She Said: She Said: B'yadei Shamayim

Its 2:30 a.m. right now, six and a half hours before I have to be at the Central Bus Station to board a bus for a sherut leumi (national service) seminar. I wasn't planning on writing a blog when sleep was of the essence, but life rarely goes how I plan it. That's why I stopped - planning, that is.

I was never one for huge plans. I never sat down and wrote about what I wanted to do in the future, and where I saw myself in ten years. I did have rough idea of how life was going to unfold. I was going to finish elementary school and get rainbow braces and platform shoes. I was going to get my driver's license at sixteen, and then a car for my birthday. I was going to have two sons who shared a room and slept on a bunk bed. I would kiss them goodnight, first the son on the higher bunk, and then I would bend down and kiss the boy on the lower bunk.

Needless to say, asides from the braces, life hasn't gone according to plan. And I'm perfectly fine with that. The twists and turns of life have offered me the chance to learn that everything is for the good, even if it's hard to see at first.

It's the twists and the turns that I live for now. Life according to plan would be bland. There would be no surprises and no emunah, faith. The fact that we don't know what's going to happen allows us to appreciate that everything is b'yadei shamayim, in Hashem's hands. 

We become able to realize that the only control we have over out lives is prayer and acting properly. We learn to believe that everything is for the good. It's not always easy to see the good while experiencing a lack of sleep, but I'm sure its there, waiting for me around the corner, complete with a down comforter and two hundred squishy pillows.
 
As they say in Yiddish:
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Man plans, God laughs.

-Becca
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There is no question that life is b'yadei shamayim. Simply, Hashem creates wonders which are beyond our ability to conceptualize, let alone to execute. Miracles, from rainbows to babies, from interdependent species to kindness, especially kindness on the part of someone who is themself suffering, all bear witness to Hashem's benevolence.

Whereas effort is required to write prose about the glory of nature, the glory of human nature and the glory of inner nature, a different type of exertion is needed to praise G-d while going through challenging times. When someone dies, for instance, we say Baruch Dayan Emet, blessed is the one true judge. When we wind up in Holland, even though we had a ticket for France, we say Gam zu la Tova, this, too, is for the good. In cases of unpleasant surprises, we necessarily must cry out our faith in Hashem, i.e. we necessarily must cry out our belief that we do not, can not, and never will control our lives.

I recall, years ago, when I had an academic book published, lots of speaking engagements at academic conferences lined up, a National Endowment for the Humanities award on my resume, and other professional accolades accumulated, that I was convinced I would be a professor forever. Instead funding for my teaching position disappeared (only to reappear two years later, when I was no longer interested) concurrent with Computer Cowboy's industry experiencing a downturn. In short, we had to stay where we were, geographically, for him to keep his then-rare research post. Meanwhile, I could not work without relocating. We had no idea that Hashem was streamlining our lives in order to preparing us to receive great fortune.

Within a short time, I became pregnant with Becca, the first of our four children. Had I remained a seventy-hour-per-week-academic, it is unlikely I would have been a fit mother. It is possible, as well, that I would not have been able to conceive.

We were blessed to have one child after another. I was getting used to being “Mom,” and hoped we would have a large family. Again, Hashem had other plans. Our third child was born in a medical crisis and was admitted to a different hospital, days later, with a diagnosis of two potentially fatal illnesses.

Afterwards, between our third and fourth children, I experienced medical difficulties. What's more, during my pregnancy with our fourth and youngest, I made sixteen emergency trips to the hospital, never sure if that pregnancy would prematurely self-terminate or whether the child would be healthy. BH, Boy-Who-Needs-Books, was born at term and healthy. Two miracles.

Thereafter, inexplicably, I lost one pregnancy after another, often with hemorrhages, one of which was so massive it found seven medics attending to me and a bucket waiting for me in the ER. Yet that seemingly rough passage, too, was a window. From death, my husband and I found a means to strengthen our faith. In the end, we became religious Jews.

Accordingly, we moved to a new community which better accommodated our new lifestyle. There, too, our paths did not progress according to our plans. There, too, we thrashed about, inelegantly, trying to figure out how to control the picture. Of course the picture was never ours to control.

After despair of assorted kinds, we were invited to make aliya. Our perceived “losses,” once more, were Hashem's means of preparing us for greater things. Baruch Hashem, we are now in Jerusalem. The story does not end here, however.

Once Israeli, I taught a bit, as I noted in "Old/New World Discourse," but never found the career success I enjoyed in the States. Israeli friends, delighted with my storytelling, urged me to try out writing. I never told them I had chosen to be an English professor as a means of "funding my writing habit." I just followed their suggestions and reached out to some publications. Amazingly, the world reached back.

Baruch Hashem, in a little more than a year (since last summer, really, in any concerted way) I mailed my writing to dozens of venues worldwide, print and electronic, religious and secular, creative and scholarly, and they, in turn, added my name to their rosters of authors. Very recently, I've become a reviewer for a few of those publications, and a columnist for another. Also, if it's okay with The Boss, in the very near future, I'll be teaching creative writing, online, in my dual capacities as a professor and a published author.

These events, too, do not conclude this story. Recently, in our nuclear family, the ground we held as solid has begun to shake. Something very good may soon be born from these tectonic shifts. Regardless, my loved ones are aching.

Today, my family recognizes, especially with the help of our friends, though this knowledge does not quell the pain, that Hashem Gives us agonizing experiences out of love. Our job is to try to embrace His edicts.

I do not always or immediately succeed in manifesting acceptance. I keep trying.

-Channie