Ramadan Kareem to all of you! May Allah accept all our good deeds and ibadah (worship)!
A couple of weeks ago, two sisters who’d been attending our New Muslim Project for a while said that they wanted to take their Shahadahs (say the Testimony of Faith to become a Muslim). They said that they wanted to make it a formal occasion with a bit of a ceremony, so we organized a small celebration for them and we were surprised by how many sisters came over to be there for them; some of whom we hadn’t seen for ages.
One sister had just given a lovely introductory talk about the meaning of taking the Shahadah and we were just about to start witnessing the Shahadahs when a woman who’d been attending our circles for a while said rather shyly: “Would anyone mind if I said my Shahadah today too?” There wasn’t a dry eye in the room! We were all so choked that Allah had finally opened her heart and she was ready to take that huge step to join us, fully.
Spending time with these lovely new sisters, who are so keen to learn how they should be celebrating this blessed month, and helping them prepare for their first Ramadan and overcome some of the hurdles (that we take for granted when we have been fasting for many years) has proven to be a wonderful reminder of the beauty of this month and all its benefits. It's deepened my own feelings about the value of this month and spurred me on to improve my own commemoration of Ramadan as well.
In the last post: Motivating Reminders of Death, I mentioned some important factors that will help you develop stronger goals. They were:
Having a strong vision of what you want to aim for in life – if you want to aim for Paradise, as most of us do, you need to work out what you need to do to deserve it.
You need to be motivated to work towards your goals – reminders such as those of death can act as strong prompts to action.
Every journey starts with one step – it’s easy to dream about an amazing goal you want to achieve, but unless you take a first step, no matter how small it may be, you’ll never reach it.
Writing down your goals makes them more concrete – and declaring them in public, as I did, can make them even more real and really spur you onto action.
And one other point that I mentioned above:
5. Having the support of like-minded people - this will give you support and motivation to carry on if you start to flag, as being around those sisters has strengthened my determination to carry out my Ramadan goals.
What those sisters did by taking their Shahadahs embody all these factors, in perhaps the ultimate way:
They had a clear vision of what they wanted in life – to gain Paradise by living according to their belief in Islam.
They were motivated to make their Shahadahs – one of them seeing the other sisters ready to do it and hearing the meaning of it realised that she was ready too.
They took the huge step to say that they were ready to say their Shahadah – and from that we made arrangements so they could start on their journeys.
Not only did they write down their commitment, they also made a public declaration of their beliefs - which has made their commitment even more concrete.
They made their declaration in front of a large group - and now have the whole group to support and spur them on.
I’m guessing that the first step of your journey may not be quite as big as theirs, but how many of the above factors have you built into your goals to help to make sure that you achieve them?
~Sister~ If you're ready to make important changes in your life, ask for a phone / Skype coaching consultation to discuss how we could work together on this
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Reply #2 on : Sun September 05, 2010, 00:56:04