Give Muhammad a Chance

At 21 I married a man five years older than me.  The second time around, at 31, I married a man five years younger than me.

Eight years into our marriage, it still sends little shock waves through people when I mention this. There are sometimes oooohs and aaahhhs, eyes get bigger and rounder, and I can almost see folks wanting to high five me and slap my husband on the back for biting the bullet and marrying an older, divorced, single mom.  I have, no joke, been asked at least a dozen times how I managed to pull this off.

But a decade ago when he proposed to me, I didn’t bounce off the walls. I advised him to speak to his elders and family, which he did. I was mature enough to know that marrying into a South Asian family meant actually marrying the family, and without their blessings there would likely be no blessing in the marriage.  So he dutifully approached his parents, armed with the story of Khadijah (ra) and Muhammad (saw), confident as an aalim and haafiz Quran himself.  They took the news fairly well, asking for time to think. Istikharas were had all around and the green light came about a month later, at which point his mother called my mother.

Read the rest of Rabia Chaudry’s brilliant piece at Patheos!