I took the time to ask God to accept my Umrah but more than anything I was so grateful and gave thanks to Allah (God) for giving me mercy in a sense, so as to make this easy for me to do. At no point did I panic. My sugar levels remained stable and I did not have any emergencies. I was so grateful. Relief yes, but more thankful than anything. I have had experiences where doing something like this would have almost guaranteed something that needed to be dealt with. These are just my experiences from managing these conditions. So the fact that nothing like this happened in completing Umrah, the fact that I was still in relative comfort, it just signalled to me that Allah (God) answered my prayers and he kept me safe.
For me it felt like a small miracle, and I was so thankful! Throughout the whole pilgrimage, leaning into my faith and Allah, surrendering and being content with Him, I felt a kind of calling I have never experienced before. I felt at peace, and I just felt for the first time in my life, a true belonging.
I’m sorry if I sound overly dramatic in any way but it’s just the best way that I can describe how I felt at the end. Yeah ok I get it – “well done you finished, now back to reality”. Whilst I accept that this is true, it just felt I’d achieved something greater than just doing the Umrah itself. And despite how I try to write this out, I suspect that I don’t have the literacy to encapsulate how I really felt in that moment.
After I finished my prayer by moving your head from the right shoulder to left, as I stood up my umrah guide said that my umrah was now complete. I had thought that the completion only happens once you trim/cut your hair but it was clarified that whilst this still needs to be completed with men, umrah at this point is finished.
For women, only a finger’s width is normally cut no more.
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