The Scribbles on the Heart

On my to do list today was scrubbing crayon marks off of my walls. My two year old thinks it looks beautiful, but I am positive my landlord will not agree. Eventually my landlord, the owner of my apartment, will come to know about how we decorated the place.

I didn’t mind the scrubbing because I was reminded of a few things like for example, it’s an amanah on me to leave my apartment as I took it or better at least. And that reminded me that in life we have a lot of amanahs on us, like when we borrow something it should be returned undamaged or how we should leave the bathrooms nice for the next person, every day things.

And during my scrubbing, I learned how to scrub the most effective way:  one small piece of scribble at a time, because when I tried to scrub the entire scribble, nothing was removed. And when I tried to apply more pressure to a large area, my arm would cramp up, and I couldn’t keep that up. So by concentrating on one small part of a scribble at a time, eventually my walls became clean despite there being really a lot of scribbling on my walls.

So as I was scrubbing and becoming happy, I started thinking that my apartment isn’t the only thing which I do not own and that I will have to return.  Allah swt is the Owner of my heart. And He will take it back from me at some point. I am responsible for keeping my heart  as Allah swt  gave it to me, clean and pure as when I was born.

Anyone can imagine how disheartening it is to receive something back ruined and blackened of one’s own possessions. And we can imagine how we would feel if we were the borrower who ruined someone else’s possession. We’d feel dread to return that thing, and when we did return it, our faces would be downturned, feeling humiliated.

So similarly, Allah swt would not be pleased to receive our hearts back ruined and blackened, and how would we even face Him?  Allah swt will only allow that which is pure into Jannah.

Alhamdulillah, our teachers have told us how to purify the heart in the most effective of ways, which is by the way, just like cleaning scribbles off of our walls. They have described this process better than I can explain, but, the idea is to focus on one bad habit at a time because if we try to write a giant list of things to immediately stop and expect success, we might find our efforts can’t be sustained, and we will feel defeated; we may completely give up. So, one bad habit at a time or take on one good thing at a time …one step at a time with consistent effort is the key.

I also realized that I was lucky that I got started cleaning the scribbling on my walls before it collected because who knows if I had waited, kept allowing the scribbles to collect, if I would have had time to get it all off before returning my apartment back to the landlord. I mean, when you have to leave, you have to leave no matter if you are ready or not.

And besides, my two year old gets fairly sneaky, and I get a little distracted at times. So between those two conditions, it’s possible that scribbles are likely to suddenly appear, almost from no where. So a clean-as-you-go approach is best iA.

And lastly, it was a good reminder to monitor the art activities in my house closer to prevent further wall decorating projects, initiated and managed by my two year old.  =D

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