Canadian Girl Finds Inner Peace in Islam
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(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - I lived with my mother. My mother doesnt have a strong religious background. She comes from a Christian background. Because of my mothers and I lack of compatibility, I had to live in the street for a couple of months where I was then found and I was placed into a foster care.
I was in three different foster homes before the last one that became my permanent home where I stayed for six years. During that time I was completely alone. I had no mother, no father and no friends, nothing that I could hold on to, and I think thats what really opened the doors for me and why I had to start my search because I was alone.
My mother never really installed any firm roots, so I myself got involved. I guess you can say I put my suffering in Christianity then. And I started attending a Pentecostal Church. So every Sunday I would look forward to going to church. I felt like it was my spiritual education that I was not getting from home.
So every Sunday I would go and I would have questions to ask about who Jesus was because again we had like prayers and basic teachings from my mom but just basically a prayer before dinner and a prayer before bed but thats as far as it went.
So when my Sunday school teacher would tell me about Jesus, I got the classic egg theory: the theory of the shell, the yolk and the white; how the three compose an egg. If you take one away, then you dont really have the whole egg, so thats how the trinity was described with Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit. So I acknowledged that but I still felt there was something missing in that teaching.
It wasnt until much later I was in high school actually and I started becoming more involved again with the church because in my childhood I was involved, but then I strayed out of the church. As most young teens, they are involved with their friends and things like that but I really questioned everything about life.
There was a boy in my high school who was a Muslim. I tried to explain to him more about Christianity and he wanted to explain to me about Islam. So I remember just talking to him and he was denying certain things about Christianity and it really struck me like how he could say such things about Christianity.
I thought instead of me being pulled one way from someones opinion, I wanted to find my own opinion. I didnt want to be led any more by pears or by other influences. So I started going to the library and researching more about what religion is; Islam, Christianity and all faiths and thats where the doors started to open for me.
What attracted me to Islam was the beauty in it. I hadnt been exposed to all the stereotypes or the media or the negative connotations. So when I started reading these books about what Islam had to say I was confronted with myself from my childhood teachings, from my life style at that time, which was basically just living your life with no particular direction, and now this, Islam.
And my soul came into a trauma. I couldnt eat, I couldnt sleep, I couldnt think, I couldnt live properly any more I didnt know what was proper, nothing made sense any more. I would stay up around the clock just trying to get my hands on anything that would talk about God to find out who He really was because up until this point, I think he was just a name, He wasnt alive, He wasnt alive in my heart as yet.
I remember just running outside late just crying out to whoever was there, this creator, and I was saying Please answer me, give me direction, give me footing, give me something that I could hold on to because Im lost". I was desperate. I didnt want to live but I knew I couldnt take my life because I knew that wasnt something for me to do, but at the same time I didnt know which God to call on, do I call on the God that they called in the Christian background or do I call on the God in the Islamic background do I just drift as Ive been drifting. Who do I call? So I called to this above the name above the language. I said please give me an answer, I need to know, I cant go on like this.
Alhamdulellah (all praise is for God), within 2 days of me calling my creator, I received that answer. I was inside my grade 11 math class and I was reading a book and everything I have been rejecting about the elements of the faith, I cant fully explain it but it just flooded in. I believed, I believed in everything and I had already learned the shahada on my own just by reading books. I had learned about Muhammad and other things about Islam and all these things came in and I was just overwhelmed it was like this is it.
This is it I found it, and my eyes got full with tears and my heart just filled with this joy and ran out of the classroom, and my teacher said like Tanya, where are you going? and I couldnt even respond. I was just like language wasnt in my head. I didnt know how to talk even. It was just so overwhelming. I ran to the washroom and I didnt know what Wudu was, but I was like flushing my face, trying to get clean. I tried to make my own Wudu I guess! And I just said this is it, I found it.
I ended up seeing a sister who was in my school at that time and she was wearing a hijab and I said to her Are you a Muslim? she said Yeas I said I need to talk to you because I think Im a Muslim too. So alhamdulellah I just went from there and she took me to meet her family. With open arms, they invited me to their house.
They would give me their clothes, their books, food and everything, they just showed me their hospitality and they drove me to the Masjid. It was here at the Islamic foundation. I was there and I took shahada with the family that took me and a sister who was working inside the office and I made my shahada La Illah Illa Allah, Muhammad Rassul Allah those words could barely come out of my mouth because I was so overwhelmed.
My life has completely changed. Now I have a belonging, its a deeper belonging. With my mother, we had different opinions for so long about faith, about actually nationality because Im mixed; my mother is white and my father is black and I wasnt raised with my father so I was always questioning, people would ask me where are you from, whats your background and I didnt know what to say. Im Canadian, I only know my mothers side.
Basically now I belong I have something to ground me I have something to look forward to. I know now why Im here and where Im going to, Im going to my creator and it makes me want to learn. My past started off with that learning, with that exploring and its an ongoing process until Allah commands that to stop but I encourage everybody to continually strive for that inner peace.
This feeling that I have inside of me, I want to share it with others, and sometimes some people are willing to embrace that in Islam, and even if it doesnt come through Islam just with our example to non-Muslims we can show what its all about, and alhamdulellah that my goal is to share that little light that Allah has given me with others.(http://abna.ir/data.asp?lang=3&id=260319)
I was in three different foster homes before the last one that became my permanent home where I stayed for six years. During that time I was completely alone. I had no mother, no father and no friends, nothing that I could hold on to, and I think thats what really opened the doors for me and why I had to start my search because I was alone.
My mother never really installed any firm roots, so I myself got involved. I guess you can say I put my suffering in Christianity then. And I started attending a Pentecostal Church. So every Sunday I would look forward to going to church. I felt like it was my spiritual education that I was not getting from home.
So every Sunday I would go and I would have questions to ask about who Jesus was because again we had like prayers and basic teachings from my mom but just basically a prayer before dinner and a prayer before bed but thats as far as it went.
So when my Sunday school teacher would tell me about Jesus, I got the classic egg theory: the theory of the shell, the yolk and the white; how the three compose an egg. If you take one away, then you dont really have the whole egg, so thats how the trinity was described with Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit. So I acknowledged that but I still felt there was something missing in that teaching.
It wasnt until much later I was in high school actually and I started becoming more involved again with the church because in my childhood I was involved, but then I strayed out of the church. As most young teens, they are involved with their friends and things like that but I really questioned everything about life.
There was a boy in my high school who was a Muslim. I tried to explain to him more about Christianity and he wanted to explain to me about Islam. So I remember just talking to him and he was denying certain things about Christianity and it really struck me like how he could say such things about Christianity.
I thought instead of me being pulled one way from someones opinion, I wanted to find my own opinion. I didnt want to be led any more by pears or by other influences. So I started going to the library and researching more about what religion is; Islam, Christianity and all faiths and thats where the doors started to open for me.
What attracted me to Islam was the beauty in it. I hadnt been exposed to all the stereotypes or the media or the negative connotations. So when I started reading these books about what Islam had to say I was confronted with myself from my childhood teachings, from my life style at that time, which was basically just living your life with no particular direction, and now this, Islam.
And my soul came into a trauma. I couldnt eat, I couldnt sleep, I couldnt think, I couldnt live properly any more I didnt know what was proper, nothing made sense any more. I would stay up around the clock just trying to get my hands on anything that would talk about God to find out who He really was because up until this point, I think he was just a name, He wasnt alive, He wasnt alive in my heart as yet.
I remember just running outside late just crying out to whoever was there, this creator, and I was saying Please answer me, give me direction, give me footing, give me something that I could hold on to because Im lost". I was desperate. I didnt want to live but I knew I couldnt take my life because I knew that wasnt something for me to do, but at the same time I didnt know which God to call on, do I call on the God that they called in the Christian background or do I call on the God in the Islamic background do I just drift as Ive been drifting. Who do I call? So I called to this above the name above the language. I said please give me an answer, I need to know, I cant go on like this.
Alhamdulellah (all praise is for God), within 2 days of me calling my creator, I received that answer. I was inside my grade 11 math class and I was reading a book and everything I have been rejecting about the elements of the faith, I cant fully explain it but it just flooded in. I believed, I believed in everything and I had already learned the shahada on my own just by reading books. I had learned about Muhammad and other things about Islam and all these things came in and I was just overwhelmed it was like this is it.
This is it I found it, and my eyes got full with tears and my heart just filled with this joy and ran out of the classroom, and my teacher said like Tanya, where are you going? and I couldnt even respond. I was just like language wasnt in my head. I didnt know how to talk even. It was just so overwhelming. I ran to the washroom and I didnt know what Wudu was, but I was like flushing my face, trying to get clean. I tried to make my own Wudu I guess! And I just said this is it, I found it.
I ended up seeing a sister who was in my school at that time and she was wearing a hijab and I said to her Are you a Muslim? she said Yeas I said I need to talk to you because I think Im a Muslim too. So alhamdulellah I just went from there and she took me to meet her family. With open arms, they invited me to their house.
They would give me their clothes, their books, food and everything, they just showed me their hospitality and they drove me to the Masjid. It was here at the Islamic foundation. I was there and I took shahada with the family that took me and a sister who was working inside the office and I made my shahada La Illah Illa Allah, Muhammad Rassul Allah those words could barely come out of my mouth because I was so overwhelmed.
My life has completely changed. Now I have a belonging, its a deeper belonging. With my mother, we had different opinions for so long about faith, about actually nationality because Im mixed; my mother is white and my father is black and I wasnt raised with my father so I was always questioning, people would ask me where are you from, whats your background and I didnt know what to say. Im Canadian, I only know my mothers side.
Basically now I belong I have something to ground me I have something to look forward to. I know now why Im here and where Im going to, Im going to my creator and it makes me want to learn. My past started off with that learning, with that exploring and its an ongoing process until Allah commands that to stop but I encourage everybody to continually strive for that inner peace.
This feeling that I have inside of me, I want to share it with others, and sometimes some people are willing to embrace that in Islam, and even if it doesnt come through Islam just with our example to non-Muslims we can show what its all about, and alhamdulellah that my goal is to share that little light that Allah has given me with others.(http://abna.ir/data.asp?lang=3&id=260319)
