I’ve written that I’m going through a hard time. And because this is an uplifting, positive place (for me at least as much as you), I’m not going to go into detail about the nature of this challenge. But last night I had to reconnect with some truths to help me through.
We are flesh and blood. Only Hashem has an aerial view of past, present, and future. Only Hashem understands how all the parts fit together. He runs the world, this incredibly beautiful, incredibly detailed, incredibly painful world. He sees inside our hearts and plants thoughts in our minds. He leads us to the people and places we need in our lives, and He leads us away from them at the right time. Hashem determines what we’ll know. Hashem decides what we’ll see. Hashem chooses what we’ll understand.
Hashem forgets no one, not even for a second. There will never be a moment in this life or beyond when you go unloved.
Hashem is not limited by time or space or the rules of nature.
My favorite haftarah is the one we read on Shabbos Chol Hamoed Pesach, from Yechezkel. It’s the story of the atzamos yeveishos (dry bones), when Yechezkel has a vision of a valley of dry bones coming back to life. Although we understand it as chizuk for Klal Yisroel in galus, that we will yet rise from galus and return to E”Y, I think it can be taken as personal chizuk as well.
Please share if you have any chizuk. <3
I’m sorry to hear you’re having it’s tough today.
I love the vort by R’ Shlomo Kluger on God’s response to the angels when they questioned “This is the reward for Torah?” upon Rabbi Akiva’s brutal death. God told the angels that if they didn’t keep quiet He would return the world to the state of nothingness that existed prior to creation.
Rabbi Kluger explains why God wouldn’t answer the angels and instead threatened to destroy the world:
He brings an analogy of a tailor who’s hired by a king to create a beautiful royal garment. The king provided all the materials and the tailor produced a magnificent garment. A jealous member of the king’s counsel accused the tailor of skimming some of the expensive material that the king had provided. The king summoned the tailor and demanded an exact accounting of how and where each of the materials provided was used. The tailor explained that in order to do that he’d have to take apart the entire garment thread by thread.
God’s was telling the angels: “”In order to explain this seemingly devastating injustice I would need to go back in time to creation. Only then could you understand how every event since the beginning of the world is perfectly designed according to My plan.”
Remembering that we see but a snapshot of the movie is a huge emunah boost for me. As always, talking/venting to God is the best therapy (and cheapest).
Wishing you the strength and inspiration you need to get through this.
Thank you so, so much for the support.
You know, sometimes I have moments when I feel (and really believe) that I am so privileged to be tested in this way. That I have been given a way to touch parts of myself that are deep and fragile and totally vulnerable before Hashem. I didn’t realize that “a Tehillim soaked with tears” really IS a Tehillim soaked with tears. And I am secretly proud of myself for being chosen to be in this place, where I am totally dependent on Hashem, as if I’ve been let in on a secret.
Seems to me you’re thinking about this in all the right ways 🙂 Parenthetically, that is one of the reasons we thank Hashem for our challenges. Because it allows us to take our relationship with Him to places we never knew existed.
(Yes, I remember thinking as a kid that a “Tehillem soaked in tears” is a nice figure of speech.)