thank you God for the lives you have given us

I remember watching the Lion of the Desert as a child with my parents and siblings, I never forgot the scene of a mother's final moments before she was hung at her neck to die. She had been designated a rebel by the Italian colonials who considered it a crime for Libyans to fight for the right to live freely on their land. This mother would leave behind a son who was recently orphaned by the loss of his father to the resistance. Her final words: thank you God for the lives you have given us.  

Her final words revisited me tonight as I reflected on another year of life, revisited me again during break as I spent my evenings making coffee for my mother, playing chess with my little brother, lifting my nephew's joyful face into the air, it revisted me again as I was driving to the hospital in the morning, the sun's rays falling on the buildings to my left, the verses of Ar-Ra'd in the voice of Muhammad Ayyub playing in the background. I was conscious of these moments in a way that I had never been before. It was overwhelming.

To have lived and loved and lived is a blessing that doesn't dawn on us daily as we carry out our mundane tasks, as we go on through our days and weeks and years. I am realizing how transformative it is to live reflectively, not only on our days of birth or other milestones, but to live in such a way often - it grants a natural gratitude and contentment. 

I pray that I become more deserving of the days that Allah has granted me. 

Cuyahoga National Park, 02/2025