I am probably not going to do this every night, but I did want to share a little about my first night of prayers for Ramadan.

After Isha prayers ( night time prayers), the brothers quickly discussed how many Rakats (parts) we would do each night. It was pretty much a consensus to stick with 20 on the weekdays, and 10 - 20 on the weekends. I was warned that I would be standing a long time, as well as doing a lot of prostrations. But as some of my Orthodox Christian friends know, you haven’t stood long until you have been to a Russian Orthodox church for Pascha (Easter). So the standing came pretty easy. The prostrations I also didn’t have to much difficulty, except towards the last two or three Rakat, when my knee started acting up a little. This is merely the physical aspect of Ramadan. My first night also had a mental and spiritual part. I put these two together, because it was the mental struggle that lead me to spiritual side of it. As many of you may know, my Arabic, is well lets say… lame. Up until two days ago I have been pretty much attempting to learn it on my own. So if there is a way to massacre the Arabic language I have probably found it, and if I haven’t, give me some more time. Regardless, due to my lack of understanding of the Arabic language, I found it easy for my mind to stray during the recitation part of the Salat. And it made me realize all the things in my life that I place before Allah, whether it be family, work, loved ones, recreation, ideas, things I needed to do, things I want to do, things I did that day, people I spoke to. I think you get the drift. While many of these things are important, NONE of them should out weigh my worship of Allah (SWT). So I have a lot of work to do, and quite a long way to go. And thats ok, because what is Ramadan about? Mercy and Forgiveness. None of us are perfect, and none of us have the same struggles and temptations as someone else. But we all have Allahs forgiveness if we seek it.