The Wedding – Of Fathers and Daughters

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

Thank you all for the kind words and prayers regarding my daughter’s recent wedding :)  I promised to write a post about it, though words failed me when trying to express the myriad emotions a father feels when walking his daughter down the aisle, and placing her hand in that of another man. Then a young reader of this blog wrote to me and asked the following:

How did it feel? The actual process of the marriage? Were you happy? Were you sad that she was leaving you? Did your heart at any given point in time feel a bit disappointed that you are no longer the only man in her life? And how does it feel now that after the marriage? Where the celebrations and congratulatory messages gradually die down and you get back to your normal life? Do you feel any difference?

To which I can only say: “All of the above.”

And yet…Alhamdulillah! She married a wonderful and kind man of whom I greatly approve and am honored to call my son-in-law. His parents are also very warm and kind and loving, so the process of marriage went smoothly as far as taking him into the family, and adding the extended family as well, so to speak. Of course the nafs want to hold on to the young girl that looked up to you and that you loved so much, but the heart, that overflowing fountain of love, wanted her to be happy more than anything else, and now, inshallah, she will be.

And it is different now, of course.  For her whole life, I knew her only as “my baby girl” and now she is another man’s wife. But a fine man, whom I came to love over the course of their engagement, so I am truly gaining another son, and not losing a daughter. This is not always the case in marriage, so I thank God that she has found a soul mate :)

Besides that, it’s time for her to begin the next part of life’s journey, and give me grandchildren, LOL. Inshallah, it will be so :)

So thank you, young brother, for inquiring. It is a blessing to set the thoughts down and makes my eyes water and my heart happy all over again :)

My wife is also very happy, of course, and recently wrote this, about loving children and letting them go, to a friend (the emphasis is mine):

You have to move yourself to Love.. You have poured love and goodness into her and that is all you can do. Sometimes the reward of these things is far down the road. I can tell you that I have loved my children during times when other parents I have known have all but turned their backs on theirs. What they do and say is not important, whether you believe that or not. What is important is how deeply and consistently they are loved. It is the place from which they center their entire lives. This is what Love of God and God’s Love for us, means. This is how we live what He intends. It is the source of everything.

Ya Haqq!