In high school, one of my friends once asked me, “How do people go through the nisayon of being single for years?” At that time I had a sister in shidduchim for a while and had wondered the same thing. And it occurred to me: no one goes through a nisayon for years. They go through it for days.
Our experience of life is not static. We have ups and downs, the times we feel charged with potential and fully alive, the times we feel depressed and unable to move. The exhilarating moments of clarity and connection and the long, painful, lonely nights. A nisayon does not last for years. It lasts for days, or moments.
Even when considering a nisayon in terms of a period of life, like singlehood or infertility, it’s never about facing the one thing for years. We don’t know where we’re holding relative to the total length of time. We never know how long it will actually be until things change, so our best option for dealing with a rough situation is to live in the moment.
Whatever is already behind us means that much less distance until the next bend in the road. We are not Robinson Crusoe on the desert island, scratching another tally mark into a post to mark time. Life is a series of nows. Survival depends on our willingness to say, “Okay, what’s the next right thing?”
I once heard in the name of Miriam Millhauser Castle that every night when your neshama goes up to Shomayim, it receives the tools and the strength to deal with the following day. So you have what you need — for today. If thinking about the future fills you with anxiety and dread, it’s because you can’t handle it yet. You haven’t been given the tools. You’ll have them when you need them.
