Maryam ✨

“Anxiety-prone people who don’t like uncertainty can be especially likely to ruminate about why something has happened and come up with explanations involving excessive personalizing. To overcome this, you need to learn to tolerate that you’re not always going to know why people behave the way they do.”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points

“For most people, prayer necessitates stepping back from the pains and joys of daily life. We need this stepping back, particularly from all that is difficult or conflict-ridden, taking for ourselves a certain distance, in order to look at things not just from our own self-centred perspective but from the perspective of the vision we are seeking together. That vision is to create a place of love and belonging. Prayer is a time to let light flow into our lives, to literally “enlighten” each day.”
― Jean Vanier, Becoming Human

“For one thing, Mom knew Broca and Wernicke were scientists, not patients. She had read all kinds of books about the brain from her regular visits to the local library. She also didn’t like that the doctors saw me as an interesting specimen rather than a human being. She had given up hope early on that the doctors would cure me. All they’d do is put him through weird experiments or give him untested medicines, observe his reactions, and show off their findings at a conference, she wrote in her diary. And so Mom, like so many other overprotective mothers, made a declaration that was both unconvincing and clichéd.”
― Won-pyung Sohn, Almond

“When we realize that Allah loves us beyond what can be fathomed and that He always knows what is best for us, our fear of the unknown transforms into faith. After all, as the Qur’an says, “To Him belong the keys of the heavens and the earth” (39:63). When we surrender to God’s will even when things do not go as planned, we are still grateful, because we know that God’s plan will always be greater than our greatest dreams. So long as we remain chained to this world and everything in it, including our own desires, we can never truly feel liberated. It is only in trusting the Divine and becoming a servant of Allah that the soul experiences true freedom.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam