Clarity-It REALLY is Good
oubts, lack of clarity-this is what really makes life difficult. The unsettled feeling of not knowing what you want, being afraid to want or even to want to want. To want. Is it really so terrible? Maybe I’ll want and I won’t get it? Maybe I don’t want to want because if I want, He might actually give it to me and then what?
My baby, he’s not a baby anymore. His second birthday is in less than two weeks and I’m weaning him. It’s the right time already. He comes to me to nurse and I try to distract him. I give him a big hug and a kiss and I cuddle him. I tell him how much I love him. He cries. He wants. He knows what he wants. He wants to nurse, but he also wants to be “big”. I cry. I want, but I don’t know what I want.
My heart aches at this transition. It’s so much more than just physically weaning him. It means that my baby is not a baby anymore. My relationship with him will change. It will develop, it will mature, but it will be more distant, less codependent, and healthily so. It means he’s growing and he developing and I should be grateful for that. But all the same it’s a change and I lack clarity.
Send out for yourself men who will scout the Land of Canaan, which I am giving to the children of Israel (Bamidbar 13:2)…
Send for yourself: According to your own understanding. I am not commanding you, but if you wish, you may send. Since the Israelites had come [to Moses] and said, “Let us send men ahead of us,” as it says, “All of you approached me…” (Deut. 1:22), Moses took counsel with the Shechinah . He [God] said, “I told them that it is good… - [Midrash Tanchuma 5]..
“I told them that it is good.” It is good and yet why did they still lack clarity? Why do I? Why were they afraid of the change? Why am I afraid of the change?
“Tatileh, it’s so good here in the desert, eating mann directly from Your bosom. It’s so clear and so easy (our Sages tell us we complained upon entering the Land).”
“But I’m telling you it’s good there! I’m telling you that our relationship will be that much more meaningful, that much stronger, deeper.”
And yet my toddler cries and I cry until at last I have clarity and I know it’s the right time. I work up the courage to change and to grow- to say no so that I can say yes. My milk dries up and those sweet moments of nursing, for my baby, they are forgotten, gone.
**
The woman sitting in front of me. She told me her story. She’s forty and desperately wants a baby. She’s married a year after almost two decades of searching and asking herself, “Do I want?”
Everyone criticized her, “You are two picky! You are waiting for the ‘perfect’ man.”
“Yes, I was waiting for the ‘perfect’ man and I found him. My husband, he’s perfect for me.”
How did it happen?
She told herself that for the past two decades she ruled out every possible shidduch option that came to her. Then something in her changed. Before opening the door this time she told herself, “I’m only going to see the good.”
We came to the land to which you sent us, and it is flowing with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. However (.(אֶ֚פֶס[BUT] (13:27)…
The big BUT, the big HOWEVER. It keeps us from seeing the good, from enjoying the good, from having good.
She opened the door. No buts. A short, bald, overweight man stood in front of her. He had gorgeous green eyes. She fixed her gaze on his eyes and they spoke until 4 o’clock in the morning. Their souls clicked and three months later they married.
**
Another woman comes. She’s distraught. She lacks clarity. She doesn’t know what she wants. She’s pregnant and she has a baby at home. Her husband is thrilled at this blessing. She’s not. She’s not sure if she wants this. “I feel trapped, tied down.” She cries to me in honesty. “What about my studies? My career? I want to travel, to explore, to do…”
She sighs. “I know it’s a blessing, but…”
However, but…the Hebrew word used here is אֶ֚פֶס. אֶ֚פֶס means zero. There’s blessing and good. We can’t see it. Why? Because we feel like zero. We feel like we are doing nothing.
The people who inhabit the land are mighty, and the cities are extremely huge and fortified, and there we saw even the offspring of the giant (13:28)... "We are unable to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we (13:31).
We compare and look around us. Look what she’s doing! Look what she’s accomplishing. And me? What am I doing? Nothing! I’m not good enough, not doing enough…”
But if Hashem is putting us in a certain role, doesn’t that mean we were handpicked to do it? What more should be doing than the role we were designated to do?
The Amalekites dwell in the south land..(13:29)..Amalek, עֲמָלֵ֥ק, the same gematria as the word for doubt, .ספק
Doubt, lack of clarity, being afraid to want or not even having the energy to want to want. No, push those thoughts aside and enter into the Land. The Land of clarity, of growth and of change. The Land of knowing what your role is and being happy with it. The Land of good- of seeing the good and being open to receiving it.
May we be blessed to see the good and have 100% clarity about it!