Prayers .. When you plan, to be surprised !

With eyes that sees the Beauty 
And steps that touches the Dream ..
I say Bismi'Allah.

O'Allah, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can change, and the wisdom to know the difference.

This Marc Aurele prayer got me thinking into many things, and I've been praying it everyday.
I found it very deep, logic and it just gathers everything I may ask Allah now, knowing where I stand in my life.
It gave me enough courage to accept some choices that are no more available, to accept all the bad things that happen in the past, to accept some current events that I can't change, some circumstances...
It gave me also enough strength to stand up (or get up first) and face all what I've to face right now, to do what I've to do, to take control of my life, to get my self busy doing what I like to do most, changing some bad habits, getting some good ones and so on.
Seeing the difference between what I can change and what I cannot is still a bit difficult but am working on it.

This power of acceptance gives the person such a huge relief and serenity. Since I started praying it, knowing deeply that Allah won't let me down and try my best to trust him and trust his plans. The first huge step was when I stopped asking my self the question "why this happened to me?"
When I stopped asking this stupid question, and got the idea that I gotta move on and I can't stop my life over something that became a past and eventually is not even a big deal, leaving school! so what it might be the most amazing thing that will ever happen to me, I mean who knows ! Really, I felt such an inter peace with my self, with the past, the present, and constructed a better clear image of what my future will probably look like.

As DeVon Franklin said on Super Soul Sunday last week, what important to do in conflicts during our lives is how we prepare for them before they happen, and how we react to them, cuz we don't control their happening, we might see it coming, sometimes we can stop it, sometimes they're just Allah plans for us, and who knows better than him what's good for us?

I trust Allah with my life, he gave me such a beautiful soul that am carrying in me, and surely planed for me an exiting life where I'll invest this soul. No worries anymore. I just feel like am armed, and nothing can break me, Allah's with me !

Keep planing to be surprised with what Allah is planing for you :)
Allah .. Thank you for accepting my prayers.
Peace be upon you all.

Super Soul ... when I get Spiritual

Selamualaikum wrt wbt,

Well, as you can see or feel through my posts, I've became kinda interested in The Spiritual things lately. Of course I didn't use to, and I've never considered my self as a spiritual person. I've been raised in a technical way, on analyzing things, understanding them in their contexts ...
The value of Love in our relationship with God, trusting him, doing what he loves, feeling his existence ... are just things I wasn't confronted to during my life. Weather in my childhood or in my relations with the closer people to me, or even the books I read, lectures I attended etc.

The experience I had this year, changed many things in me, and also made me reorganize the way I consider values in my life, my spirit was one of this sacred things I rediscovered in myself.
It all started with a stupid idea at the time that I used to think about a lot. The simple idea was may inability to understand the relationship between me and God, their was some moments when I felt the grace of God and its blessings but I was wondering how can God loves me, as am not doing all what he asks and doing some wrong things. I saw his love in some decisions, some doors that got open, some relationships, conflicts, I saw it pretty much in everything; I just couldn't understand it, I never heard about such things, never been confronted to it, so I thought I was just imagining specially that the way I've been raised, obliged me to think that religion is Islam so if am not doing all what Islam asks and didn't stay away from the forbidden things then I've no right to talk about any kinda relationship between me and God. The idea I got was wrong.

Because Islam is one thing and Faith is another thing.

Now I started believing that in order to become a better Muslimah I should probably have a strong faith first and not the opposite as I always thought.
In my life, two things got me confronted to the spiritual part of me, and it's all just lately. The first one is with some girl friends of mine as we had a meeting every week when we only talk about religion, faith, quran and all. In this meeting called "Al-Jalsa" we discussed a Sheikh's book, the Sheikh is called Farid Alnsari (peace be upon him) and the book's name was "The beauty of the Religion".

The Beauty of Religion by Sheikh Farid Al-Ansari (pbuh)

In this book, the Sheikh really talks about all the beauty and mercy we have in our religion, in this book I've discovered it in the very most amazing way, cuz the way he describes it and the way he talks about it makes you think about how you can actually get closer to God and be loved by him. This book, for me personally, talks about a very high level of spiritual balance that every muslim should have it in his life as he believes in a religion, a balance that most muslims don't have it cuz they're so busy getting satisfied by the five prayers or the pilgrimage, indeed they are mandatory things but in fact the're leaving aside the most important part of their religion wish is Faith.

The second situation that opened my eyes even more in this domain was as Oprah Winfrey's new TV show "Super Soul Sunday" in this show she invites some spiritual people and writers who share their vision of things, God, prayers, life ...etc with Oprah's audience. I've watched couple episodes on livestream, it's very inspiring.
Oprah invited DeVon Franklin who's a Hollywood producer and a writer of an amazing book called "Produced by Faith", DeVon is a very religious person, and got spiritual after his father death when he was 9 years old; In this book he wrote about how he takes life for a movie with each person's scene, God who's the director and who wants the best of the actors who are us ... he also talks about how we should accept what happen in our life and how we should feel the presence of God with us, how to deal with God plans for us and all, as I watched the show he got me rethinking about so many thing in my life.
There was specially one idea that I liked much, he said and I quote :

• If your faith won't fit in the door that opened, then I argue do not walk through that door. The door that God had opened for you, will fit your faith.

And actually, as he was talking about some conflicts he had in his own life, and how he relies on God, and how God do answer his sincere prayers, I was like he's a christian and he has this strong faith in God and such a strong relationship with him, so how can he not enter heaven? Are muslims that I know and who only do technical things Islam asked them to do, and with no faith or belief or any kind of spiritual relation with their creator are going to enter heaven? I have no answer to these questions, but the ideas the guy shared were so deep, hope my uncle will find me the book in Germany and bring it to me "Produced by Faith". 



This book is a life changing thing, it's going to change many things in me. I can feel it already.

Well, if you wanna watch the show herez Super Soul Sunday's livestream link :
http://www.livestream.com/supersoulsunday/video?clipId=pla_0b97a5b4-620a-498b-89a8-28d57d28fe1c

Enjoy the show for those who are interested and pray for me :)

Time and Me

Peace bu upon u all,

As I was reading in my favorite book "Vivre Content" by Jean Louis Servan-Scherelber. I found some very intreresting and ispiring ideas that I marked and that I'll be publishing some of them in here from time to time.

In a section where he talks about how time is very relative and how the good moments actually fades away faster than the bad ones. He said :

• " Le cadran de ma montre est rond, les heures y donnent l'impression de se contenter d'y tourner. Les saisons se succèdent et, au coeur de l'hiver, je rêve au printemps. Le soleil se lève chaque matin, et je compte sur celui de demain." 

In the last few weeks, I went literally from being super busy to having nothing to do. I can still remember as I was in school, the huge work we had to do for each day something more than what 24h can offer, between preparation, classes, writings, presentations, readings and all. But I always found a way to plan my schedules and get everything ready in time hamdulilah. Didn't sleep many nights didn't hang out most of weeks and so on. I put so much effort back then, I was proud of what I was doing and how I was doing it. 

Am an active person, I like to keep my self busy. 

But what happen this last few weeks is that as I left school I suddenly found my self staying at home all day long, doing what ? pretty much nothing. I sleep around 5:00 am and woke up the next day in the evening. I knew that its was wrong, but I was enable to think of anything useful to do, or to be more honest I didn't want to.

As time passes I was not even counting the days, it was a bit hard for me to recognize on which day we were or even what time is it. I didn't care. I had a rough time that I went through it alone.

The thing now is that it all changed hamdulilah, I can't specify what exactly changed the way I saw things or how my state of mind changed, because many things got involved in the process, the two important ones are the death of my grand pa and the very inspiring book av been reading.

For what concerns the book, it actually showed me that the self destruction by doing nothing won't lead to anything good, especially that the time wasted won't be coming back under any kind of circumstances. If u are someone who have dreams and goals that you wanna achieve, you can't sit down, well maybe for a while .. but you'll get bored, why ? because you're not doing anything that can get you closer to your dreams. This idea made me realize that I should do one thing at least everyday that will make me get closer to my goals. And it's working pretty well.

For what concerns my grand pa's death (may Allah bless his soul), well he was actually home with us, he was pretty sick for a while before he's death and we all knew that he was going to die. But what inspired me in his death is one simple though I had just after I knew he died. I was in my room, I woke up, it was a beautiful morning, when mom came to me and told me the news.
As I got up from my bed and got dressed cuz I knew that people will start visiting and all, I opened the window, I looked into the blue sky. My grand- pa was dead in the next room, and it's just a beautiful morning like all other mornings and probably they'll be some more, I started to think that he left life, with all her pain and joy, and life will continue without him, he won't be present to see many things that will change, many people .. he's gone and life goes on. The idea might be seen as a stupid one, but for me it's a very deep one, a thought that didn't leave my mind till this moment, and whenever I notice something beautiful, or attend a family gathering I remember it. 

I was confronted to two deaths of beloveds in my life, my aunt's husband and my grand pa, so am still trying to understand the concept, and to get some deep inspirations from it.
The very inspiring little words plus a major tragedy who both came after a long period of self destruction, made me realize the value of many things that I have in my life and especially Time.

And that's how I discovered it's value, not when I was super busy, not when I needed more but when I had plenty of it and nothing to do with it.

A beautiful song to close up this beautiful topic :) Enjoy the angelic voice




Keep Calm and be Classy :) Selam

Chasing the Sun

Who will tell whether one happy moment of love and joy of breathing, or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and the effort which life implies.