Poor Mum, Rich Mum

As Easter holidays start for my children, the complaints about boredom will start up again. I have been complaining quite a bit too lately and I have become quite self-conscious of my attitude. The kids are at home and we have no plans for holidays. Our last holiday was to Scotland in 2013. Since then I have tried to make up not being able to afford a holiday with days out and finding fun things to do with the children. As they get older it’s harder to placate the children in this way. Little Man tells me lots of the children in his class are going on holiday. Little Lady is sad because her snapchat is full of pictures of her friends having fun on holiday or going shopping or hanging out in cool places (minus parents of course). 

My family in Pakistan keep asking me when I will come to see them, it’s been about eight years since my last visit and I have four sisters-in-law and a little gang of nephews and nieces I have not met. Some of my friends have travelled to Pakistan for the Easter holidays, often via a stop in Dubai or Saudi for umrah. Family members have been either coming or going on their travels and holidays.

I think my poor husband has been hearing a lot of moaning at the moment, about the need for a change, a break or a holiday. Fourteen years of parenting can feel like a long time with no break. We have spent our savings on refurbishing our home and owe money to friends which will be paid back by then end of the year insh’Allah. So no holidays this year. Hubby suggested next year, but I feel like have been hearing next year for a long time. Once in a fit of pique, I told him I don’t want to wait until I am too old to enjoy it to go on holiday. He laughed and told me I won’t be old in a year.

We are also still in the middle of having the ground floor of our home refurbished, everything has been moved to different rooms and piled in corners, my bookshelf has been taped over with black sheets of plastic. Gorgeous’ homework book is trapped inside the bookshelf for the time being with no prospect of coming out soon (this is what he gets for leaving it lying around). We only needed to paint the walls, but on starting work found serious damp in one wall, a few weeks later we found the broken sewage pipe in the garden which was causing the damp. So we are still waiting for the plaster to dry weeks after we decided to paint the room. I cannot entertain, although I have still been trying to take care of guests in between all of the mess. I cannot walk past, set the cushions straight and put books away and feel contentedness at how everything is in its place.

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In all, I have been feeling a little dispirited. But when I write these things down and reflect, they are such petty little things. They seem hardly worth getting annoyed about when so much of the world is facing so many serious hardships. It helped to listen to some talks on gratitude (this one by Ustadh Nouman Ali Khan and this one by Mufti Menk), as they say, a reminder is always good for the believer.

The talks and also some introspection helped me to change my perspective a little in the last few days. We can look at what we want and cry about what we can’t have, or we can be deeply grateful for all that we have:

I had to take a step back from holidays, debt and moaning children and count my blessings: My beautiful faith, being married to the love of my life, my soul mate and patient best friend. My children, healthy and confident, if champion moaners. Many of my friends fly abroad to see their parents every few years. Mine live five minutes away. The house is a mess, but it is my sanctuary and safe place – because I choose for it to be so. The kids will moan and compare to their friends lives, but I trust that at some point they will see that we have raised them with endless love and the best of intentions and that will count for something with them. I could get paid more at work, but I am enjoying work at the moment and funnily enough, I was offered two opportunities today to apply for higher paid work – one I really liked the look of.

I have gained weight and can’t quite seem to shift it thanks to my love of chocolate and carbs, but I still feel more beautiful than when I was 21 and a size 8 and I have the strength and stamina I have always had, certainly more than anyone else I know alhamdulillah. 

So I am going to stop moaning insh’Allah, stop thinking about holidays, rest, money and small moany people living in my house and count my blessings.  All of the ones I can think of insh’Allah and even those that I cannot and take for granted. We have so much and still it is never enough, so the only thing to do is to be happy with what we have and grateful with whatever comes our way and content for what does not, because in every circumstance there is some benefit for us:

On the authority of Suhaib (may Allah be pleased with him) he said: The Prophet (sallallaahu alayhi wa sallam) said: “Amazing is the affair of the believer, verily all of his affair is good and this is not for no one except the believer. If something of good/happiness befalls him he is grateful and that is good for him. If something of harm befalls him he is patient and that is good for him” (Muslim No. 2999)