Bismillah
As Salaamu alaikum.
This summer I have been thinking about Quran a lot. I have memorized 8 juz, a quarter of the Quran, but I can only recite two of those from memory without looking and without mistakes. I almost feel cheated. I thought that memorizing Quran would be easy. That the only difficulty would be in finding the time to sit and study day after day after day. The father down the path I walk, however, I am realizing that the real struggle in memorizing Quran is to retain it. And to actually make myself find the time revise day after day after day.
So this summer (to the end of the year) my goal is to get it all so firm that I can recite from any section I have memorized without looking and without making mistakes. It doesn’t matter whether this task will be difficult or easy. The only thing that matters to me at this particular moment is that I am giving my best to Allah.
It used to be that I believed I would never reach the point where I would rememorize everything I had forgotten and now I can see that it’s happening. I don’t want to keep repeating the same cycle of forgetting Quran. This time I want it for real. I want it forever. That doesn’t mean that I’ll never have a memory lapse. It means I will return to Quran so often that it’ll become my breath.
My goal is to memorize 1 to 2 pages (1 really) of sura Nisa each week. And to memorize them extremely well. It’s been a long time since I was young. Sometimes I wish I had memorized back then, like my teacher master Yoda and so many others. But the beauty of memorizing in my thirties with children and work is that I am learning how to live a Quranic life. Every page I am able to conquer fundamentally changes the fabric of my life by necessity. When I dont change I cannot memorize.
That’s for new memorization. As for the parts I am currently losing I am going to create a system to go through them every week.
It truly is in the smallest matters where I find the most difficulty to be consistent. And those are the actions that have the most potential. I have no tears left and no sadness whereby to feel sorry for myself. All I have is choice. I can choose to keep going and to get better. Or I can choose to stop here. I can decide that where I am is perfectly acceptable and better than most will ever attain. But that way of thinking is no longer good enough for me. I want the dream. I want to be able to hear a page number from Quran and be able to recite from any line on that page forwards backwards and upside down. I want to be the best.
I’ve got s long way to go.