Mashallah we booked our Umrah in February.

I have been looking into visiting Makkah since November, the plan was everyone in the Miah household to go together. We have discussed it for a while, then January situation happened. Then I thought I wouldn’t be fit enough to go, we stopped our savings towards it as we thought it wasn’t going to happen, Then we booked a date for Jubbah & Ambia’s wedding, and then Jubbah had an important training day at work so couldn’t do the pre-organised date, then mum wasn’t going to go as Jubbah was wanting to take them, I hadn’t sorted Ibrahim’s passport and we needed that for applying for a VISA so had to do the fast track passport, then we had to rethink as taking Ibrahim will be too much for me and Tee, then mother inlaw and father inlaw said they’ll keep Ibrahim if we still want to go.

This all happened in the space of 10 days…so it did feel like it wasn’t our time, but someway Allah SWT made a path for us and it was meant to be. Financially, physically and emotionally…everything just came together.

The dates were during Ibrahim’s birthday and that was my motivation. Because of my ectopic pregnancy my thoughts on life changed. I didn’t want to throw Ibrahim a lavish 1^st birthday, or ‘celebrate’ I wanted to Thank Allah SWT for this blessing, for gifting me this child and wanted Ibrahim to grow up knowing we did Umrah for his first birthday. I don’t want him growing up expecting presents/parties for his birthday instead we will celebrate by giving back to the world. Inshallah I hope to maintain this and when he grows up he understands there’s no reward bigger than the blessings from our creator so in the afterlife we can try and be together.

If I don’t change and try and strength my Imaan how can I expect my son to grow up with Imaan in his heart? I love him so much I changed. I love him so much I hope Allah SWT grants me a place in the heavens and I hope Allah SWT guides my son on the right path and we both meet again in the afterlife. That’s how much I love him. I can’t expect my son to grow up to be a ‘practicing Muslim’ if his parents are not.

You can’t expect your kids to be well educated and lawyers, doctors and engineers if your not educated. Same principal with Islam, how can I teach my son rights and wrongs if I’m not ‘perfect’. In our culture there’s a lot of hypocrisy unfortunately. But not in Islam, we are taught your sins are forgiven if you truly repent, unlike culture religion doesn’t chuck your past in your face, Allah SWT lets you go through the darkest of sins so you come back with light and because of your past you repent and have Imaan in your heart. Whilst culture makes you believe once you have a stain, you are stained forever and Allah SWT will never forgive you. THIS IS NOT TRUE. You know your intentions and you know if you’ve sincerely asked for forgiveness and Allah swt is the only one that can judge you on it. Not culture.

I decided after paying our final for Umrah to wear the Hijab….as a sign of my commitment. I will talk more about this in my Hijab story next insha’Allah

Sultana ❤ ❤