Are You From Stagnant Island?

The complex dynamic of a family isn’t to be taken lightly—just like the surface of that dynamic isn’t meant to reveal all its depth. What’s seen isn’t always the whole picture. That’s why there are so many ways to approach any given problem, with solutions that are also outlets—not just to fix what’s broken, but to help prevent it from happening again.

For someone like me, the decision to correct my prayers didn’t happen instantly. It came after a long trial of just doing basic prayer. I went through phases—waves of commitment, moments of weakness, frustration, and impatience. But all of that was necessary. It was the strengthening process. It helped me build a more solid approach to prayer, to understand its weight and its defining moments. 

I knew the force was real. I knew Allah was present in my life. But I didn’t yet have the confidence to fully understand. That might sound like a sad excuse—but really, it’s a valid way to recognize how intimidating belief can be. Our spiritual sense is quick to acknowledge when we’re lacking, when we’ve neglected something. And our ego, or our intuition, will respond. That’s where the battle begins—within. Constant self-assessment. A tug-of-war between what we know and what we’re ready to act on.

That’s part of the phases we go through—forming the connection we have with Allah through the trial and error of our prayers. And when I reached the point where I was tired of being in that trance-like state during salah, Allah aligned the guidance with what I needed. It was precise. Like a seesaw—He balanced it with just enough support to keep me steady.

This journey didn’t start with salah alone. It began when I started exploring life itself, the soul, and what happens when we pass. And every time I looked back, I could see the sequence of events—how Allah kept confirming the guidance, inspiring me, leaving me no choice but to keep turning toward the truth He continued to show me.

It wasn’t because I fit some perfect criteria. It was because I was open to the call. That’s what people often don’t understand. The connection with Allah is a give and take. And when we don’t grasp that, it creates doubt—blinding us to the easier ways we can rise to a challenge, and pushing us toward the harder paths where we sometimes miss the opportunity altogether.

When looks can be so deceiving, the deceit itself becomes the look. It becomes the expectation, the face everyone recognizes, even when it's not real. For someone like me, harkening to a truth that’s so personal yet so universally derivative, I found that my family’s quiet SOS—a distress call I didn’t even realize I was a part of—was really an indirect response from Allah delivering authority on land. But what unfolded felt more like a Broadway show called Wicked.

A show where my struggles, my weaknesses, even my strengths, were on full display—twisted into scenes I never asked for. Used to entrap me in roles I never auditioned for. Roles shaped by years of misunderstanding, projections, and emotional debt no one ever paid off. They took the present confusion and the past pain (or the other way around) of my family and used it like a script—to control the narrative, to define me, and to prevent the good nature that usually tames the beast of the passage… from actually reaching its climax.

That good nature—my instinct to hold space, to forgive, to try—is what usually helps the process move forward. But when your softness is used against you, when your stillness is mistaken for guilt, and your strength mistaken for defiance, it becomes harder to move. It becomes harder to breathe within the same walls that raised you. And yet, through it all, Allah was near. Watching. Rewriting. Waiting for me to see what He already knew.

That is why Allah will always supplement the steps you take getting to know the treaded path He paves—so you don’t mistake the source that planned it that way. So you don’t give credit to coincidence when it was His Mercy guiding you the whole time. Every subtle shift in your heart, every inner dialogue, every pause you took instead of reacting—He saw it. And He responded in ways you weren’t even always ready to understand.

Because it's a responsibility—to relieve yourself from the unspoken nuances surrounding you. The ones that mold your decisions before you even realize it. The silence in the room when truth is mentioned. The tension in the air when you choose peace over performance. These things shape the path too. And Allah knows that. Which is why He waits—not passively, but with full knowledge of what’s unfolding. Waiting for the result of the call. Waiting for you to respond to your own prayer.

We often think we’re the ones calling out. But sometimes we forget—He was the One who placed the call first. We just picked up later.

And when we finally arrive at that clarity, we realize—we were never truly lost, only redirected. Brought back through experience, through pressure, through roles we never asked for but were shaped by anyway. Because once you start to recognize the divine reasoning woven into the struggle, the chaos begins to quiet. The confusion loses its grip. The noise softens, and what’s left is the meaning that was always there, waiting to be seen.