"Every Tuesday at 3 PM, my mother calls the same wrong number. Has for six years. "Hello, this is Susan. Is Robert there?" Same response every time, "No Robert here. Wrong number." "Oh, I'm so sorry to bother you." Then she hangs up. Sets a reminder for next Tuesday. I thought it was dementia. Mom's 71. Maybe forgetting she'd already tried this number. "Mom, that's not Robert's number. You've called it 300 times. Why do you keep calling?" She looked at me strangely. "I know it's not Robert's number." "Then why" "Because someone answers." Turned out, the woman who answers is 83. Lives alone. Has severe social anxiety. Never leaves her apartment. No family. No friends. "Six years ago, I called your brother's old number by mistake," Mom explained. "Woman answered. We talked for two minutes. When I apologized for the wrong number, she said, 'Please call again anyway. Nobody calls me.'" "So you just... kept calling?" "Every Tuesday. We talk for exactly twelve minutes. About nothing. Weather. TV shows. Her cat. Then I say I have to go, and she says okay." "For six years?" "For six years." "Does she know you're calling on purpose?" "Of course. I'm not subtle. But we maintain the fiction. I 'accidentally' call. She 'happens' to answer. We pretend it's chance, not choice." "Why the pretend?" "Because accepting help is hard. Accepting a wrong number is easy." Mom's phone buzzed. Tuesday, 3 PM reminder. She dialed. "Hello, this is Susan. Is Robert there?" A pause. Then laughter. "No Robert here, Susan. But I'm here. How was your week?" I listened to them talk. About the weather. A TV show. The cat's vet appointment. Twelve minutes exactly. Then, "I should let you go." "Okay, Susan. Same time next week?" "Oh, I'm sure I'll accidentally dial this number again." More laughter. Goodbye. Mom hung up. Looked at me. "Her name is Dorothy. I've never met her. Don't know her last name. Don't know her address. Just her voice every Tuesday for twelve minutes." "What if you stop calling?"

When a hardship goes on for what feels like too long, and when you find yourself at the edge of a breaking point, again and again and again, and when you feel you have exhausted whatever is in your means to help yourself, and still you see that your ordeal is not over, then take comfort in this: ‎وَاللَّهُ يُحِبُّ الصَّابِرِينَ Allah loves the steadfast. [Quran 3:146] You are in sabr as long as you are in the hardship, bearing it and putting up with it, in submission to Allah. You are in sabr as long as you do not give up hope in Allah, and as long as you keep striving to look for a way out. Sabr includes effort, faith, hope, determination, conviction, tears, silent pleas to Allah, so why would Allah not love the person who has gathered so many good things?

I am Allah's servant. Will be turning 44 within a few days. Ever since my birth I felt things never went according to my plan. Being a teenager and someone who wasn't much aware of the higher purpose, I used to feel angry and frustrated that why do I have to settle for plan B? Not realizing that when plans don't go our way they're actually going Allah's way. It took a story I read in my early twenties to realize that. Mind you I never was ungrateful but took whatever came my way. The society we live in judge us if we don't conform to the milestones set by it and we'll I was really behind according to the world but in Allah's timeline things went the way they were up until two years ago. Since two years I have been facing another major shift that has turned and torn my life apart. All the comfort zones that I had slowly stripped away and here I was literally burnt to ashes. After that there was sorrow, grief in me as to what happened and wondering how weak are the pillars we surround ourselves. Yesterday I came across Fatima's post and it was like I was looking in the mirror and in the three years I saw a ray of hope. I am not alone. I am ready to embrace this new chapter where I have only Allah. He's the driver in my life and I just want to now focus on the journey instead of worrying on how to get a ride or who is with me. I'm grateful to Allah for showing me the real faces under masks. In sha Allah! 2026 is the year where the new me emerges and becomes what Allah wants me to be.

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