The Emuna Dial

Oftentimes, the tensions and frustrations that are normally just under the surface in our close family relationships erupt when we hit a difficult time, and we start to feel overwhelmed. We all have these times, when we’re worried about the kids, or worried about the neighbors, or worried about the money, or worried about our boss.  When we find ourselves in that super-stressed, “worried” place, the person who is most at risk of an emotional flare-up is probably someone in your family. If we’re honest, we usually already know which predesignated target we’re going to shoot all our frustrations at. The family scapegoat could be your spouse, or your most challenging kid.

The first thing to do when we feel overwhelmed like this is to get in touch with our feelings, and to really feel what’s going on. Be truthful about what you’re feeling, and then go and talk about it with G-d. Why am I putting so much emphasis on feelings as opposed to thoughts? Well, we can make fundamental changes in our behaviors and reactions much quicker through our feelings than we can through our thoughts.

When we get stuck in one mode, especially when it’s negative, we can’t easily think our way into a different mode. But when we’re going through our feelings, since they are more global and cover more “area” than thoughts alone, G-d will send us something in our environment that can change our emotions and consequently, our outlook and actions. It could be the happy look on one of your kids’ faces; or the way the sky looks so beautiful. Whatever it is, let the feeling register in your heart, and acknowledge that G-d is sending down an influx of emuna,  hope, and strength, from His gigantic “Emuna Dial” in Heaven.

Even the smallest “clicks” in that giant heavenly Emuna Dial can lead to massive improvements and breakthroughs down here, for us. All of a sudden, we can shift into a whole different way of feeling and reacting. It’s like being part of an interconnected gear, that’s directly connected up in Heaven. We get assistance from Upstairs to make that first, almost imperceptible, gear-shift, and if we’re receptive to it, then very quickly, our feelings, perceptions and memories can all re-calibrate, and we flip into a completely different mindset.

This can happen even with “bad” memories that can be incredibly hard to deal with, or erase. We connect into that Emuna Dial, and click! – We’re suddenly remembering past events with a completely different set of feelings. Instead of: “Wasn’t it terrible… horrible…awful…excruciating and  painful,” we get: “It was tough to go through, but I’m so glad it happened, because I grew like this”, or “I changed like that,” or “It sparked off a chain of events that ultimately ended in such a positive way.”

When we try to live our lives with this sort of emuna, we see how so many of our problems get solved in the most amazing, miraculous ways. Recently, I was speaking to someone who had got himself into a massive panic because he was $10,000 short on a purchase that he was committed to. If he didn’t come up with the extra money he was going to lose everything he had invested so far. I told him to go and pray. G-d could certainly give him the extra money, if that’s what he needed.

So my friend went and prayed, and he asked G-d to please help him complete the purchase of his apartment. When he came back home from that praying session, his wife met him at the door with an elated expression on her face. She told him that many years ago she had invested in some gold stocks, and then completely forgot about it. She never told him about this particularly investment, because it had slipped her mind. In the subsequent years, the investment had actually lost money – but she’d remembered about it this morning, for the first time in years, and even more miraculously, she had managed to find the necessary papers that would enable her to cash it in. There was enough money in that forgotten investment from years’ ago to cover the shortfall they needed to buy the apartment. Problem solved!

Human beings are package deals; once we hook into that Emuna Dial, we can actually “Taste and see that Hashem is good” (Psalm 34:9). First we must “taste” Hashem, and we do that though personal prayer. Then our mood lightens up, and we merit to “see” Hashem answering us and fulfilling our every need.