Naima B. Robert – Advice on Gratitude in Times of Hardship for Muslim Women
AI: Summary ©
The speaker shares a story about a woman who had a difficult time at a hospital with her daughter, and how her husband turned to her and said not yet. The woman later became a victim of abuse and lost everything, but the speaker encourages those who have had similar experiences to reframe them as grateful for the loss.
AI: Summary ©
Smilla,
has it ever occurred to you to make
sujood in a time of calamity?
Not just any sujood, but sujood shukr,
prostration
for gratitude.
In this show up snippets, I'm going to
share with you a story that I tell
in my book Show Up A Motivational Message
For Muslim Women
and it was shared with me by a
sister who came to see me while I
was in the hospital with my late
husband. And she told me the story of
a couple who had a daughter who was
very very ill.
And every time that they went to the
doctors,
their daughter had been kept in. And whenever
they would give the couple some more bad
news,
the husband would turn to his wife and
say,
not yet.
And they would go away, and then they
came back again, they were told more bad
news. And the husband turned to his wife
and said, not yet.
And this happened a few times, them coming
in being told ever worse news about their
daughter's condition,
and the husband turning to his wife and
saying, not yet.
Then the fateful day came when they arrived
at hospital and they were told that their
daughter was no more.
And upon receiving that news,
the husband looked at at his wife and
said, now.
And the 2 of them fell into
Sajda Tushukar.
Now the hospital staff was amazed and some
of them were horrified because
sajda tushukar is something that we do when
we are thankful, when something good happens. And
they didn't understand why this couple was making
sujood at a time like this.
And the husband explained
that
if Allah
took their daughter back,
they would
immediately default to gratitude.
That they would display
their gratitude to Allah
for having blessed them with her in the
first place,
for having allowed them to be her parents,
to be her care
givers for the time that she was allotted.
And I don't know about you, but this
story
really affected me very deeply.
And I made the decision that if,
Laqadr Allah,
my husband did not survive,
I would have the same response.
And I
talk about this in the book.
I describe
receiving the news
of my husband's
anything in your life that you feel
you could potentially
reframe
as something to be grateful for? Sometimes it's
not the loss.
We focus so much on the loss because
we're losing. All the time, every day, we're
losing.
This life is a series of losses and
disruptions to our norm.
But every time we lose something, there's a
reminder that we had it in the first
place.
And I feel like focusing on the thing
that you had in the first place, the
fact that you had it,
is in itself
a reason to be grateful.
If you found this useful, please do share
it and may it be a source of
Khair for everyone who hears it.