When I was young, I used to have a lot of trouble sleeping. I would be scared to go to sleep because I would have horrible nightmares. My mom used to tell me to close my eyes and say Bismillah (In the name of God) right before I went to sleep and I wouldn't have any bad dreams.
Since I was only six years old, I took what she said quite literally and kept trying to make my very last thought be Bismillah. If you have tried to do this, you know how hard it can be. It is a strange place, between waking and sleeping. Those minutes or seconds before you go from being among the living to being among the dead.
As the years went by, the advice of my mom stuck in my head and I would always say Bismillah and try to remember God before I went to sleep and surely my bad dreams did go away.
When I was in my late teens, I was attending a conference and the speaker spoke movingly about the importance of saying "Astaghfirullah" or "I seek the forgiveness of Allah." I was so deeply impacted by the speech that I switched my nightly routine and started to say Astaghfirullah until I went to sleep. This was a big improvement from Bismillah because it made me reflect on my sins, those who I may have wronged and on any other transgressions I had. In these years I became more aware of the way I treated my parents, acts of worship I was weak in and who I was as a person generally.
But the years did not bring me closer to God. I started thinking of Him as a scary God. A God who was angry with me and from who I constantly had to seek relief. Although in retrospect I can see that these feelings were the symptoms of a diseased heart, at the time I felt it was this word that was causing me to feel so badly and so I abandoned it.
My nights felt different. I didn't sleep as lightly as I once had. At night I started to think about the problems I was having, what people had said to me that hurt me, I worried about deadlines, expectations and what the future held. At nighttime I would feel the giant weight of my thoughts and this dunya crushing me.
One night after many, many nights like this, without me even thinking, "Alhumdulhillah" or "All praise is to God" came from my lips. It felt like the most natural thing I had ever said. It is the word Muslims say when they want to express their gratitude for Allah's blessings. And on that night, I felt the first softening of my hardened heart.
The practice has been restorative and fills me with a sense of calm and humility for all that I have been given. As we get older, life becomes more challenging. We face new struggles that can bring us down and these struggles make us become cynical about life, God and people. But when we remember this simple word and the strength it can provide us, we develop a protection for ourselves. When we face life with gratitude, we only find more to be grateful for.
May Allah make us among those who never tire of praising Him and find reason to praise in every moment. Ameen.
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