Dr. Ahmed-Zaid: Recognizing that God is in control helps us accept tragedy

As the holiday season comes to a close for another year, I have to admit that I enjoy receiving yearly updates on all the friends we made throughout the years. One of these friends is a neighbor who used to live across the street from us.

In the late '80s, my wife and I moved from the Midwest to upstate New York. We were not aware of the brutal winters in that part of the country, nor were we ready for them. After a couple of snowstorms that started as early as October, I decided to invest in a small snow blower. This piece of equipment served me well until the famous blizzard in early March 1993. The morning after the storm, I opened my garage door and could barely see a little light shining across the garage roofline. A neighbor who had a plow mounted on his truck could not help us because the snow was high above his truck and he suggested that we hire an inloader to dig us out. We began to despair, when our neighbor to the left of us showed up with his wife, two young sons, and their 10-horsepower snow blower. Together, we attacked the snow, cleared it from the driveway and managed to have a little fun along the way. Soon after, I went shopping for my own professional snow blower.

I met my neighbor from across the street one snowy day when I saw him struggling to shovel his driveway. I offered to blow away his snow with my new toy. He gladly accepted as he watched me fire away the white powder onto the nearby embankments. I don't recall if I helped him out of a neighborly gesture or if I wanted to show off my new equipment. Maybe it was a little of both. Sadly, however, I did not get to know him better for the tragic reason that he committed suicide later that year.

I remember that tragic afternoon when I was alerted by the sound of sirens and an EMS vehicle parked in my neighbor's driveway. Soon after, they were pulling him from his car inside the garage and trying in vain to revive him. I vividly recall how he laid lifeless in the driveway and wondered why he had left a wife and three children without a husband and father.

My wife and I visited with his wife and the children, offering them our support during this difficult period. I learned later that the father had been depressed and was drinking heavily every night after he got home from work. Years later, and through those holiday cards, our widowed friend keeps us informed of how she and her now grown children are doing.

We all suffer tragedies and hardships at some time or another, and we usually cope in different ways. We may become sad, depressed, and retreat from the company of others. We can act out, become angry and question fate. Or we can accept the event and learn to deal with it. Accepting an event has to do with recognizing that God is in control of what happens in one's life. This is the definition of the Arabic word "Islam," which means submission to God's will. If we submit voluntarily and without resistance to God's will, only then do we understand that we cannot control the events around us. The choices become clear: Either we lose hope and despair that things are only going to get worse; or we can believe that, inside the folds of calamities, there are lessons from which to learn. We can still grieve and mourn our losses but in a measured way that does not lead us to total despair or to another tragedy.

The following verses in the Quran give comfort to the soul as we read in Chapter 94:5-6: "So, verily, with every difficulty, there is relief. Verily, with every difficulty there is relief." In other words, after difficulties or distress comes relief and ease. These verses are comforting because of God's promise that ease will follow hardship.

Realizing that suffering and hardship are part of life, such events become an opportunity to help our immediate neighbors as well as strangers during difficult times. There are many ongoing projects to which we can all contribute - and that do not end when the holiday season is over - such as Project Share and The Idaho Foodbank.

Those very connections that my wife and I have made through the years become more precious as we come to realize that it is through acts of support and caring that difficult times can be eased for others.

Dr. Said Ahmed-Zaid is a Boise State University engineering professor and the 2004 recipient of the annual HP Award for Distinguished Leadership in Human Rights.