The Cord of Love

It’s been just over three months since my last relapse in October & things are going well, alhamdolillah. I’m walking without any assistance, & though an hour’s brisk walk may wipe me out for a day or two, a meandering walk with frequent sit-downs lets me stay out all day. I’m learning to read my body's signals, which seem to change every few weeks so that something that was impossible becomes possible, & something that was easy becomes difficult.

A former boss told me that once he hit 40 his body was full of aches & pains that he’d never had before. No one really tells you that pain becomes a daily companion as you age, which you sigh in welcome for as it walks in every morning in that old familiar way. I just never thought I’d know what he meant at 30. It may seem incredible, but the last pain-free string of days I had was in November 2003 & its memory is one that I savor.

Although I pray for the alleviation & cure of my illness I no longer pray for a return to “normalcy” as I initially did. Normalcy these days too often means living in willing ignorance of one's Maker & one's final destination. To take each step knowing what it's like to be paralyzed, to see the face of my beloveds knowing what it is to be blind, to never take a healthy day for granted - I can only say that the journey has been for my betterment.

Suffering is a part of the human condition. But the modern understanding of suffering, untied as it is from any personal betterment, can only lead to despair. To see suffering as redemptive, as a chance to return before the final return is upon us, as a tug on the 'cord of love' with which God binds us to Him enables me to be overwhelmed at how very blessed I am each moment, each day, subhanAllah.

May the consciousness of His constant grace never leave me, ameen.

"We have a common instance of this referring to second causes what ought to be referred to the First Cause [God] in the case of so-called illness. For instance, if a man ceases to take any interest in worldly matters, conceives a distaste for common pleasures, and appears sunk in depression, the doctor will say, ‘This is a case of melancholy, and requires such and such a prescription.’ The physicist will say, ‘This is a dryness of the brain caused by hot weather and cannot be relieved till the air becomes moist.’ The astrologer will attribute it to some particular conjunction or opposition of planets. ‘Thus far their wisdom reaches,’ says the Qur’an. It does not occur to them that what has really happened is this: that the Almighty has a concern for the welfare of that man, and has therefore commanded His servants, the planets or the elements, to produce such a condition in him that he may turn away from the world to his Maker. The knowledge of this fact is a lustrous pearl from the ocean of inspirational knowledge, to which all other forms of knowledge are as islands in the sea.

The doctor, physicist, and astrologer are doubtless right each in his particular branch of knowledge, but they do not see that illness is, so to speak, a cord of love by which God draws to Himself the saints concerning whom He has said, ‘I was sick and ye visited Me not.’ Illness itself is one of those forms of experience by which man arrives at the knowledge of God, as He says by the mouth of His Prophet, ‘Sicknesses themselves are My servants, and are attached to My chosen.’"

-Al-Ghazali, The Alchemy of Happiness

(Thank you Dervish for highlighting this beautiful reflection)