Better, not Bitter

A friend of mine recently lost her job. It’s a long complicated story but basically a mistake was made. An important client got offended and my friend was fired even though the mistake was not her fault. Since she had worked there the shortest amount of time, she was the designated appeasement sacrifice.

My friend was hurt and humiliated. She slunk home and spent the following week keeping herself busy so she wouldn’t sink into self-pity and bitterness.

All day long, she ran errands and took care of things she had been putting off for months.

One of the things she had been meaning to do was go to the doctor. For some time, a small mole she discovered on her lower cheek bothered her, although she never had the time to have it checked out.

Can you see where this is going? Sure enough, it turned out to be a cancerous growth. The doctors quickly prepped her for surgery.

If she hadn’t lost her job, my friend would have continued to delay her visit to the doctor. Fortunately, she ended up with a much less severe case of skin cancer than she would have had, had she kept on working at her full-time job. The doctor told her they had caught it just in time.

Losing her job saved my friend from a much worse predicament than temporary unemployment. Her bitterness immediately turned to gratitude as she realized the kindness that Hashem did for her.

Although we know that everything God does is for our good, it isn’t always this obvious. Almost everyone has stories where the seemingly awful became beneficial in many ways.

I remember when I lived in a small religious community. There was a nice man that often came around to pray in the local synagogue. Kollel families would usually invite him for Shabbat meals. He was charming, had a great sense of humor, and everyone liked him.

Periodically, I would ask my husband if we could also host him but my husband always said no. In those days when our kids were little, we were barely getting by. Feeding a big man like Avraham meant buying another whole chicken.

I felt bad about that; it was hard to believe we were so financially limited but there wasn’t much I could say. My husband is generous by nature, and if he said we couldn’t afford it, I trusted him.

Later that year it turned out that “Avraham” was not so nice after all. In fact, he was a pedophile and had been attempting to molest several of the children of these host families. We only found out when one of the kids finally broke the silence and told his mother. Once exposed, that evil man ran away; no one ever saw him in the community again.

Our tough financial situation, which had felt so frustrating, turned out to be a shield of protection for my boys. Our lack of money, which prevented me from hosting this popular guest, likely shielded my family from terrible pain.

I could not stop thanking Hashem for protecting us from danger. We know so little! We are like little children who think we understand, but we have no clue as to how our Heavenly Father runs the world.

Every situation has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or we can take hold of it with the handle of emuna. May Hashem bless us to choose the handle of emuna so that we can hold on even tighter to Him.