Eassa@Faith

Peace, Mercy and blessings be upon you all on this glorious sunny winter day🌺. Several years a go, my friend’s father passed away. He was a community leader and a religious man. My dear friend would recount her precious memories of her father. One such memory was the deep and gentle voice of her father breaking the silence of dawn as he read the Holy Qur’an, sitting humbly on his prayer mat, emersed in peaceful absorption of the teachings of the Qur’an. Although I didn’t have such an experience myself, I remember making up my mind at that time to give such memories to my children.
I tried. BUT. The thing is, you can’t pretend or fake these experiences for your children. Because kids KNOW. They see right through you.
And you can’t be screaming away about the mess they make and the next minute pretend to be in a state of spiritual connection with God on the prayer mat 😒. This doesn’t indicate spirituality. It indicates signs of being unstable 🤦🏽‍♀️
I soon figured that it takes a revolution inside you in order to arrive at what you want your children to see. If you want them to see peace, you must live peace. If you want them to see kindness you must be kindness.
So I stopped pretending for their sake and started working for my sake.

But turns out working on yourself quietly is also not enough. You need to make your struggle visible. Don’t shout it out or make a big deal of it but just gently share the experience. I realised this when my Eassa and I were watching a short video about a refugee child. He was touched. I said: “We have so many blessings Eassa, don’t we. That’s why we have to share it with people in need”.
Eassa: ” But we don’t do that, mum. We don’t help anyone”.
These words came down on me like a ton of bricks! What?! How did I miss that! Doesn’t he remember those moments when we donated and helped?! Can’t he see the charity box in my bedroom?
I realised active parenting requires consistent recurrent visible effort accompanied by continuing explanations and discussions. So every Friday, I call Eassa to give him money so that he himself puts it in the charity box. We talk about our “intention” when we put it in the box; the words we say; the gratitude we feel in our heart; the children we will share the blessings with… Every Friday.
This morning, Eassa woke up at 5 AM. He is my 4th child so I am much more relaxed. I let him get into my bed and sit with me. (I would never had done that with the other 3, firstly because my sleep was precious and secondly because if one gets in, the other two would follow 😖). I was reading my daily Qur’an. He snuggled in and asked me to keep reading. I read 20 pages in a low audible voice. Every time I stopped reading, he would ask me to keep going.
All glory and gratitude is due to God, THESE are precious memories.