Embracing G-d's Will

I spend my morning going from store to store to find the one product that I need. No one seems to sell it even though it appears every one is asking for it, or at least that is what the salesmen say. After the eighth store, I give up. I go home.

The next day I have to take care of some bureaucratic forms downtown. Of course, I remembered incorrectly and the one morning of the week that the offices are closed is the one morning where I go to them.

“Okay I wasted my time. Now what?”

I step onto the sidewalk and notice a small store across the street. “Maybe, just by some small chance, could it be that they’ll have it?”

I ask the salesman who is still in the midst of opening up his shop.

“Yes, we have that item in stock.”

I want to jump up and down in glee as I say a prayer of thanks, but remind myself that I’m almost forty and flash a big smile instead.

I realize. In life, sometimes you go out and that is in itself the journey and sometimes you have to journey to go out.

These are the journeys of the Children of Israel, who went forth from the land of Egypt…Moses wrote their goings forth according to their journeys at the word of Hashem, and these were their journeys according to their goings forth (Bamidbar 33:1-3).

We have a plan and we think we know where we are going and get nowhere, but the very nowhere leads us to where we need to go. It leads us to who we need to be. It could be that our destination wasn’t what we intended. The journey wasn’t what we planned, but as soon as we go out, the path becomes clearer and we say, “Ahhh, that’s why….”

I know a woman who for many years was misdiagnosed and suffered miserably because of it. After years of searching and seeking. She found the right person who led her to healing.

“Why? Why so many obstacles? Why so much time and energy and traveling?”

The famous question of why did she have to suffer? Couldn’t she have found this out so many years earlier?

The goings forth was her journey that led her to study the very condition that she finally found out that she has. She went back to school, got a degree, and now helps others.

These are all the journeys. Life’s journeys. Sometimes we go out and that is the journey. Sometimes we journey in order to go out.

May we always have clarity to accept, embrace Hashem’s will. May we always grow and learn from our journeys and see how each step of the way got us to where we are now at.