And I’m still a believer, but I don’t know why
On being distant with the One Who Never Left
Lately, I’ve been feeling it again, that quiet ache in my chest that comes from being far from Allah for too long.
It’s strange because I never ceased praying, in a way. I continue to pray five times daily, I continue to make du’a, I continue trying to do the right.
But somehow… it feels empty.
It’s like Islam became something I do, not something I feel.
A rhythm I follow, but not one that reaches my heart.
There are days that I wonder, why?
Why do I still pray, yet feel so distant?
Why do I follow every obligation, yet sense no closeness?
Sometimes it seems like faith has become a routine, not a sanctuary.
One night, after finishing my prayer by routine, I sat for longer than I planned. My hands were still raised, but there were no words to be had.
So I opened the Qur’an and recite it. Without hope, really, until my eyes fell upon a verse that I have recited by memory since childhood, from Surah Adh-Dhuha:
“Your Lord has not abandoned you, nor does He hate you.
And indeed, the Hereafter is better for you than the present.
And your Lord is going to give you, and you will be satisfied.”
(Adh-Dhuha 93:3–5)
I read it once, then read it a second time, slowly this time.
And something within me changed. Those words were a gentle hand upon my chest. A quiet reminder that even when my heart strays far, I am not abandoned.
Maybe the silence isn’t absence. Maybe it’s space, for me to learn how to listen differently, to search for Allah not just in the moments that move me, but in the ones that test my stillness.
And then it struck me. The sudden, silent tears, then more copiously, uncontrollable.
I did not believe that after all these years, straying so far astray, after being so remiss in my faith, Allah would still wait for me. Still call me back so lovingly.
I cried because I knew how little I deserve, and yet how much I have always loved.
Maybe my distance served a purpose, as well.
Maybe it wasn’t punishment, but a summons to return.
I knew I had been praying mechanically. My lips moved, my body bowed, but my heart was somewhere else. Distracted, tired, gone. I was going through the ritual, but not reaching for the relationship.
And maybe that is why everything started to feel surface-level. Because how could I feel close to Allah when I wasn’t really there with Him?
Allah doesn’t waste any feeling, not even the hollow ones.
So I began to slow down.
To breathe between my prayers.
To not rush through Al-Fatihah, but to hear what my tongue was reciting.
To let my forehead hit the ground and breathe in what I really needed to say, instead of what I thought I had to.
And in that gentle shift, something relaxed.
I started to realize that maybe faith doesn’t exist in perpetual sensation of light. Maybe it exists in holding on when everything feels dark — in trusting that Allah’s nearness is not based upon the degree of emotional closeness that I feel, but in the fact that I still turn to Him.
There is a love that is in staying.
In showing up even when your heart is heavy.
In hearing “Allahu Akbar” even when it’s barely a whisper from a faraway shore.
I take my time in sujood,
not to perform but to confess —
to tell Allah that I’m tired, that I miss Him,
that I want to feel close again.
Slowly, I found myself with a gentler kind of intimacy. Not that emotional high I had yearned for, but a peaceful equilibrium- the kind that subtly pervades my chest during Fajr, or when the world is asleep and there remains only me and a prayer mat.
I do not find myself wondering, why don’t I feel it?
Because I think the answer is simpler now: I am feeling it. Just differently.
It’s good in the silence, the surrender, the small things that bind me to something infinite.
And that’s the kind of faith I’d wish to cling to. The kind that is not noisy or dramatic, yet constant.
Now, when I pray, I don’t seek to chase closeness. I simply sit in it. In the possibility that even my silence is heard, even my doubt is seen.
For maybe that’s what faith is: showing up for a God who never leaves, even if I do.
Every day is a little more alive nowadays. Not because I’m a little more divine or perfect, but because I’ve remembered why I began in the first place. Not out of fear, but out of longing.
And in wanting, I am peaceful.
I see Allah in the quiet, in the silences, in the way He pesters me to come back over and over and over again even when I’ve strayed.
Faith is not never losing your way.
It’s about always choosing to return.
May Allah soften our hearts, return us to Him, and make our worship more than movement. Let it be meaning.
Like a prayer —
that keeps me from breaking,
and from never feeling enough.
