by Anonymous

"Throughout my life I always switched from being a strong Muslim, getting all of my prayers, reading Quran etc to someone who didn't care about prayer and then back. Alhamdulilah I am back on track with praying and everything. I was never really bothered by my constant change of Iman until recently. See, I started off the school year strong with my prayers and decided to join the tennis team. Everything was going great and I couldn't have been any happier during that time. Eventually each prayer would adthan earlier and earlier and I would start to miss Duhr, Asr, and Mughrib from how late I would get home after practices and games. I became depressed and did not realize what the cause was. Nothing was going right for me, everything was a blur of depression. I would constantly argue with my best friend, take out my anger on her by yelling and being rude and I just felt horrible, lost, and confused. During that time, I was never completely happy. Nothing made me smile or actually laugh for real. But throughout this time I took Quran classes once a week for two hours and I would always feel at peace and somewhat content. Then it suddenly hit me, I realized what had caused my depression and it was the fact that I was barely praying anymore! I started to bring my own prayer rug and started to pray. At first, I felt awkward about praying in public, but now I am used to it and many people started to ask me questions about Islam which I happily answered. I started to become happier and happier and now I am no longer depressed, Alhumdulilah. By the end of the season, I was praying all of my prayers on time and everything was going well and inshallah I will be able to keep doing this. My goal and everybodys goal should be to figure out how to keep increasing our Iman."