Ramdan Night 5

Relate to them the story
Of the man to whom
We sent Our Signs
But he passed them by:
So Satan followed him up,
And he went astray.
S.7 A. 175

For as long as I can remember, I have had conflicting motivations, conflicting moralities.  There has always been a great desire to help others, as well as a profound propensity for sin and unproductive pursuits.  Each fed each other, the worse I behaved, the larger the penance.  I was fighting to create some sort of karmic parity, some sort of general ledger that would tally on the bottom line, somehow forgiving the erratic excesses along the way.  No wonder people reacted the way they did to me, why people often loved me or hated me, respected me or loathed me.  There were also the few that stuck around and weighed things out, who gave me the benefit of the doubt. I don't think I would have been that patient.

When I read this verse, it made me think more about this awful dichotomy that brews inside me.  I think I always thought the bad side was me, and the good side sort of an accident, even something I didn't deserve to have within me.  I didn't realize that the good things, the beautiful things were from God, His Signs.  I grew up without a faith, but I had something deep inside me that was decent, that kept me close enough to my path to reemerge and see the truth.  I thank God for the kindness that is in me, and I regret terribly the part of me that tried to negate it, too ashamed to claim it.  No, I did not find the Koran early in life, nor did I know any Muslims.  But the word of God was in my chest, and enough of it has persevered for me now to reconstruct my faith in an honest, forthright manner.

My signs were internal, and they have led me to Islam.  I have not embraced my faith as fully and as quickly as I should have, but I am trying.  It hurts me to know some friends think my conversion was not genuine, and it is my fault.  I don't share what I feel often, other than in these posts.  The constant introspection in these writings is my way to keep bringing myself back to my goals, back to the signs I have always owned, back to my faith.  They are not self-aggrandizing pleas. I want to be a good man, not the man I was who often did good things, but a man who lives a good life, no longer worried about compensating for failures, compensating for sins, a man who is proud to carry God's goodness in his heart, and is not afraid to let people see it.