Subhan Allah how quickly the time flies when you’re not eating, you’re not drinking and you’re not having much fun, and yet you’re sublimely immersed in the calm and the peace that is Ramadan.

The first few days are not easy, but even now, when Ramadan is falling during the longest days of the year, and we fast for about eighteen hours straight, the body adjusts.

That’s what people don’t realize.

The body adjusts.

Like when my body adjusts to wearing the hijab, and even though yeah, at times in early summer I can be really hot with it on, the body gets used to it, it changes its thermostat setting and everything becomes bearable.

We seem to be living at a time of impatience.

Where everyone expects the world to accommodate each and every one of their whims instead of people developing the intestinal fortitude to tough out inconvenience, to tough out hardship and not always take the easy way out.

What happened to developing discipline?

Don’t they realize that if it were easy everyone would be doing it?

But I am so fortunate because Ramadan has fallen in the summertime and during the summer time my schedule gets free. I am basically not busy until things start up again on September 8th insha Allah, where my residency as Artist in Library at Downsview Public Library begins again.

I have adjusted my schedule so that we get up around 4 am to have suhoor, the pre-dawn meal before we fast, and then I stay up till about 7 am and I write, and alhamdu lillah, I’ve been able to finish a project that’s been haunting me for years.

So now comes the discipline of polishing, which really isn’t that hard.

And soon insha Allah, I’ll be able to send it off and see if it will get published.

There’s something really beautiful about being up so early in the morning.

Praying Fajr with my husband and son, and then tidying up the kitchen so it’s clean for the day! (Another benefit of Ramadan.) And then taking out the computer and getting to work while the house is blissfully silent and the eastern horizon is slowly growing light, first with that bluish hue, and then with tinges of pink and orange until the final climax of golden orange light that doesn’t reach you down at ground level because there are too many trees and buildings in the way, but definitely hits the top branches. And the birds are singing their hearts out, and there’s just the coolest freshest breeze coming in through the open dining room window.

And there’s something to be said for just getting to it.

I won’t deny that I always sort of dread Ramadan coming. A month of fasting and losing sleep and all the Eid preparations, and stuff, it definitely isn’t easy.

But…once it’s actually underway…it’s a whole different story.

There are so many little moments, rewards that you just wouldn’t notice otherwise because you’re too busy eating and drinking and getting on with stuff.

It’s amazing how much TIME you have when  you’re not stuffing your face!

Time to just observe and to soak in the here and the now, and notice the little beauties like the coming of dawn.

And you know that the hardship will be over all too soon.

And I remember what my mother in law said, that I probably already mentioned in my last post, that she wishes all year could be Ramadan, and there’s truth in that.

People don’t know what they’re missing!

Subhan Allah.

Life is good, and Ramadan is achingly beautiful.

A time of blessings.

A recharge.

A spiritual renewal.

Peace.