The moment you have to tell yourself that you are strong, means you are not strong. But you force yourself to be strong, which is okay. We have to start somewhere anyhow.
For me, a strong character is something that you have to build, it does not come by nature and it cannot be restored in yourselves without facing any great calamities and difficulties.
This is one of the reason on why God always inflict us with hardships (Q2:216). To build it in us and to prepare us for something greater that only strong people can understand and manage.
Till at one point, you dont have to tell yourself to be strong anymore. When something happens, you just embrace it with full heart. It doesnt matter to you what the outcome could be. What your focus is to improvise yourselves, move on with your lives and create a better tomorrow than yesterday.
Strong people dont realise that they are strong. They just have it in them.
I have a friend. We used to be best friend and now we are all separated with our own paths.
One day she contacted me and all out everything. She said that she has gone astray too much from the religion and that she even dared to commit adultery. She asked me what to do because out of everything that she had done, she was still in love with her ex. She felt hopeless. She felt that everything was meaningless.
I listened to her carefully, giving her full attention. We talked about the mercy of Allah, we talked about life, we talked about our purpose in this dunya as the slave as well as the vicegerance of Allah. We go for the solution. Its a lot of steps - its not as easy as ' I wanna to move on and thats it, Im successful, Im good. No. I understand its not that easy and I wished I could be more helpful to her.
Yesterday she whatsapped me and said, out of all the people in this world, she didnt expect at all that I can accept her and not judge her for what she had done. I was the last option and the option that changed her perspectives *cough*.
She asked : What makes you to behave like this? You know, by your appearance, people like you will shun away from people like me, what makes you not?
"People do terrible things, it does not mean that they are terrible person. Just because you told me that you committed bad things, doesnt mean that you are not capable of any good. We are human and we make mistakes."
By sharing this, Im not saying that Im a good person, i am not - I am still striving to be a good one, but as said by Yasmin mogahed, people don’t need to be condemned. People need hope. People need to believe that they matter to God. That no matter how far they’ve fallen or strayed, He always awaits their return.
Say, "O My servants who have transgressed against themselves (by sonning) do not despair of the mercy of Allah. Indeed, Allah forgives all sins. Indeed, it is He who is the forgiving, the merciful." (Az zumar verse 53)
