If you’re here since last year, you might remember that today’s date is quite disturbing to me. February 16, 2020 is the day I got into the car accident that I’ve been constantly bringing up almost all year long. Sometimes I wonder if it was really that traumatizing, or if it just happened during a generally stressful year and that’s why I couldn’t get over it as easily as I would have expected. But either way, I know I’ve spent a large portion of my life swallowing in so many of the words I wanted to say, just because I thought people would get sick of hearing them. And I no longer feel okay about catering to other people’s preferences this much before I even tend to my own needs. So now, whenever I feel like bringing this up, I just do. And since today’s date triggered the memory, I had to allow myself a moment of reflection.

This time, last year, I had so many questions. I couldn’t understand why something like this had to happen to me. At that particular time. Why I had to work on healing from something I did not choose. And why I couldn’t just rewind back to a simpler time and pretend like none of this ever happened in the first place. I blamed myself so much for it. I thought it was God’s signal that He was really angry at me.

But now, one year later, I see it.

I see how terribly flawed my entire thought process was. I see how very loving God has been all along. I see every reason why it had to happen this way. Maybe it was a wake-up call for me because I had been very spiritually distant back then, maybe I did need that. But what I didn’t quite remember at the time was that my journal actually held an entry from exactly 2 days before the accident, where I was making a very specific prayer that I couldn’t see how it would ever come true – yet I continued wishing for it anyway. Reading it today brought tears to my eyes, because even though I completely forgot I had even prayed for it, it’s now been answered e.x.a.c.t.l.y the way I wished for. And though it might not make sense, the accident was actually one of the major reasons that led up to it. I didn’t know it at the time, I never would have. It reminded me of this part of the Ayah (verse). Of the fact that I could hate an experience this much, when it really did carry so much kheir (good) for me.

I think it’s now bringing in a new meaning to my life. Because one year later, I still HATE that the accident happened to me. I still have to deal with some of its consequences that do not go away. I still am not completely okay. But deep down, I KNOW it’s kheir. And that’s what’s changing for me.

Kheir, isn’t necessarily what’s going to make me super happy or content. It isn’t going to magically remove all the pain that kicks right back every time I remember the scene. It isn’t going to stop the muscles in different parts of my body from tightening every time my eyes spot a speeding car. But it helps me *accept* all of it. Accept that sometimes bad things happen for good things to follow through. That not every thing is always going to work out the way I planned for it to. And that it’s okay to feel the hurt and the gratitude together, because the existence of one never has to cancel out the other. I am grateful. Very. And if I were to go back in time, I’d choose the accident all over again. But does it still hurt? Hell yes. It hurts a lot. And my old understanding of the Ayah would have made me feel guilty about that. But I no longer do.

No one gets to “choose” the things they have to heal from, no one would attempt to walk right into things they’d know would only bring them pain. But that never means that none of it is kheir. Because He knows. He knows all that we forget we once prayed for. He knows when we’ll need to have it, and even though we might unknowingly hate it, He still knows when we’ll need it to be taken away. Because He knows, and we don’t. Always.