Walk the Walk

In the Garden of Gratitude, Rav Arush’s latest book, he writes time and time again that when seemingly ‘bad’, ‘annoying’, ‘costly’, or ‘upsetting’ things happen to you, you should just see G-d behind it all, and say thank you.

And if you say ‘thank you’, it all turns around for the good, whatever the problem or situation you are facing.
 
I love this idea so much, I’ve been telling it over to almost everyone I talk to. One person will tell me that their kid is struggling in school, and I’ll be like: “Baruch Hashem! They’re still healthy and so sweet!” Someone else missed out on buying ‘the’ house, and I told them: “Baruch Hashem! Hashem must have a much better house waiting for you.” (He did).
 
Still another person missed a week of their annual holiday plus a family bar mitzvah, due to the unusual snow and ice that was blanketing most of Europe at the end of December. “Baruch Hashem!” I said. “Hashem knows what He’s doing. There must be a good reason for it all.” (There was).
 
And so on and so forth. “Wow!” I thought to myself. This thanking G-d stuff is pretty cool – and it’s SO easy to be grateful for everyone else’s problems, isn’t it?
 
But I wondered to myself, could I really thank, sincerely for my own issues? I’ve come a long way from the non-stop whining and complaining and feeling sorry for myself of a few years’ ago, but thanking, continually for a slew of annoying and upsetting things? Who knew…
 
Until today. Because today, Hashem sent me a whole bunch of ‘annoying’ ‘costly’ ‘upsetting’ ‘seemingly bad’ things. It started yesterday, when I had to leave early to go and visit an elderly relative in hospital. My kids, who are usually as good as gold, really played up. The oldest one in particular got very teary and unreasonable, and I had to remind myself that G-d was behind it all, and that I shouldn’t get cross at either her or me as I ran out of the door.
 
I got to the hospital early, and found what I thought was suitable parking (people park all over the place around Jerusalem’s two main hospitals, and it’s usually a case of ‘anything goes’.)
 
My relative was not in a good frame of mind – she kept trying to escape from the hospital ward, in a desperate bid to go home – which meant that the four hours I spent there felt like a very stressful, looooonnnngggg week.
 
Again, I reminded myself that ‘Ain Od Milvado’. I thanked G-d for putting me into a very stressful situation where there really wasn’t very much I could do except pray for my relative to calm down, and start to find her situation a bit easier to handle, and thank G-d, after half an hour, she did.
 
When the visit was over, I raced to my car, as I needed to get back home before my daughters came back from school. I had a parking ticket for 250 shekels, the first one I had for a while.
 
“Baruch Hashem!” I said, and I really meant it. It was great to have something so small and meaningless, instead of something real and nasty, to deal with. I drove home a bit shell-shocked from the morning, but generally, in a good mood.
 
Later on, I was changing my daughter’s bed, when I realised that something was leaking on to the eiderdown. I looked around, I looked up, and then I realised that the roof was leaking, thanks to the amazingly heavy downpour we’d just experienced.
 
“Baruch Hashem!” I said. And again, I meant it. But I was starting to feel a bit puzzled. Why was G-d sending me so many things in one shot?
 
I did some hitbodedut on it, and the thought came to me that last year, when we’d had a chronic roof leaking issue in our old house just as we were trying to sell it, I hadn’t been incredibly grateful for it.
 
Ditto for all the parking tickets I’d ever got before. At best, I accepted them (at best…) But to actually thank G-d for sending me a leaky roof and parking fines? Never! So I figured that this year, Hashem was giving me the chance to ‘fix’ my previous ingratitude.
 
Ok, Baruch Hashem!
 
I woke up today, grabbed my camera, and drove out to take a picture of some very striking trees that I’d spotted on a back road around 20 minutes away from my home, that I was intending to try and paint.
 
I got there, I parked – and the camera refused to work. “Baruch Hashem!” I said. It must need some new batteries. I drove on for quite a while until I found somewhere to buy them; changed the batteries; tried to turn on the camera – and realised that somehow, it had broken itself and jammed shut.
 
This is the 5^th camera we’ve had in five and a half years.
 
One got stolen; one got bought from an airport duty free who forgot to put it in the box; one went through a set of batteries every eight pictures and got too expensive to use. Then, we didn’t have one for a while, until my brother gave me his old one. That got broken by one of my kids, and we were camera-less for another year, until we decided to buy a cheap one just before we moved house last year.
 
Today, that one bust. Again, I figured it must just be a reminder to be grateful for the four previous ‘camera issues’, as well as this latest one, so I said ‘Thank you, Hashem!” And I really meant it.
 
This afternoon, I was coming back from taking my husband to the airport, and I was driving no more than 100 km in the slow lane, when I got waved to the side by a traffic cop parked on the hard shoulder.
 
I didn’t have the first clue why he stopped me, but figured maybe it was a spot-check for documents, or something. He came to my window, and asked me why I’d been driving so fast.
 
I had no idea what he was talking about, so he told me I’d been clocked driving my five year old Hyundai Getz at 136km an hour. I didn’t have the Hebrew to tell him that was absolutely impossible – my car starts to shake badly if you even try to go above 110km. And I knew I hadn’t been driving that fast, because I’m one of those annoying people who actually try to look at the speedometer.
 
I’d been going around 100km, which is standard in Israel, and I knew that in my bones. So what was going on here? Clearly, it was another test from G-d – the ‘classic’ test – and as the cop called me over to his car, to give me an expensive 750 shekel speeding ticket and a lecture on dangerous driving, I just looked up at the sky and thought: “I know this is from you G-d. I don’t know why it’s good for me, but I know it’s good for me and I thank you for setting me up with a speeding ticket.”
 
I got home, and I looked up psalm 136, trying to figure out what was going on. The whole psalm is one big song of praise and gratitude to G-d – in fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a more ‘grateful’ psalm in the whole book. I suddenly felt very reassured.
 
“Baruch Hashem!” I said. Because when all was said and done, the whole day was really a bunch of tiny tribulations, big enough to notice and to give the emuna muscle a workout, but otherwise, completely harmless.
 
It’s very easy to talk-the-talk about emuna, and seeing G-d in everything; but the last few hours, Hashem gave me the chance to see how far I’ve come, and how much I’ve grown, thanks to Rav Arush’s teachings. I have to walk-the-walk…
 
In the not-too-distant past, the last 24 hours would have made me really miserable and depressed. My yetzer would have instantly jumped on the bandwagon, and made me feel that G-d was angry with me; G-d was punishing me, G-d forbid; G-d was out to get me.
 
This time around, I kept reminding myself that G-d loves me; G-d is always good; and everything He does is good. And it really kept my spirits up, even when I could feel they were starting to flag. It wasn’t ‘easy’ – I’m definitely NOT tzadik material – but it was really ok. And if that isn’t cause for a heartfelt ‘Baruch Hashem!’, then I don’t know what is.