The joys of married life

Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh,

So when I married, my husband and I were poor college students. Now...two years later, nothing has really changed.

My husband works full time now instead of going to his classes so that he can support us, alhamdulillah...but inshaAllah we´ll be moving soon, so that he can start up with the uni again in a year and a half or so, inshaAllah.....

That said, it´s started getting to me lately that we have NEVER had a real bed. When we were in the dorm, we just took my mattress out of my room and put our two mattresses together on the floor at night (and piled them up on his bed during the day)...and after we moved into our apartment, we got a sofa bed, which we used until it broke. We also got a bedframe (from the spring clean up...)...but no mattresses, so the bed serves more as a cover for all of our things than anything else... because we don´t have any storage room in the apartment, either...alhamdulillah.

We took a mattress with us from the dorm (because they got new mattresses that year, we just took the old one with us)...alhamdulillah that´s what Jayjay and I use these days.

I put the mattress on the bedframe even though the mattress is too small and Jayjay and I sleep in the bedroom...my husband sleeps on the couch...in the living room.

For some reason, when the mattress was in the living room, I didn´t mind it that much that we didn´t have a bed...but Jayjay just doesn´t sleep if there is any light (computer) or noise (Baba) in the room, subhanAllah. If I want her to go to sleep before her father (at 2 a.m.), she needs to have a seperate bedroom...I can only hope that when we move, I can get her a small toddler bed...and I can leave her in there for the night where she will inshaAllah not fall face first onto the floor if she wakes up in the middle of the night...for a while, though, she´ll have my old bed...

Alhamdulillah I have a place to sleep. Especially when there are so many people in the world that have so many more problems than I do, subhanAllah.

Oh well...alhamdulillah. While I don´t like it, I guess I have to live with it.

...................................................................................................................................................................

I´ve kind of been thinking lately that either something is in the air or something is wrong. I know way too many sisters who have been going through problems lately. Doesn´t it seem strange that a proportionately larger number of Muslimahs have depression, eating disorders, sleep disorders, etc??? Why do so many more of us seem to have problems than the general population.

A lot of women find themselves having problems in their marriage. Either they feel left out, lonely, taken for granted, required to take on their husband´s culture...or maybe even all of that together.

While I prefer staying at home, it´d certainly be comforting to know that my husband listened to something I said now and then...instead of giving me the answer "I´m not interested in what you were talking about" after I tell him the same thing three times repeatedly with no answer.

And while I´ve gotten used to it and probably a little too complacent, maybe other women have more trouble with it.

I´ve pretty much lost all hope for this world. I even get kind of upset when somebody (my husband?) tries to put hopes in my head--like saying "hey, when you get home from visiting my family, if it goes well and we can change your visa, you´ll find a big mattress on the bed"......I don´t want him to put ideas in my head. That´s the way people get hurt. I had enough of that crud growing up from my mother. None of it comes true. Don´t even think about it. It´s not going to happen. Just concentrate on your prayer, on taking care of relationship with Allah subhanahuwata´ala and taking care of your family and forget the rest. There´s nothing in this life and that´s the way it´s going to stay whether we like it or not. Start planning for what´ll happen after this life, because that´s all we´ve got that´s really certain.

A woman I know says no. Her life is worth living and that she is worth it. I can understand her. I wish that I were like her sometimes...but I don´t think that making myself false hopes is really going to help me. But is laundry really the only thing we have to look forward to in life? Is spending hours in the kitchen to make our husband´s favorite dish (yabra? mahshi? maqlooba?) really life?

Yep.

Get used to it.

Try to look forward to your children. Try to raise them to be good Muslims. Try to keep your home clean and relatively pleasant to live in. Try to make your food enjoyable. Sometimes...always...it´s the little things that count. If you can´t find pleasure in the mundane...then yeah...life isn´t really fun...but Allah subhanahuwata´ala tests the people He loves, inshaAllah...and if we bear it all with patience, inshaAllah we´ll be rewarded.

Am I depressed? Yep. Do I have an eating disorder? Yep, but I try to control it, because we´re not allowed to harm ourselves as Muslims. Do I have a sleep disorder. Oh yeah. Do I wish that my marriage were happier? Yep. Has this life beaten me down? Yep.

Am I ungrateful? NO.

I am happy to have what I have, alhamdulillah. I have lived with much less than what I do now and I am happy that I now have at least a small amount of control over the way I live, alhamdulillah. I am sooooo grateful that Allah subhanahuwata´ala led me to Islam, alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah that I am here and have a chance at achieving Jannah, inshaAllah.

So I go on. And I put on a smiling face for my husband, because he provides for us. And I put on a smiling face for my daughter, because she doesn´t need to know what´s going on. And I ut a happy face on for my neighbors and aquaintances and anybody else that I cross paths with, inshaAllah....because that´s also jihad for me. Self-control means a lot.

Fi aman Allah,

Katherine