Keep Walking

She came to me for dysmenorrhea. As I took her medical history a raging storm of pain and loss came to shore. She shed tears and my heart cried along with her as I heard her tell her life of the past nine years. It began with the loss of her mother followed by an ectopic pregnancy, a late miscarriage at nineteen weeks, a premature baby born at week twenty-five, and then two more late miscarriages.

So much pain and loss and fear. But there was also something else. Yes, she had been through trauma, but she kept moving on. She told me that after the last miscarriage she took a year off from work and went back to school. She spent the year studying, growing and learning Torah. This decision she says saved her life. She’s a woman who at times feels like she’s drowning in an ocean of pain, but a woman still floating, swimming, a woman holding on.

I felt proud of her for coming and wanting to make her body strong, healthier, more balanced. For having the courage to accept the moment and reality that she found herself in and the courage to try maybe once more.

These are the generations of Noah, Noah was a righteous man he was perfect in his generations; Noah walked with God (Bereishit 6:9).

Noah walked with God. That is when he walked with God he kept going. He found the strength to build and work and move on. He was a righteous man. He was also a man who had been through a lot. He saw destruction and felt loss, worked hard and felt pain.

Then Noah did something which neither of us could judge. He was faced with a difficult test. And what did he do with it? He chose to drown himself in misery. You see we all make choices. Either you choose to suffer by seeing this world at face value and you get stuck in the mud you stepped in or you have faith and continue “to walk”.

And Noah began to be a man of the ground, and he planted a vineyard. And he drank of the wine and became drunk, and he uncovered himself within his tent (ibid 6:20-21).

And that was the rest we hear about Noah besides for his embarrassment and his death.

Yes, in life we either walk with God in faith or we cause ourselves to suffer and drown in our pain and loss.

***

She’s petrified that it will happen. What is it? It could be anything. You name it. You fear it happening and it comes true.

There’s a fear of an illness, of coming down with something or being contaminated by something. She does every step necessary not to get sick. She takes all the vitamins that she can and follows every “healthy” diet. She runs to every healer and doctor and test. In the end she finds herself weak and with the illness she most feared.

There’s a fear of an induction, of a “not according to her plan” type of birth. She runs and tries everything under the sun to prevent it from happening and yet it does.

There’s a fear of being alone. She pushes herself on people so much so that they pull away.

There’s a fear of getting pregnant. She does what she can to prevent it. She’s expecting.

There’s a fear she’ll be poor, so she works and takes on more jobs. In the end she’s broke.

There’s a fear that the child will rebel, so she tries to control him. In the end he runs away from home.

There’s a fear of being fat. She starves herself so much that she ends up binging and gaining weight.

So many fears and what they all boil down to is, “I’m afraid I won’t have control.”

And you don’t. I don’t. We don’t.

And they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make ourselves a name, lest we be scattered upon the face of the entire earth (Bereishit 11:4)."

And the Lord scattered them from there upon the face of the entire earth, and they ceased building the city (ibid 11:8).

You see it’s not about “murphy’s law” that if something can go wrong, it will. It’s not psychology or “self-fulfilling prophesy”. It’s about control. In the area where we try so hard to control, in that very area, G-d forces us to recognize that we’re not in control.

We fear something happening. We go beyond normal hishtaldut (personal effort) in a futile attempt to prevent it from happening and so it does. But when we increase our trust in Hashem and understand that He knows what He is doing by running this world more than we, the need to prove to us Who is in control is gone.

***

Have faith and walk with Hashem. With this you will find comfort and tranquility. Accept your fear, don’t fight it, nor try to conquer it nor control it. May we be blessed to stay afloat and keep walking.

Shabbat Shalom, Many Blessings,

Elana