Day 6
Actions are but Intentions
Today is my Day 1 of fasting… I’ve noticed a little bit of a theme in the testing of my will…
5am
I snoozed my alarm this morning too many times and missed my window of opportunity to eat before sunrise and pray. What’s interesting to me is that shortly after 5:45am, I started dreaming about eating cereal so intensely that I considered getting up and eating even though sunrise has started. My (irrational? devil-inspired?) thought process went a little like this:
What’s the difference between eating a bowl of cereal at 5:35 or 5:50?! I mean, I’ll still NOT be eating alllll day!
I did not eat after sunrise. I had made my intention before going to bed and would not submit to cereal.
7am
After I got out of the shower and was preparing for work, I realized I was still menstruating ever so lightly (the ‘sneak attack’) and asked myself if it it was worth breaking my intention for my fast.This was actually a very hard internal back and forth – an odd combination of hating my uterus for it’s slow release of lining; despising myself in the moment for being indecisive about if my fast would be valid; and hating the fact that I would consider giving up my fast so quickly.
I did not break my fast and went on with my day.
9am – 11:30am
My school runs a Summer Camp for some of our middle school students (ages 11-13) and today, without coffee/caffeine in my system for the first time since last year during Ramadan, I was running on empty the entire time. When my lunch break came around, I sat outside debating whether I would have a cigarette or not. I literally had to tell myself: NO.
I have to be honest, in prior years, I have let myself have a cigarette every so often. This year, I decided that I would not… but again, the devil inside kept saying: so what? Who will know? GIVE ME A CIGARETTTTTEE.
I did not.
3-5pm
I thought it would be a great idea to lay out in the sun and reflect today… read a hadith on intention… tan. As a result, I was a sweaty, thirsty and sticky mess. All I wanted on my walk home from Prospect Park was a cherry icey… and all I wanted in the shower when I got home was to drink all the water from the showerhead.
I did not.
You see the theme here right?
It could be that I am weak-willed person (and you would be correct).
or it could also be the latter: I need to constantly remind myself of my intention to keep my integrity in check in order to strengthen my will/self-discipline.
More and more, prayer to me is putting our intention into the universe and the more we say it, share it, believe it… it is what we live in this world as or work/fight/stand for.
When I pray, it’s putting my dreams, my hopes and my wants out there into the universe. As a Muslim, I do believe that Allah grants my prayers when it is in my destiny, my faith and what is right for me on my path.
I also know that when I pray and I allow myself to admit to what it is that I want, I will work as hard as I can to make it happen.
And if I want something to happen, I need to know that if I say it, I can fulfill on it.
That I am a woman of my word.
(Not always, but I am working on it… that is my intention)
From the hadith I was reading earlier:
Actions are but intentions and every man will have only what he intended.
