Patience

I read this post on one of my favorite blogs a few days ago, and I loved Alice's point about how valuable and yet how difficult it can be to be generous with your time with your children. Oh gosh, so true. I think I do a relatively ok job, most of the time, of pretending to be patient with my kids, even when my stock of patience is running pretty low. But sometimes.... well, I guess it's inevitable that a mom of a four-year-old and a one-year-old will spend a large part of her day waiting - for someone to finish tying their shoes, for someone to finish eating their yogurt, for someone to drag their nose out of their book long enough to respond to what you're telling them... the list seems endless.

Most of the time, I truly don't mind. Other times, it drives me batty :) I usually manage to hide my impatience well enough that the kids don't realize it's there (I think), but sometimes it's all too obvious from my reactions that their pace is messing up My Schedule. I've been disappointed with myself for so long about this, because first of all, they're little kids and can't help it, and second, where do we really need to be in such a hurry? Nowhere in particular, is the answer. But I couldn't seem to convince myself to relax and just go with a little-kid-paced lifestyle.

And it's not just with the kids, either. That little bit of time after the kids are in bed is so precious to me that I kept finding myself feeling resentful when my husband needed my help with anything extra during that window of time, and obviously that kind of attitude never made for a happy end to the evening.

So, Alice's post made so much sense to me, although I wouldn't have phrased it myself in quite the same terms she used. And then that evening, at the end of that evening's juz, I got to this aya:

which, translated, would be something like, "You will never attain righteousness until you give freely of that which you love, and whatever you give, truly Allah knows it well." Well, for me, "that which I love" would be my free time, for sure. One of the rarest and most precious things I have. It's made such a difference to realize that even if nobody else does, Allah truly appreciates it when I close a long-anticipated book in order to play tigers (again), or file taxes! It's finally easier to join the game, wait for the shoe-choices, or sort through paperwork truly cheerfully. For me, that's been the biggest blessing of Ramadan so far this year. Al7amdulillah :)