Is holding unto faith when you are struggling easy?

When you see your loved one's life slowly slipping away, when the pangs of your stomach are so strong yet you don't have anything in your pantry, when you feel so much pain in your body, when you go through criticism for the things you didn't have the control over - being called fat, shamed for being skinny, I don't know why your body shape matters so much to others. Even if they are perfect, they want to look down on you. When your debt is bigger than your income, when you struggle to keep things  going, when your parents suffer, when you are oppressed, when you don't get pregnant, when you don't get a good rishta and your age bar is in continuous rise, when you don't find your dream job, when things don't work out, when you fail, when everything fails.

Is it easy?

It is easier said than done.

Allah says He is with the patient. But being patient amidst trials is the hardest thing in this world.

Because being patient is a choice.

A choice we make instead of screaming our lungs out, instead of running away, and giving up.

We know it's a rough road, it will be hard, and it will consume a lot of our energy yet we strive to be patient because we want Allah to be with us.

We can do all behaya things and claim to be depressed. Sometimes we do get lost in worldly desires or reliefs to just numb/forget the pain, to stop feeling the sensations that rip our hearts but we always come back. It sometimes takes a day, a week, a month, or a year. But we always come back.

Because we want Allah to be with us.

And whoever turns away from My remembrance - indeed, he will have a depressed [i.e., difficult] life, and We will gather [i.e., raise] him on the Day of Resurrection blind." (20:124)

Because we understand the truth of this above verse. No matter how long we take to return to Allah, we somehow return with regret for going away from him. We regret all the sins we committed to get back to the person we were before the calamity that had hit. We return because life without Him isn't a life anymore.

And He - the most Merciful and Gracious lets us wake up to a new day, every day. To take the choice. To choose Him.

Put Him above all the worldly things.

Sabr is boiling gold. Liquidy, bright yellow, and thick. Touching it burns our hands. Still, we take the choice to touch it, we burn ourselves in the process. Our shattered hearts couldn't hold the pain that stings with each step we take further, with one more moment where we remain patient. Slowly our whole body is shaking, with immense amounts of pain to take in.

Sabr isn't easy but it's beautiful. It's very very very very hard to have hope that the next moment will be better than the previous. To believe that with hardship is ease.

The voice said, "Look at Me."

Even if it is just an imagination of my own.

I will believe that Allah has said it to me.

"Look at Me."

I will strive to grab as much melted gold of sabr as I can and choose to take the shattered fragments of my heart one by one and glue them. One at a time. With Sabr. With endurance. With worship. With hope.

One day when I will be standing in the middle of thrones of gold and silver, below which rivers flow.

I will have a golden heart too.

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holding on to Allah isn't an option, it's the only way.