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Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| Dealing with Life's changes |
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| Bismillah23 |
| 03/31/03 at 18:25:12 |
| [slm] everyone ;D im just curious, how does everyone deal with life's changes.....? i dont deal to well with change, i dont know if someone in here can give me some tips on how i can think differently about new things going on to benefit myself? ie; family spliting up on the accnt of marriages, etc... :( ugh nothing will be the same, does this make sense guys? thanks in advance for hearing me wine about this lol i know that allah swt creates these changes for us for the better, but sometimes u just feel like, wow, how am i going to deal with that? all i can do is make duw'a and pray, and inshallah everything will work out for the better, i just wanted to see if u guys did anything different in here... :) :) ;D w-salaam |
| Re: Dealing with Life's changes |
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| theOriginal |
| 03/31/03 at 23:19:18 |
| [slm] hmm...I think you should have a chat with my mother :) Growing up, as a child, we moved around a LOT. I attended 9 different schools in 7 different countries...sometimes in places where we had no constant food supply/running water/electricity...things I now find myself to take for granted. And even though I could relay to you my own experience of how I dealt with it all...all I can say is that for me, change has been the only constant thing in my life. You would better relate to my mother's experience, who got married at the age of 18, left behind everything after marrying my father, and still had enough courage, strength, and peace of mind to raise four children, mostly on her own. At the age of 23, my mother had three kids, my father was always away on field, due to his job, and at that time my mother was living in the middle-of-nowhere (that is NOT an exaggeration). I visited Hargeisa, Somalia a few years back, which was my father's first posting, and I really wonder sometimes how my mom dealt with it. I don't want to undermine my father's efforts, because Alhumdulillah he has done so much for people, that I could not even begin to discuss it here. But somehow, perhaps because my father doesn't discuss his experiences in the way my mother does, or perhaps because he will forever remain a superhero in my mind, I feel like my mom's life was more real. Over the years, and across the planet, she learned to make friends with people who didn't speak the same language as her, who didn't share her culture... I could really go on forever, but I'm just going to cut to the chase, before this starts sounding dramatic ;) I once asked my mother how she did it. How she dealt with the change...the physical, mental, emotional toll of not having my father around all the time, and then leaving behind so much everywhere we went. Now that I am older, at this age, I do not know if I could endure that much. She told me that the key was to never think about herself. She always thought about the other people who were her responsibility. Taking care of my father's house while he was away, repairing him emotionally whenever he returned, taking care of us as her dependents, and then remembering that the only true inspiration behind all of this was Allah. (I would have used the word "motivation", but I have this new theory that motivation is a myth...so I had to use a poor substitute. :D ) All I remember is the beaches, the story-telling when our generator ran out of fuel, the intensely fantastical rains of Sierra Leone, the food, the mosquito bites, and leaving friends always thinking that I'd see them someday. My mother would probably recount a different story: the refuge of the beach as the ONLY escape when we got out of control, Peter (the houseboy)'s story of the cannibal who roamed our neighborhood at night, the rainy season (when the thiefs would take advantage of the deafening sound of the splatter on people's tin roofs), the sanitation, my sister getting malaria 3 times, making friends knowing that she would have to leave them someday. May Allah reward her for being the best mommy ever. Don't get into the questioning of "how am i going to deal with it"...instead just do it. Just say Bismillah, and have patience... may Allah make it easy on you. Wasalaam. |
| Re: Dealing with Life's changes |
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| panjul |
| 04/01/03 at 00:49:15 |
| [slm] Wow the original...your life seems very interesting. :) I was caught up in your article....why don't you write a book about your life? seriously, so far so good [] |
| Re: Dealing with Life's changes |
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| bhaloo |
| 04/01/03 at 01:23:34 |
| [slm] I agree, it does seem pretty interesting, perhaps you could tell us about these different places you grew up in and what it was like being Muslim there. |
| Re: Dealing with Life's changes |
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| BrKhalid |
| 04/01/03 at 04:17:06 |
| Asalaamu Alaikum ;-) [quote]hmm...I think you should have a chat with my mother :) [/quote] *Br Khalid sees hoardes of Madinates descending on Sr Original's mother's home* ;-) Hope she has enough tea to go round ;) [quote]im just curious, how does everyone deal with life's changes.....? i know that allah SubHana Wa Ta`ala creates these changes for us for the better, but sometimes u just feel like, wow, how am i going to deal with that? [/quote] I don't think when it comes to the crunch you can do anything more than seeking help through prayer and having patience. ;-) Of course you can always vent on the board ;) |
| Re: Dealing with Life's changes |
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| bismilla |
| 04/01/03 at 10:21:58 |
| [font=comic SANS ms][color=green][slm] :-) ..take each day as it comes.... You cannot try and predict how you will deal with a situation. You can only deal with it once you are faced with it. I found that if you sincerely make Duah to Allh SWT and leave everything in His hands, worry is the last thing He puts in your plate. ...Worry never robs tomorrow of it's sorrow......it only robs today of it's strength... It's true....so make Allah SWT your confidant and leave all your tomorrows in His trust, Insha Allah :-) [/font][/color] |
| 04/01/03 at 10:25:10 |
| bismilla |
| Re: Dealing with Life's changes |
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| Dude |
| 04/01/03 at 10:32:12 |
| I think I can relate to the subject of change myself, although from a completely different angle. I jokingly tell my friends that my Dad goes through wives like I go through socks. Although an extreme exaggeration, he’s been divorced twice and is on his third wife (my Mum being his first). Because my parents were never really well off, it meant starting work young and going through various interesting jobs. One included moving to Eastern US for a spell, then on to Eastern Canada for a while. It also meant plowing my way through college as fast as possible because it was just too expensive to waste money “finding myself”. Anyhow, through all this, then into marriage, careers, and two kids (I’m 29 years old now), I always found my constant release from the stresses of life is exercise. I always have, and still do, make sure I spend 5 days / week on my own for an hour or two getting a workout in. There is no problem a 5-10 KM run won’t help me forget, or at least sort out in my head (funny, when I was 16, we got a phone call from my aunt telling my sister and I my Dad had suffered a major heart attack. My Mum went into damage control...she consoled my sister, and kicked me out of the house for a run..."Go for a run, and don't come back for an hour!" She knew me pretty well). Exercise can be anything- it doesn’t matter what it is. If it means going out for 20-30 minutes per day walking the neighborhood, that’s good enough. Just something to exert some energy, clear the head, and to make yourself feel good. The obvious side benefits from stress relief are the health and wellness aspects. Of course, this is one of the ways I deal with stress...at the end of the day the best is advise that the Original already gave: keep on going on. Have faith, work hard, respect others...hopefully everything will work out in the end! :) |
| 04/01/03 at 10:36:05 |
| Dude |
| Re: Dealing with Life's changes |
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| bismilla |
| 04/02/03 at 02:02:58 |
| [slm] [font=comic sans ms][color=orange]It's true Brother Dude, finding a hobby or passtime that allows you time for yourself is about the only constant one can hope for, i suppose. I have always have things change around me too (moved about 20 times in my life) but my passion for arts & crafts has always stayed the same. It was expressed in different forms, but it was always there when i needed time to myself to just be with me. :-) [/color][/font] |
| Re: Dealing with Life's changes |
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| Halima |
| 04/02/03 at 08:36:10 |
| Dealing with Life's changes..... How about dealing with losing a parent through death? My mother died when I was eleven. I was the eldest of six children. The youngest was eleven months old. It was the second time my Dad was losing a wife. His first wife died leaving him with two young children, a daughter and a son. The son was only 40 days old and the daughter was two years old. He lost his first born child/daughter when she was seven. He never re-married till my elder brother was 14! Then my mother gave him six children, 5 daughters and a son. And he lost her too. It was the most devasting time in my life. One thing I painfully remember is the question I kept asking: How are we going to survive without our mother??? But then, I did not know how strong my Dad was. All people around him urged him to remarry so that he will have a wife who will help him raise us. My Dad adamantly refused saying that a step-mother will only make my children cry and he could not stand that. Then some relatives wanted to split us up so that we will be raised in different homes different towns. Again my father refused. He said his children will grow up together so that they will know and love each other. Some of the changes that happened in our lives was first, changing towns, hence beginning a new school and a new set of friends and second, living in Mogadishu, Somalia for a while. But we never wanted for anything and my Dad ensured that we were always happy. He made the loss of my Mother bearable to the point where we never actually missed her later on. We miss what it feels like to have a mother. To know her. And if anybody says that men can not raise children, that is utter bull. There are a few of them like my Dad, granted. My Dad never re-married again. And he died in Nairobi in November 1993. We miss him very very much. I remember when my Dad was sick and we realized that he was not going to recover from the illness, I stood my the window in his room looking outside and wondering how the world will look without him. How we were going to survive without him. I was 32 years old, a mother of two kids, running my own home and a working woman as well. I still could not imagine leaving without him. He was 80 years old when he died. The days following his death, I used to expect to see him seated in his favourite chair in the compound waiting for my arrival from work. And when I saw the empty space, I would bleed inside because at those timas, I felt the most profoud and overwhelming sorrow. One of my sisters was in Milan, Italy at the time, my elder brother in Hargeisa, Somalia with his children and wife, another sister and a brother in Toronto, Canada and three of us were with him. And my sister in Italy was crying on the phone saying that she was all alone at the most painful moment in her life while the rest of us had each someone from the family to comfort each other. But we pulled through nevertheless. I had responsibilities which needed attention, so even if my heart was breaking into small tiny pieces, I had to trudge on like a soldier. So, did my brothers and sisters. Plus Islam teaches us how to handle grief. It was not easy though. But when you have a cohesive family unit, then you can go through anything and become even more stronger than you ever were before. Recently, I have found out that exercise releases tension, gives you time to yourself as Dude has put it. So I go for a run 4 times a week and do some workout on machines in the gym after my run. [wlm] Halima |
| Re: Dealing with Life's changes |
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| Bismillah23 |
| 04/04/03 at 11:04:39 |
| [slm] wow, my problem sounded very useless compared to the responces ive read. I forgot that my problem is nothing, i should thank allah swt, that allhamdullilah i have my iman, my husband, my family, my health. halima sis, (and others)iam really sorry to hear your stories, i read it while i was at work, tear jerker. its hard, i know. but allhamdullilah we have allah swt to heal our hearts and dry our tears, and make us strong muslims. i grew up without a father. he died before i was born, so i know where your coming from(atleast you spent time with your mother <may allah reward her and ur father>) i never got a chance to see mine, so i grew up always crying for him. he's a shaied so i know he's in jannah, i stopped crying for him because someone told me he will know if his kids are sad or crying for him, and he will be hurt.... anyways, thanks everyone for sharing your stories, may allah bless all of you (and ur families) in this life and in the hearafter, ameen. your sis |
| Re: Dealing with Life's changes |
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| Halima |
| 04/07/03 at 02:00:27 |
| Shukran, Sis Bismillah23. The times I really missed my mother is the adolesence years, when I was getting married and when I was having my first child. Those are the times you really need a mother. But my father tried his best and was there for me. I remember when I was in labour. He did not rest till I had my son. Yeah, family is really important. Wasalaam. Halima |
| Re: Dealing with Life's changes |
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| Bismillah23 |
| 04/07/03 at 21:25:16 |
| [slm] halima sis i know how you feel, while u were missing ur mom when u were young, i was missing my dad.. inshallah all of us will be with our families, take care sis |
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