has always been a source of social fulfillment. I also had a dream recently that seemed like it had the makings of a good story, so I’m also wanting to give that life and see how it goes.

And of course there’s always Twinkles (the baby). Allah knows how I’ve wanted a daughter. I won’t be able to find out the gender until sometime in July, but I don’t feel guilty to fantasize that it might be a girl. 50/50 odds are pretty good!

Drowning and Drowning and Drowning

When the polygamy first began, it was immensely difficult for me. From the very beginning, I felt traumatized. I couldn’t sleep more than a couple hours. I could barely eat, and in a matter of weeks I lost several pounds. My mind kept replaying the events that led to how it all started over and over, and every time I had to face the pain of the situation it felt like someone was dunking my head under water and holding it there. It was suffocating and frightening, and I felt there was no escape from the way everything made me feel. I began calling in sick from work almost every week, as well as making up excuses to ask to work from home. On the days I did go in, I was going in several hours late. I had truly become a non-functional mess…I couldn’t even bring myself to distraction by going online to blog or look at Facebook. The agony consumed me.

A lot of people might think that the cause of my feelings was because of having to share my husband with another woman, but really that wasn’t it at all. If that had been my only concern, it would have been a cake walk. No, the thing that made this whole situation so tremendously heart wrenching was that it peeled back and kept exposed, like raw nerves, my deepest and most troublesome insecurities.

All of my life I have struggled with a sense of belonging. I have wrestled with a disconnect of feeling wanted by others. I know the experiences I went through in my infancy and childhood lent to those issues, and I grew up with some baggage of being pretty needy, very insecure, and extremely afraid of being abandoned. I’ve spent most of my life compensating for those things in both healthy and unhealthy ways, but I know deep down there will be a part of me that won’t quite be whole because it just missed that chance at the appointed time in my development.

Since I came into the polygamy after Bashir had married Coco, I felt all of these things much more profoundly than I have in years. I couldn’t really find where I belonged, because I knew that he had already begun a life with her under the idea that I was not going to be a part of his life. I wasn’t sure if he even really wanted to be with me again, or if he was doing it because he felt that’s what his religious teachers wanted. I couldn’t escape the exposure to his new love for her, and the attention he would give her through constant texts and phone calls, and I felt overwhelmed with the pull to have my own emotional needs for attention met. I found it hard to find any grounding or security to stand on, and I was constantly afraid he would decided he was more satisfied with her than I and cut me loose again.

So I worked really hard to be the ideal wife, but no matter what I did right the emotions overtook me time and again. Every time she came down for a visit (as she lived out of town), it was like another tsunami overtaking me. I tried to keep everything to myself, but I had become so sensitive and vulnerable it had become impossible to hide. Eventually, the very deepest fears I had began to come true because I was driving Bashir away with the never ending emotional crises. I became the wife with “all the issues and drama”, while Coco, who was already a seasoned polygamist, spent her time with him just trying to start their relationship.

I remember the first weekend after the polygamy started, I took a trip out of town for a Quranic conference. The whole ride there I felt like I was living in another world. There were no love songs that described my life as it was now. There were no nice romantic comedies I could relate to anymore. It seemed like everyone was in one world- the world of monogamy- and I was stuck in another….alone, and with no coping skills or guide to help me find my way through it.

Things got so difficult at one point I wrestled with my darkest thoughts in a way I haven’t dealt with in years. I have been struggling with certain thoughts to hurt myself since I was a teenager, and they always are triggered when I feel I truly have no place or am causing more harm than good to others. Those struggles broke wide open at one point when Bashir was visiting with Coco, and I feared that this situation was so extreme that I might not be able to ride it out this time. I seriously considered checking myself into the local behavioral hospital, but in the end things went another way and another day passed.

Bashir was naturally concerned about how all this was affecting me. Coco on the other hand just saw my “antics” as a nuisance and intrusion into her marriage. She just wanted the problem (me) to disappear so she could go on happily ever after. I just wanted someone to walk me through my darkness until I came out the other side. In the end, Bashir became overwhelmed with his own duties as a polygamous husband and was finding himself becoming more and more stressed by trying to keep the balancing act going. He felt stuck too because he knew the commitment he made in marriage to her was not one he could just easily shrug off now.

The turning point came slowly. It began when Coco, who had her tubes tied several years ago, decided she wanted to get a reversal so she could have a baby with Bashir. Bashir and Coco, however, had agreed before marriage that they were not going to have children. Bashir felt scared and betrayed when this was brought up, because he didn’t want to have children with her. However, it was open fact that I was not under the same standard because for one, my tubes weren’t tied and for two; I never stipulated anything like that with him. Coco decided to continue with Bashir in spite of the fact that it meant giving up her right to have more children- a right I still retained. Even though she agreed to that, I think Bashir’s trust in her (after all, he had only known her a matter of weeks by then) was permanently shaken.

It was quite ironic that only 2 weeks after that incident I found out I was pregnant at my annual checkup. I have been infertile for several years, and I never imagined I would get pregnant on my own before I had even discussed with Bashir how such a thing would fit into our newly polygamous lifestyle. My pregnancy ended up magnifying all of the issues that had been going on with me personally, as well as all three of us, to the point where Bashir really needed to think about what was best for everyone.

In the end, Bashir ended up divorcing Coco after they had only been married 6 weeks. It had nothing to do with me or the pregnancy, but personal issues they were having with each other. He gave her opportunities to return to him since then, but she has rejected them. Bashir and I have been living monogamously for the past nearly 4 weeks.

I am eating again, and sleeping too (probably a little too much). My sense of normalcy has returned, and I’m no longer “drowning” or reliving the weekend my life changed over and over. I am going to work the way I need to, and not having emotional breakdowns every other day. So in those senses, I know I am healing.

But there are parts of me that still feel damaged. I feel like I’ve lost passion and fire I used to have. In one sense it’s a good thing because I no longer tend to be defensive, argumentative, controlling or nagging. In another sense I’m left feeling empty and apathetic, because there’s a part of me that knows all too well that if a painful thing comes my way I won’t be able to stop it or even necessarily control how it affects me. I am at the mercy of Allah’s will, so if He wills tests for me I almost feel defeated to them….and I miss that part of me that lived on hope and dreams.

The Rock, and the Hard Place

I knew a second chance with Bashir would be pretty much impossible in light of the fact that he was now married to someone else. Having a chance to be a better wife to him would essentially mean remarrying him, and I have to admit I had already done so much work on becoming independent of him I was not exactly eager to thrust myself back into such a big commitment. Not only that, but unless he divorced his new wife for me, remarrying Bashir would mean I would be coming to him as a second wife in polygamy.  Very few women willingly choose to be polygamous, and I certainly was not one of them.

 

Allah knows best what we need, all the time. He plans our life perfectly, and nothing He does is a mistake. Allah takes our folly and creates purpose, and fashions strength from weakness. Sometimes, he breaks the proud to create a beautiful humility.

 

So when it came out that my iddah with Bashir never completed, and that we were essentially already still married, all the shattered pieces of my being re-assembled strictly to be ground again to a pulp.

 

That’s right. Bashir and I never completed our divorce. That’s right. I was now in polygamy, whether I liked it or not.

 

For those of you who want the details, it went like this: I went a little crazy. I bled all my insanity out to Bashir, with no regard to the fact that it was his honeymoon. That was bad of me to do, and so poor Bashir was now in the position to try to clean up a mess he had partially created (we won’t get into why or how, that’s really irrelevant at this point).  He contacted an imam and the first question he asked -to my surprise- was whether our divorce was valid, and cited a technicality which might have been the reason it was invalid.  The imam confirmed that the iddah did not complete because of that technicality. BOOM.

 

Bashir clearly told me right then and there that he would absolutely not give me a divorce again, even if I begged for it. He was not going to let me go twice, when he didn’t even want to let me go the first time. So being with him, remaining with him in marriage, was no longer a choice. And at that point, things were getting so upside down I was terrified to fool with any more big changes.

 

The second question was asking advice what to do with his new wife.  He was advised to tell her everything and give her the choice, and he did. She decided she wanted to remain married to him as well. BOOM.

 

Two realities that were at once shackles on my wrists and demolitions of any walls or defenses I could’ve possibly had.  This was Allah’s will for me, and there was nothing I could or was willing to try to do about it.  It was as though the blows grabbed my nafs by its scruff and forced it to prostrate and recognize the power of Allah to do anything He likes with me. All this time Allah knew I thought I was walking away, but in reality I was going nowhere. I never went anywhere as far as being apart from Bashir. We were linked in marriage in Allah’s sight the whole time, and everything else that took place He allowed in His perfect wisdom as well.  This was meant to be for all of us.

 

But that’s the thing, it wasn’t just me that was getting this supernatural shakeup.  Bashir’s new bride, who I will call Coco (short for co-wife), was thrown for a loop as well. She came down to marry a man she had never even met face to face before, thinking they were going to be monogamous ever after. She wasn’t planning on getting into polygamy either, and has said that if she had known she wouldn’t have given him the time of day.  Even though she had experience with polygamy, this was not her dream come true.

 

And Bashir, he never wanted polygamy either.  He married Coco thinking they were going to live happily ever after. My recent dealings with him had been crystal clear to that effect, and he and I were both convinced we were divorced. I’m not sure what convicted him to ask the imam about that technicality, but Allah knows best. He was not ready to take on two wives, but he was going to have to whether he liked it or not.

 

Could it be that Allah was correcting the flaws in all of us but putting us into this press? Were the issues I had with Bashir before finding their remedy by him being thrust into a position of having to be twice as responsible a husband? Yes, I think that’s what exactly happened.

 

And so the three of us began this new polygamous journey, wide-eyed, wounded, frightened and scarred.

 

….to be continued…

Be True to Love

Over a month has past since I’ve been here, but for me no time has passed at all in some senses. The weekend of Bashir’s nikkah was life-changing for me, in more ways than I could begin to describe. Since then, I have been faced with undeniable truths about myself, life, divine decree, and the purpose of our existence in ways I could never have imagined before. It seems as though that dua I made to be shown how to live more honestly was answered in the fullest way possible.

When I asked Bashir to give me a divorce, I believed I was doing the right thing. I was looking at the situation logically, and shoving all emotions and attachments aside. I saw black, and I saw white, and I thought that’s all I needed to see. I made my decisions out of will and determination, because I believed that making decisions with the heart would sabotage me. I figured I could let my heart get with the program in its own time, as long as I kept focus on the direction I had set for myself.

Even when I found out Bashir had moved on to someone else, I tried to pack up my wounded pride and keep moving forward. I took it as a test of my resolve and gritted myself to make it through the blizzard. But when I found out he had actually married her, I was snapped back to the resonating truth that I had never, ever stopped loving him.

Not for one second.

I realized that I did not love Bashir because of what he did or did not do. Or because he failed or succeeded. I loved him because of who I am. I remembered how pure and unconditional my love for him was when we began our marriage. Whatever he gave in return, it sufficed me, because I was fulfilled in being true to who I was- in lavishing him with attention, affection, and obedience.

Obedience. Yes. Something that had slipped through the cracks over the years of our marriage, taking the other qualities with it.

Here I had spent several months parted from him trying to “find myself”, thinking it was about my personality, my roots, my hopes and aspirations. How daunting to see that what I really needed to find was my lost character, that aspect that actually develops us to the maturity needed to enter the next life without empty hands. I had lost sight of my character, my core essence in being a loving, supportive, humble wife and Muslimah.

All of a sudden the past nearly 10 years of our marriage took an entirely different view. Until that time, I saw the years in terms of his failings, his shortcomings, his wrongs toward me. Everything was myopically focused on him-him-him, and the mistakes he made had built up into a mountain I kept between us. I am not saying he didn’t have the responsibility to make certain choices or treat me certain ways. He did. But I saw that instead of encouraging him, being patient with him, actually trying to help him by being appropriately submissive, I rather became increasingly arrogant, harsh, unyielding, controlling and rebellious to his God-given authority. My pride had been blinding me, convincing me that I was blameless and flawless and entitled. I saw how I began treating him in demeaning ways, which probably only made him more inclined to seek solace in his own maladaptive responses. I was only happy when I was in charge, and he was on his belly.

Yes, by the time we had divorced, I cared more about whether he was following my rules about not eating in the bedroom, than how he was feeling with his anxiety attacks. I became entirely ungrateful, and I only saw it when I realized how far I had gotten from just being true to the love I had for him. For so long I had been wrapped up in how he needed to change and improve, while I became a worse and worse person in my adab and taqwah. I had lost sight of the fact that my day of judgment will be for what I did, not what he did.

As all of this clarity flooded me, I knew that I had been dealing with Bashir based on how I saw him as a human, not how Allah saw him. Allah knows Bashir through and through, and Allah knows what Bashir is worth more than I do. I had to consider that perhaps I got it wrong- that idea I had that I was somehow rescuing myself from a “bad person” and that it was only I who deserved happiness and love. Perhaps the magnitude of my arrogance that had grown made me the one who deserved to be alone and drifting as though lost, while Bashir was actually the one Allah saw deserved mercy and promptly provided him a companion and all other means he needed to have a peaceful life. The ayat came to mind:

“It may happen that his Lord, if he divorce you, will give him in your stead wives better than you, submissive (to Allah), believing, pious, penitent, devout, inclined to fasting, widows and maids. “(Quran 66:5) Also, the hadith which says, “They (women) are ungrateful to their husbands and are ungrateful for the favors and the good (charitable deeds) done to them. If you have always been good (benevolent) to one of them and then she sees something in you (not of her liking), she will say, ‘I have never received any good from you.” indicates that such women will make up the majority of Hellfire.

I realized what a serious mistake I had made, and how much was truly at stake. All at once I was broken in a way I had never been broken before, and in the recognition of my folly all I wanted was the chance to repent and do it the right way- not the way that would please me or my nafs, but Allah only. I wanted a second chance.

….to be continued….