We Are Married

After you got married and met with each other's families, you may notice huge differences between the both of you. As time goes by, you begin to understand where each other came from and what shaped this person who you fell in love with. Some may be easily understood while others you may not be able to fathom until the end. Some traditions  may be so different from yours, it ends up being pet peeves. But, ultimately, those matters should not make you love the person any lesser. Adapting with each other is always a challenge. I think it is especially important that you truly adapt to living with one another before you decide to have children. I am lucky that between my husband and me, we can truly talk about anything. We even discussed when we plan to have children before we got married (We're both doctors, remember? So we are control freak professionals). I can ask him anything about everything.  Dearest grew up in different places even before we met in 2002, when we were both...

 One of my good friend at work lost her husband one month ago. It was so sudden, unexpected. They were married for 5 years. She had him for 5 good years. She came back to work today and we talked about her. I let her talk about anything she wanted. I only answered if she asked. For the rest of the time, I just let her talk. She talked about those last few days of his life, the moment she knew he was gone and all other things. She asked me, "What is the reason for all this? Why did he have to die?" ...she asked, so I had to answer. I thought about it for awhile. I answered  that in our religion, we do not focus on the why. We do not dwell to search for the reason why it happened. But, we focus on the things that happen after a bad event. We try to find...I could not find the correct word. I said "benefit" but I meant "hikmah". So, what is hikmah? I went back home and kept thinking about it; how to explain "hikmah" to a person with another religion...