I didn’t cry anymore when it happened this time.
At first, when I was passed over for the promotion—for the fourth year in a row—I felt hollow. Not angry. Not despairing. Just... worn out.
I went home, made wudu slowly, and stood for Maghrib. But even then, my hands felt too heavy to raise in dua. So I whispered a prayer I barely believed in: “Ya Allah… I’m tired.”
That night, I wrapped myself in a blanket that still smelled like my mother’s oud, and stared at the ceiling. I remembered how she used to say, “Nothing is lost when you walk with Allah, habibti. Even delays carry you closer.”
But four years of effort? Left behind for someone younger, louder, better connected?
The next morning, I didn’t open my laptop until noon. I watched the light on the wall shift with the sun. I couldn’t explain why, but I found myself stacking all the clean dishes from the rack onto the shelves one by one, as if control over this small order could fix the chaos in my chest.
It didn’t.
That Friday, I almost skipped Jumu’ah. But guilt pulled me there. I drove in silence, parked in the back row, and sat down on the carpet near the wall. Everyone else seemed to have purpose. Wives with their toddlers. Old men with canes and calm faces. Young boys running to catch up with a crowd stronger than their legs.
And me? A thirty-four-year-old with a shelf full of certificates and nothing to show for it.
When the imam began the khutbah, he talked about hardship. About how believers carry private battles no one else sees. Then he recited from Surah At-Talaq: “And whoever fears Allah—He will make for him a way out. And provide for him from where he does not expect...”
I closed my eyes.
I had heard the verse a hundred times. But this time, something small cracked inside. I thought of all the ways I had begged Allah silently in sujood. The times I got up early to revise reports alone before sunrise. The emails I rewrote five times to sound assertive, not desperate. The way I smiled when clients ignored me and praised my male colleagues instead.
“And whoever relies upon Allah—then He is sufficient for him...”
It wasn’t the words exactly. It was the memory they flashed: my mother’s hands in the kitchen, cracked from years of cleaning, lifting in dua without ever once saying she was tired.
I don’t know why, but I began to cry—not with sobs, just small tears that fell quietly, like rain you don’t hear until you look up and feel it on your skin.
That afternoon, I didn’t check my emails. I didn’t write another “maybe next year” message to myself.
Instead, I went home, washed the prayer mat, and laid it out as the sky turned pink.
I still didn’t know what was next. But for the first time in months, I made a full dua—out loud, whispering into the dusk, not because I had confidence in myself, but because I remembered that Allah had never overlooked me, even when I felt invisible to the world.
Some hopes don’t bloom right away.
Some grow underground, in the dark. But Allah sees that hidden soil. He waters it quietly, deeply—until the heart wilts less each day, and trust rises like dawn.
Qur'an and Hadith References:
I didn’t cry anymore when it happened this time.
At first, when I was passed over for the promotion—for the fourth year in a row—I felt hollow. Not angry. Not despairing. Just... worn out.
I went home, made wudu slowly, and stood for Maghrib. But even then, my hands felt too heavy to raise in dua. So I whispered a prayer I barely believed in: “Ya Allah… I’m tired.”
That night, I wrapped myself in a blanket that still smelled like my mother’s oud, and stared at the ceiling. I remembered how she used to say, “Nothing is lost when you walk with Allah, habibti. Even delays carry you closer.”
But four years of effort? Left behind for someone younger, louder, better connected?
The next morning, I didn’t open my laptop until noon. I watched the light on the wall shift with the sun. I couldn’t explain why, but I found myself stacking all the clean dishes from the rack onto the shelves one by one, as if control over this small order could fix the chaos in my chest.
It didn’t.
That Friday, I almost skipped Jumu’ah. But guilt pulled me there. I drove in silence, parked in the back row, and sat down on the carpet near the wall. Everyone else seemed to have purpose. Wives with their toddlers. Old men with canes and calm faces. Young boys running to catch up with a crowd stronger than their legs.
And me? A thirty-four-year-old with a shelf full of certificates and nothing to show for it.
When the imam began the khutbah, he talked about hardship. About how believers carry private battles no one else sees. Then he recited from Surah At-Talaq: “And whoever fears Allah—He will make for him a way out. And provide for him from where he does not expect...”
I closed my eyes.
I had heard the verse a hundred times. But this time, something small cracked inside. I thought of all the ways I had begged Allah silently in sujood. The times I got up early to revise reports alone before sunrise. The emails I rewrote five times to sound assertive, not desperate. The way I smiled when clients ignored me and praised my male colleagues instead.
“And whoever relies upon Allah—then He is sufficient for him...”
It wasn’t the words exactly. It was the memory they flashed: my mother’s hands in the kitchen, cracked from years of cleaning, lifting in dua without ever once saying she was tired.
I don’t know why, but I began to cry—not with sobs, just small tears that fell quietly, like rain you don’t hear until you look up and feel it on your skin.
That afternoon, I didn’t check my emails. I didn’t write another “maybe next year” message to myself.
Instead, I went home, washed the prayer mat, and laid it out as the sky turned pink.
I still didn’t know what was next. But for the first time in months, I made a full dua—out loud, whispering into the dusk, not because I had confidence in myself, but because I remembered that Allah had never overlooked me, even when I felt invisible to the world.
Some hopes don’t bloom right away.
Some grow underground, in the dark. But Allah sees that hidden soil. He waters it quietly, deeply—until the heart wilts less each day, and trust rises like dawn.
Qur'an and Hadith References:
