I never used to believe love could be quiet.
Every time someone said “I love you,” it came with an expectation — behave a certain way, agree to something, prove yourself. I got used to measuring my worth in how much someone else needed me. When they didn’t, I disappeared.
By the time I was twenty-six, I’d mastered the art of silence — silencing my wants, my feelings, my heart. It was safer that way, like locking fragile glass in a box where no one could drop it again.
Yet the ache never went away. It just waited.
It was a Tuesday afternoon when everything cracked. I was sitting in my parked car, hands glued to the steering wheel after work, unable to move. The kind of tired that had nothing to do with sleep.
My phone buzzed. A message from a friend, a short one: “Don’t forget to make dua tonight. You’re not alone.”
I almost laughed. Dua?
I hadn’t made a sincere prayer in years. Sure, I moved through salah, the mechanical way some of us learn to pray when our hearts aren’t in it. But real dua — whispering to Allah from a place so raw I feared even hearing myself — I’d forgotten how.
Or maybe I was afraid of what I’d find in the silence.
But that night, for reasons I still can’t explain, I sat cross-legged on my prayer mat after 'isha, the last prayer of the day. And I just... stayed.
I didn’t have the words at first. I wasn’t sure how to begin.
I looked down at my hands. I don’t know why, but I remembered my mother cupping them when I was a child, before bedtime, whispering gentle duas with her eyes closed as if each word was a thread stitching protection around me.
I hadn’t thought of that in years.
So I whispered, “Ya Allah…” and stopped.
The rest came slowly: “I don’t know how to talk to You anymore. But I miss You. Or maybe I miss a version of me that wasn’t this lost.”
Something inside cracked open.
I cried. The quiet kind — no sobs, just hot tears slipping down onto my hands.
The kind of crying that feels like surrender.
I don’t remember how long I stayed like that, just breathing, whispering, remembering.
But in the stillness, I felt it.
Not lightning. Not a voice from the clouds.
Just warmth. A gentle weight in my chest, like someone placing a blanket around my shoulders.
Cherished. That was the word.
I hadn’t done anything to earn it. I hadn’t transformed into a better person; I was still struggling. But somehow, I knew I hadn’t been unloved, even in my worst moments.
A forgotten line from the Qur’an surfaced like sunlight breaking water: “Truly, Allah loves those who turn to Him in repentance…” (Surah Al-Baqarah 2:222)
He didn’t wait for me to have all the right words. He didn’t ask for perfection, only for return.
And I had returned. However small. However trembling.
The next morning, the world was the same — traffic, emails, broken people pretending they’re fine.
But I was different.
Not fixed. Not glowing.
Just held.
Softly held by Someone who’d never stopped loving me, even when I had buried myself so deep I forgot where the light came from.
Even when I felt so unworthy, so far from anyone’s affection — His love had wrapped around me like air: unseen, unfaltering.
I had always known of Allah.
But now, I had felt His love.
And that changed everything.
—
Qur’an & Hadith References:
I never used to believe love could be quiet.
Every time someone said “I love you,” it came with an expectation — behave a certain way, agree to something, prove yourself. I got used to measuring my worth in how much someone else needed me. When they didn’t, I disappeared.
By the time I was twenty-six, I’d mastered the art of silence — silencing my wants, my feelings, my heart. It was safer that way, like locking fragile glass in a box where no one could drop it again.
Yet the ache never went away. It just waited.
It was a Tuesday afternoon when everything cracked. I was sitting in my parked car, hands glued to the steering wheel after work, unable to move. The kind of tired that had nothing to do with sleep.
My phone buzzed. A message from a friend, a short one: “Don’t forget to make dua tonight. You’re not alone.”
I almost laughed. Dua?
I hadn’t made a sincere prayer in years. Sure, I moved through salah, the mechanical way some of us learn to pray when our hearts aren’t in it. But real dua — whispering to Allah from a place so raw I feared even hearing myself — I’d forgotten how.
Or maybe I was afraid of what I’d find in the silence.
But that night, for reasons I still can’t explain, I sat cross-legged on my prayer mat after 'isha, the last prayer of the day. And I just... stayed.
I didn’t have the words at first. I wasn’t sure how to begin.
I looked down at my hands. I don’t know why, but I remembered my mother cupping them when I was a child, before bedtime, whispering gentle duas with her eyes closed as if each word was a thread stitching protection around me.
I hadn’t thought of that in years.
So I whispered, “Ya Allah…” and stopped.
The rest came slowly: “I don’t know how to talk to You anymore. But I miss You. Or maybe I miss a version of me that wasn’t this lost.”
Something inside cracked open.
I cried. The quiet kind — no sobs, just hot tears slipping down onto my hands.
The kind of crying that feels like surrender.
I don’t remember how long I stayed like that, just breathing, whispering, remembering.
But in the stillness, I felt it.
Not lightning. Not a voice from the clouds.
Just warmth. A gentle weight in my chest, like someone placing a blanket around my shoulders.
Cherished. That was the word.
I hadn’t done anything to earn it. I hadn’t transformed into a better person; I was still struggling. But somehow, I knew I hadn’t been unloved, even in my worst moments.
A forgotten line from the Qur’an surfaced like sunlight breaking water: “Truly, Allah loves those who turn to Him in repentance…” (Surah Al-Baqarah 2:222)
He didn’t wait for me to have all the right words. He didn’t ask for perfection, only for return.
And I had returned. However small. However trembling.
The next morning, the world was the same — traffic, emails, broken people pretending they’re fine.
But I was different.
Not fixed. Not glowing.
Just held.
Softly held by Someone who’d never stopped loving me, even when I had buried myself so deep I forgot where the light came from.
Even when I felt so unworthy, so far from anyone’s affection — His love had wrapped around me like air: unseen, unfaltering.
I had always known of Allah.
But now, I had felt His love.
And that changed everything.
—
Qur’an & Hadith References:
