Stressed but Blessed
Shovevim is a time of year where it feels like if something can go wrong, it will. Imagine this scene: The driver stuck her head out of the window and started yelling at the person walking by. That’s when I noticed her bumper sticker: “Too Blessed To Be Stressed.”
Last Spring I was meandering through our quirky inner-city neighborhood in our station wagon. I was in no great hurry so when the driver of the green sedan in front of me lingered a moment in the road to yell out the passenger window to an acquaintance lounging in her front yard, I just waited patiently instead of darting around her. It was one of those Southern scenes that I enjoy stumbling upon. People here love to sit outside and watch the parade of cars, pedestrians, and pets going about their day. When the driver started raising her voice I realized that this was perhaps a less than idyllic moment.
Driver: “OK! Whatever! You just keep telling yourself that!”
Lounger: “You need to mind your business! You don’t know me!”
Driver: “I don’t need to mind your business, OK? I have got better things to do than…”
Lounger: “It doesn’t seem that way! You just keep talking and sticking your…”
Driver starts to roll forward while still yelling out of the window. Lounger keeps yelling while car rolls away. Driver keeps yelling to passenger in car…
That’s when I noticed her bumper sticker. “Too Blessed To Be Stressed”.
Why do I have a feeling that only a person who battles enormously with stress, and who is in fact very stressed, would put that bumper sticker on her car?
At this point in time, my bumper sticker would say “Too Stressed To Feel Blessed”. While reading obsessively about bombs being launched at our friends in Israel, we received the email so many families are receiving in the United States: there will be layoffs and it might be you. Two days later the car dies. OK, it’s a coma. But it will cost many shekels to fix. Many, like the grains of sand in the Sahara. So, to feel better we turn to family who are just a phone call away. Nice try. Gramps lost his job. How about sister? Sister’s friend is on her deathbed and her work is imploding. What the heck is going on? Remember the flying monkeys from “The Wizard of Oz”? It is like we all have our own personal battalion of monkeys swooping down and snatching things out of our hands while we hang on with a white-knuckle grip.
For the first time I have become aware that this is a time of year – Shovevim– where it feels like if something can go wrong, it will. Somehow in the past this information had never penetrated my skull. This is a time of year when Jews traditionally focus on various customs that are all designed to bring the individual back to Hashem and to also repair their soul through changes in outlook and most importantly in behavior.
If one has emuna, one should be thanking Hashem for these troubles that are besieging us. I should be proclaiming that all of this is for the good and doing some serious soul searching in the midst of the soul cleansing. When the troubles that are hammering you are so big – your income potentially vanishing, and so over-arching – losing the car you would use to get to any new job you would be blessed to find in this wretched economy, sometimes you can say ‘this too is for the good’ and it just doesn’t seem to mean a thing.
I finally just tried shifting to the all-out surrender. Maybe this situation calls for all-out surrendering to Hashem. Where will we live? How will be pay for it? How will we get to two jobs and a daycare with one ancient and dying vehicle? It is all too much. Hashem, we know You are in charge and we will go with Your plan for us. We feel abandoned although we know intellectually that we have not been. We will go with Your plan, Hashem.
I do not want to send my child to preschool or daycare, but maybe Hashem wants me to. I want to keep him right next to me on our walks, in his seat in the car, snuggled up whenever I want to kiss his head and his soft hair that smells like baby powder. I do not want to feel the guilt of being the one to force him to grow in ways that might really challenge him, even if I know it will be good for him. I do not want to make him cry and go through the fear that I am abandoning him. What parent wants to picture their child waiting and waiting for their mommy or daddy? I do not want to pry him off my leg at the door of the preschool because I will be late for work. I know intellectually that he will be fine, God willing. In fact in many ways he is ready for it and will learn a great deal. But my emotions tell me to resist it all the way.
That is when I had a thought. Maybe in a way I am clinging to Hashem’s leg at the door and Hashem is prying me off. I am the one kicking and screaming. “I am not ready for this! I was not expecting this. What is going to happen to me?!” But He knows what I can handle, that this is what we need. So like a good parent He challenges us, even when we are terrified that we will fail and it will hurt awfully, or most terrifying of all, that God forbid we are being abandoned. Maybe He hates to see our tears just as much as we hate to see our own children cry.
In discussing this whole Shovevim mess with my husband, he talked about how hard it is to work with all of your heart for someone who may be dumping you in six weeks. I agreed. It is tantamount to a woman telling her doting and loyal boyfriend, “I might be breaking up with you in six weeks or we might be together for years. Haven’t decided yet.” It messes with the love just at the point when you want to make the best impression of all.
This I know, there is something to be said for being pushed to the point where at every turn in your day you are recognizing that our plans may not mean much. Or that our plans do not mean anything, most emphatically. I thought I needed that car. Nope. I liked that job possibility. Nope. We are reminded all day long that Hashem is in charge and that what we really need to do is surrender. That is when there is a tiny little bit of light. Like little kids we realize that it is scary now and we badly want His comfort but that if we can hang in there He will be picking us up at the end of the day.
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