God Laughing

As salaam alaikum,

Yesterday was a very good day. I was sitting in the emergency room, seeing patients, loving my life. It could have been because I only had two patients during my entire shift due to some of the complexities of the way flow goes and the way that I pick up patients. But I feel somewhat more comfortable in the space now, comfortable enough to know that I'll miss the ED, I'll miss the residents. I have a med student crush on two of them, one because he's like the best resident ever, the other one because he's really cute and is a good resident.

The latter is married, haha, so it's like, admiration from a far. They're med student crushes, anyway...not I-want-to-get-with-you crushes.

Then, during the night, I had a sudden feeling of doom. I suddenly had the impulse to look at pictures of death. I watched, again, the last moments of the crew of the space shuttle Columbia, the tape feed that survived, before the shuttle broke up upon reentry into the atmosphere. Then I looked up a picture of Otis Redding's body that was pulled from the lake after his plane crashed...

I saw a dead body once. There was blood everywhere because his head was crushed in a motorcycle accident. Dead on the scene. Somehow, I got through an entire third year of medical school without watching a patient die. Some of my patients have died, but after I met them, so it's like they might as well still be living. Some of my relatives have died...

I suddenly started to remember the type of Muslimah I wanted to be...one who would be prepared for both life and death if it were to happen tomorrow. I wanted to feel as if I was doing everything right and as if I were good with God so that if I were to die the next day, I'd feel more secure about my going to Heaven.

I had a series of strange dreams last night. I think they all tied together. They were family related. I had a dream my cousin's daughter was on my computer and I kept her from it. I also had a dream that I got a free upgrade to Windows 7 and had some bugs to work out. I had a dream about family, and that we were somehow related to Levar Burton's wife, and Levar had converted to Islam, I guess, because his wife wore jilbab and niqab, even. I forgot how we were related to them. They had a light skinned son that she carried around. She was very stylish under her jilbab and very stylish with it. I helped her retie it upon leaving, and I wanted to tell her that I liked her jilbab, but for some reason, I didn't want my father to hear.

I woke up from the dream near the end, where I was playing a recording that I guess I had made with my webcam. I thought it was of me singing, "So High," by John Legend. And it started out like that, but then it became this 80s power ballad that I was singing at an impressively high register (which is unlike me, because I have a bit of a deep voice and I'm an alto by nature). I started singing along with it, but when I saw that my voice wasn't going to be able to do it today, I started it again so I could hear what I did. I looked at myself in the video. I was wearing an orange shirt, pacing up and down in my parent's house when I was singing it.

Then, my brother came in, and I told him to stop and listen to my singing, and watch me. He did his characteristic, "Whaaaattt?" but I started playing it for him anyway. I'm starting not to be able to reproduce the song, but the last lyrics were, "If I can't make it through the day, I'll make love through the night." Something like that.

And then my mind was like, "What kind of song is this?" And then I woke up.

But I woke up smiling...that was such a pretty song.

I woke up after feeling that little bit of impending doom feeling to a day where I'm once again, loving my life. I look around, I have everything I want and need, alhamdulillah. Something's going to change.

I just talked to a friend of mine who recently got married. I had a dream about her...she was telling someone that she prayed through Jesus (as) and she asked the man how he prayed, and he said through Jesus (as) as well. She is Christian, but she always refers to what God will do, not what Jesus will do, so it was a strange dream.

Anyway, she was saying that there is an incredible feeling of companionship that comes from being married than there was before she and her husband were married. I laughed and told her that this was the same thing that Imani said. She told me, "Yes, and you'll feel the same way with your husband."

I then snorted, "Yeah, in 10 years or whatever."

She chuckled, "You know, God is probably laughing at you." I didn't quite hear, so I asked her to repeat. "God is laughing at you, just waiting for you to see what He has in store."

This friend of mine...she is a riot! God laughing at me because I don't know what great thing I have in store?

...but I kind of took that to heart. Not the God laughing part, but that, if I only knew what was in store for me, I would be overjoyed, I would be even happier than I am now. If only I knew that what I will have will be better than I knew could exist.

I pray.

Because I prayed in my dream, too. I remember how she said she prayed for a God-fearing man, and two days later, she met who would be her husband. So, in spite of myself, in the dream, I prayed the same, with the same expectation. I prayed for in my dream what I have not been able to pray for in real life because in a sense I've given up, I've prayed for this for years, like, since I was a kid, and I guess it hasn't been time yet.

But waking up from that dream is one of those times in life that I feel like I'm in a state of grace...