Reclaim Your Heart

LOVE

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Escaping the Worst Prison
When Sara met Ahmed, she immediately knew. He was
everything she had always dreamed of. Meeting him was
like watching the sun rise in the middle of a snowstorm.
His warmth melted the cold. Soon, however, admiration
turned to worship. Before she could understand what had
happened, Sara had become a prisoner. She became a
prisoner of her own desire and craving for that which she
adored. Everywhere she looked, Sara saw nothing but
him. Her greatest fear in life was displeasing him. He was
all she could feel, and without him, happiness had no
meaning. Leaving him made her feel as though her soul
was being peeled from her very being. Her heart was
consumed with only his face, and nothing felt closer to her
than him. He became to her like the blood in her veins.
The pain of existing without him was unbearable because
there was no happiness outside of being with him.
Sara thought she was in love.
Sara had been through a lot in her life. Her father walked
out on her when she was a teenager, she ran away from
home when she was 16, and she battled drug and alcohol
addictions. She even spent time in jail. However, all that
pain combined could not compare to the pain she would
come to know inside this new prison of her own making.
Sara became a captive inside her own desires. It was this
captivity that Ibn Taymiyyah radi Allahu `anhu (may Allah

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be pleased with him) spoke of when he said, “The one
who is (truly) imprisoned is the one whose heart is
imprisoned from Allah and the captivated one is the one
whose desires have enslaved him.” (Ibn al-Qayyim, al-
Wabil, pg 69)
The agony of Sara’s worship of Ahmed was more intense
than the agony of all her previous hardships. It consumed
her, but never filled her. Like a parched man in the middle
of a desert, Sara was desperately pursuing a mirage. But
what was worse was the torturous result of putting
something in a place only God should be.
Sara’s story is so deep because it demonstrates a profound
truth of existence. As human beings, we are created with a