TAKE! to...give!
This woman, she needs help. She knows in her head that she needs help. That she feels like she’s drowning, but she can’t take that step to get help. There’s something blocking her, closing her heart to the pipeline that enables her to receive.
She thinks that she can handle it all. No that’s not true, she knows that she can’t, but she’s embarrassed to admit it. Or is she afraid? What will they think of her? Will they still love her? Will they judge her? Or was this just how she was raised?
I watch her.
I know her.
She’s my eighty-year-old neighbor who carries a suitcase full of photos from the storage room. I run into her, she greets me warmly and we chat. I know that she takes this moment to catch her breath and I see the suitcase now resting by her side. I pick it up and tell her, “Come, let’s go home.”
“Elana, no, I can do it. Stop, I’m fine.”
I shake my head in disbelief at this Holocaust survivor. She can stand up to Nazis, but she can’t stand up to me. I insist. I won’t take no for an answer.
This is ridiculous I tell her. I know that she can do it alone, but didn’t G-d send me here, in this moment to help her?
She’s my client who feels like she’s a walking zombie. She’s so anxious. She can’t sleep at night. There are no clean clothes. She has no strength to do laundry. She drinks coffee all day and eats whatever junk is at hand because she doesn’t have the energy to make a sandwich a piece of cheese with two slices of bread.
She’s offered help. And she doesn’t take it! She tells me she’s embarrassed. She actually thinks that she needs to clean her apartment before cleaning help comes and so she stubbornly refuses it. “This is ridiculous! G-d is sending you help, and you don’t take it?” The first thing that I insist that she do is to accept the help.
She’s a woman trying to get her baby carriage into the bus. It’s heavy and she’s also carrying groceries along with the baby. Someone offers to help her up and what does she do? She says, “No, thank you. I’m fine. I can do it.”
I look at her and I want to laugh. No, I want to cry. Because I too am that woman. Why? “Why,” I ask myself. “Why can’t we just say yes, thank you! What are we trying to prove?” Look around you. Don’t the biggest Executives, CEOs, BIG Important people, don’t they all have personal assistants and secretaries??? Why in the world would one think that they can or should do it alone?
"The Lord spoke to Moses saying: "Speak to the children of Israel, and have them take for Me an offering; from every person whose heart inspires him to generosity, … (Shemot 25:1-2).”
G-d Himself, who needs absolutely nothing is telling us to give to Him, but how? By taking! That’s right. The first message that we get is “take”. We take in life and that taking is giving. Like a woman who learns to say no to one thing so that she can say yes to something else. She takes in order so that she will be able to give! And after all, from Whom are we taking?
…you shall take My offering [portion] (ibid 25:2).
I’m not taking from myself, I’m not taking from you, I’m taking from Him (G-d)! One can lift a can and one can lift a sack of potatoes and ability to do so all comes from Him as King David sings:
The land and the fullness thereof are the Lord's; the world and those who dwell therein (Pslams 24:1)…
Now you might tell me, which I too know so well…. “I want help and I have no one to help me!” You cry and you look around and you can’t seem to figure out who or how, so in this situation what must one do?
…you shall take My offering [portion] (ibid 25:2).
You lift your eyes upward and you pray to Hashem and know that if He isn’t sending you the help you feel you need through a messenger, He Himself will give you the strength and with that Godly power you’ll be able to do what you need.
May we understand that taking is giving and giving is taking. May we merit the clarity to know when to take and when to give and may we be always connected to the One
Who gives us everything.
Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh tov u Mevorechet!
Elana