Dua when leaving the home

When. At the threshold, in the act of stepping out — shoes on, door in hand. Not while still getting ready and not once already down the street. The whole point is that it marks a boundary: inside, where things are known, and outside, where they are not.

The words. Tawakkaltu is a past-tense verb, "I have placed my trust," not "I will" or "I try to." The root w-k-l gives wakil, an agent appointed to act on your behalf; tawakkul is therefore not passivity but the appointing of an authority over an outcome you still walk out to meet. Then la hawla wa la quwwata illa billah, two words English tends to blur into one. Hawl is from the root of turning and changing — the capacity to alter a situation, to make something become otherwise. Quwwa is the strength to carry a thing through once altered. So the sentence denies both the power to change and the power to sustain, and returns them together.

The order of the three clauses. The name first, the trust second, the disclaimer of one's own power third. It descends: Allah's name, then my act of relying, then the honest admission of what I brought with me, which is nothing. A person who says it in that order has already argued himself out of the anxiety the door produces.

Coming back. There is a counterpart said on entering, naming Allah at going in, at coming out, and at the meal — so the same threshold is crossed twice under the same name.

Common confusion. A second, longer supplication for leaving home asks refuge from straying, slipping, wronging and being wronged. It is separate. This one is the short one people can actually say every morning.