Being the one responsible

My last training was held on the 9th of october, it was just a few days into the fasting month.
One of the discussions that came up was about letting the people in our lives be responsible for their actions .
This did not come out during the discussions but to me it illustrates a point rather well.
I had a patient who had several very difficult issues over her mother in law and by association, her spouse. She had back problems and she has had several rather awful accidents and she felt something was wrong in that it was not just a physical thing.
One of the issues she related to me happened about 20 years ago, when she first got married. She was still thinking of it and it had created so much animosity and misery in her relationship with her spouse.

She used her wedding maher( mas kahwin) to buy herself a rather elegent leather bag.
One day her mother in law wanted to borrow the bag. Although extremely reluctant to part with it , she lent it to her mother in law anyway . She never got it back. Her mother in law decided to keep it and she was very upset. One day she told her husband she wanted to go to her mother in law's house and take it back no matter what. Her husband replied, you do that and we are no longer married. This is called a taqlid, a conditional divorce whereby if the wife does the deed, the marriage is dissolved. She did not go and take the handbag but she was very sad that her husband said such a thing and also that her marriage was without even a maher, for the maher was taken away from her. She felt valueless and has felt valueless for the past 20 years. I made a suggestion. I told her to tell her husband how she felt and to ask him to replace the cost of the handbag. She said no, she said she will be fine and that she had forgiven him. I asked her ,if she had forgiven him how come it has been 20 years and she still remembers. She said she forgave but could not forget. Then I asked her, what if, on your death bed you remembered this incident and then in your last breath you could not forgive him? He has done you a grave wrong , taking away what is rightfully yours ?.He could go to hell on that one deed if you did not forgive him in your last breath. Do you know that in your not voicing out his responsibility and not insisting he make amends you are wronging him? Do you not love him enough to make him responsible towards you?

Now we go back to my workshop and the question of waking people up for sahur. One lady said she had to spend so much time waking everybody up after slaving over the food to serve and they took ever so long to get up and it was the same all the time. Even her spouse would wake up just to wake HER up and then go back to sleep and come in only to eat.

I told her," If you have to wake them up , wake them once and then you go and eat and do whatever you have to do. Make them responsible over their selves. If they choose not to get up then let them miss their sahur. See what happens. As for your spouse , this needs a discussion . I know he is a reasonable man , and you can discuss with him if you feel you are overburdened "

Of course she argued that she did not want them to go hungry etc and etc.. many of us feel that way over people we love. Actually if we loved them enough , we would allow them to face the consequences of their actions. We are not going to always be there for them , to protect them , to insulate them from the consequences of their deeds, then they will resent us actually for not helping them to have the discipline and the skills they need when they go out on their own..