Every step Counts!
Last night she came for a “natural induction”. She was already beyond ready, or so she thought. “How much longer?” She asks. “I’ve never been so late before!” I know her mind is in how much more time. My perspective, a bit different.
“Look how long you’ve carried this precious soul. You’ve made it so far!”
You see because the natural inclination is to count down. “G-d, please how many more days until…” “How much longer do I have to make it?”
But turn it all around. Look how many days you made it.
How far you’ve gone. How much you’ve done.
***
The pile of laundry high. The dishes a mountain in the sink. You start to iron; you start to wash. You sigh. “How many more shirts do I have to iron? How many more dishes to I have to wash?”
No, turn it around. Even if you’ve done only one. You’ve done one! Look how much you did do, not how much left to do.
***
It was a classic case. She had been so good. So on track, so “healthy”. She had a difficult week. She went through a tough situation. The diet went out the window and so did this and that…She feels despair, like a failure, guilty.
I tell her, “Don’t tell me about what you are not doing now and how bad that is. Look how much you did! You did it once, you can, G-d willing, do it again. Every step you made. Every effort and every act. It all counts.
***
She was so calm and patient. She’s been working on herself for years! All she wants to do is be, you know…and she is. Or in her eyes she was, such a good…Mommy, wife, friend…and then…she lost it. She got upset, lost control, lost her cool. She felt like she lost it all. Five steps, big ones, forward and one step back. She falls from that one slip. She falls flat on her back. And she can’t get up.
“No!” I want to scream. “It’s not true. It all counts. The only failure that there is, is a person stuck and who doesn’t count. Keep counting, forward. That’s right. It all adds up.”
And you shall count for yourselves…(Vayikra 23:15).
That’s right, these are the days of counting and we are not counting down, we are counting up…to..
Seeing how, with G-d’s help, far you’ve come and how much you’ve done.
How much He helped you do and what you’ve worked so hard on to become.
Counting up and count to, not counting down or from.
May our counting propel us and motivate us forward.
Shabbat Shalom, with blessings,
Elana