Water-Boiler Emuna

One Shabbat morning this past winter, I awoke early to do my hitbodedut (personal prayer). Its interesting to note, that Hashem was my alarm clock. Friday night, before I went to bed, I asked Him for help in getting up since He had made it clear recently that He wanted me to increase my prayer time. I awoke at just the right time to pray before my family would wake up.

As soon as I get out bed to get dressed, I immediately realize something is wrong. My room is cold, colder than normal in the winter with my heating system on. I hurry up and dress and go downstairs which feels even colder. We have a forced air system and the air coming out is freezing which means our indirect water boiler isn’t working. I go down to the basement to look at it. I open the doors to the closet where the boiler is, and sure enough, it has a big error message display on its main screen.

All of a sudden, I get the biggest urge to reach out to the emergency switch and turn it off. In the past, the old ‘unplug-it-wait-and-then-replug-it-in” trick had worked to get the system to start working again…

But it was Shabbat morning! Here I am, waking up early to do personal prayer and now I’m ready to violate Shabbat! Even in my past, when my Shabbat observance was a little sketchy, I would never have done something like turning off and on a main appliance on Shabbat. Something was very wrong and I needed Hashem’s help.

I went back upstairs to the first floor and started doing my personal prayer. Even with this crisis, I’m pretty sure I started with my gratitude list first. I often find that starting with Thank Yous puts me in the right attitude to talk to Hashem about my “problems.” In fact, I’ve unfortunately seen that when I tried to go right into discussing my “problems” with Hashem, my prayers turned very quickly into complaining and whining. This is a huge no-no according to Rav Arush, that brings on even bigger “problems.” (In case you’re wondering, problems is in quotation marks because with Emuna, there really are no problems.)

So I finally get to my water boiler “problem.” I Thank Hashem for the “problem” in the first place and then talk to Him about what I had almost done, violate Shabbat to try and fix it. I asked Him to please show me what was the underlying defect in Emuna driving this urge. He very quickly put the answer into my head. Fear. I was afraid of my wife’s reaction. I was afraid of having to tell her that our water boiler was not working, which could mean everything from frozen pipes, to expensive boiler repairs. I just couldn’t handle her being upset with all of this. I didn’t want her to worry about the kids, the house, the money, anything.

I’m grateful to have learned that this kind of fear is actually related to dependency issues. My own calm and happiness was completely depending on my wife’s own calm and happiness. I was willing to sacrifice my values by violating Halacha in order to control my wife’s emotional outcome. This is not true Emuna. As Rav Arush teaches in the Garden of Peace, I have to shine the light of Emuna on my wife, not the other way around. I need to show her I accept everything Hashem throws my way with Emuna that it’s all for the best. Then she can thrive and be happy with Emuna on her own.

I thanked Hashem for the water boiler issue until He blessed me to feel that it was truly for the very best. Then my only concern was how to communicate what was going on to my wife in an Emuna-filled way. I asked Hashem to help me with this as well, and sure enough, He sent a great idea in my head within seconds.

The next day, Sunday, was the day Rabbi Lazer Brody was scheduled to speak in my hometown of Teaneck. As Hashem would have it, his group’s dinner plans fell thru at the last minute. On Friday before, David Reckles (you know, Racheli’s fantastic husband whom she’s always raving about), had called me and asked if we’d be interested in hosting them for dinner before his event. Of course we jumped at the event and my wife and I were very excited that Hashem had blessed us with such a wonderful opportunity and mitzvah.

With this in mind, I was ready to tell my wife about the boiler. I finished my prayers and when I heard noise of her waking up, I went upstairs to tell her. I said, “Good morning, hun, I have a riddle for you. What do Rabbi Brody eating dinner at our house tomorrow night and our water boiler breaking have in common? They’re both from Hashem and all for the best!” I could be wrong but I think presenting it to my wife this way helped her accept Hashem’s judgement as all for the best and keep a positive mood for the rest of Shabbat as well.

Eventually, we got the boiler fixed. Hashem had mercy on us and the repair bill was modest. Meanwhile, we had space heaters and the dinner with Rabbi Brody was fantastic. I owe all of this to Hashem and His kindness in putting me on the path of Emuna and hitbodedut. May we all continue to pray to Him more each day and grow stronger in Emuna until Mashiach’s coming will be for our very best, speedily in our days, Amen!