The journey that came next was truly hard for us, and these blog posts were extremely difficult to write. Again, I can’t do justice capturing Yaseen’s struggle, or our emotions experiencing it.
Trying to make my mind remember these moments, I force it to travel to a dark place. So, before I journey into dark moments and painful memories, I have to remind myself of something. And if I’m taking you along on this journey with me, then I have to remind you too.
For a few moments, I want to move away from my story and, instead, I want to share with you about a motivational talk that I heard. The talk was about trials and how to deal with them.
The speaker mentioned a story that really impacted me, and had me thinking about the tests of life in a different way.
As I recall, the story went something like this:
There was a king who loved to go hunting, and by his side was always his trusted servant. No matter what happened in life, this servant always had the habit of saying ‘All praise be to Allah SWT, it is all good’.
So there was a day when the king went hunting as he usually did. And as the king got his arrow ready to shoot, the arrow dislodged and it severed the king’s finger. The servant, even seeing this, said ‘All praise be to Allah SWT, it is all good’.
The king was angry when he heard the servant saying this. How could it be good that he had lost his finger?
So, on their return to the palace, the king had the servant locked away in prison. The servant, even as he was imprisoned, repeated: ‘All praise be to Allah SWT, it is all good’.
A long time after, the king was out hunting once again. This time a tribe of fire worshipers came along, and seeing the king, they forcefully took him with them to their village, intending to sacrifice him to their ‘god’.
As the tribesmen were about to throw him into the fire, one of them noticed the king had a missing finger and shouted out for them to stop. They had wanted someone who was perfect to be sacrificed and offered – and this man, with his severed finger, was clearly imperfect. And so they let the king go.
The king, on returning to his kingdom, realized that his servant had been right. Even when his finger had been severed, indeed, all praise be to Allah SWT, it was all good.
The king, acknowledging that he had been wrong in imprisoning his servant, freed him. But he was curious. Why did the servant also say ‘All praise be to Allah SWT, it is all good’, even as the servant was imprisoned?
So the servant responded: he was always at the king’s side, even when the king went out hunting. When the tribesmen kidnapped the king, they would have kidnapped him too. As they realized that the king had a defect and was unworthy of being sacrificed, they would have looked to the servant who was with him as the best alternative for sacrifice. That day, the servant wasn’t along with the king, only because he had been locked away.
Truly: ‘All praise be to Allah SWT. It is all good’.