Happy Mother’s Day
Today I was blessed to attend a fabulous class by Rabbi Aba Wagensberg of Israel. I went to a beautiful brunch (a spread of food prepared by others), learned beautiful Torah from a wonderful Rabbi, and had the honor of driving him to his next destination, with an uninterrupted 90 minutes to talk to him. (I am proud to count him as a client of my firm at the moment.)
After some adorable homemade cards, a breakfast I didn’t want and adorable hugs, I ran past the DISASTER of a kitchen filled with the supplies used to make the adorable homemade cards and the breakfast I didn’t want, and left. By myself. I spent the majority of the day not mothering, which was the best Mother’s day gift I could have asked for. Sorry if that makes me sound like a terrible Ima, but this year that is what I needed.
The topic of the class was “Coping with Pain and Suffering”. Â Rabbi Wagensberg reminded me that everything that we are given is precisely what we need in order to help us become the best person we can be.
But this is also true for everyone we are given; our spouses and our children are just the challenges Hashem knows that we need to learn and grow. While he was addressing the serious, hard sufferings of this world people must deal with, I was also reminded on Mother’s Day that my children are the most amazing gifts in more ways than one. Â They do teach me so much, and help me grow. Â Each one is an awesome responsibility and often a huge enigma. But gifts. Not only for all of the good and wonderful things they do, but for the acting up, acting out, and just plain stumping me that occurs on a regular basis.
Having “abandoned” them for almost the entire day, sure enough my re-entry was met with a sudden list of traumas, complaints, boo-boos and of course “we’re starving“…..
…. thank you, Hashem, for the Mother’s Day gifts……
I disagree with Rabbi Wagensberg. Sometimes Hashem gives us too much to deal with, and sometimes not enough. It’s a very blessed person that is given just what he can handle. And sometimes our spouses and children are not the challenges we need, but the life savers.
As the Great Doctor (Suess) once said, “I’m sorry to say so but, sadly it’s true that bang-ups and hang-ups can happen to you.”
I am so happy to have someone finally write in and disagree! (Even if it isn’t technically with me.) I am sure as a fellow blogger, miriyummy, you can understand that.
I agree very strongly with you that sometimes our spouses and children are the “life savers”. The very thing that seems to be the only antidote to what is thrown our way… or the only reason motivation to overcome it!
But I have to disagree with you that we are sent too little or too much by Hashem. I choose to start with the premise that Hashem is sending me exactly what I need. So that if it feels to me like that isn’t the case then the problem is with my perception, my outlook, or the choices I am making in terms of coping. The gemara states that we should receive everything “bad” that happens to us just as we receive everything good that happens to us. There was a time in my life when I was a consistently “observant” Jew, but the notion of “gam zu l’tova” that everything is truly for the good was completely lost on me. I just couldn’t buy it, couldn’t get there. And I wasn’t sure that I wanted to. Now I don’t feel that way. I don’t know if that is the effect of time, more Torah learning, life experience or something else. But I don’t see things the same way.
Please, please trust me that this is not because I am lacking in challenges or having had things thrown my way I was sure I couldn’t handle. I have had my decent share.
The question is, I suppose, what is “too much” and in the moment, can we genuinely judge that about our own lives?
You know what they say, two Jews, three opinions. The concept of “too much” has to be subjective. My parents were Holocaust survivors, but I really don’t think, deep down, that they did survive the Holocaust. They had to live with what happened to them every single day for the rest of their lives. As for me, I can tell you that I was once happily married, up until 6:15 PM on Sunday, March 16th, 2003. And then something horrible happened. And it was too much to handle. I dealt with it the best way I could, got a divorce (had a great divorce party), and my children and I came out together at the other end of the tunnel, but what happened to our family (as one daughter says, we’re broken and can’t be fixed) will influence us for the rest of our lives. Even though I am ecstatically happy in my new life and a new marriage, I do have to say I wish 2003 had never happened.
You ask if we can genuinely judge what is “too much” in our lives. If we can’t, who can?
I applaud you for your outlook. You commented on my blog that you plan to come to Israel in two years. I would very much like to shake your hand then, or even better, give you a hug.
It is comments like these that are the reason I blog.
I look forward to the hug…..
I will take the middle ground here. Looking at mothers, certainly they are often handed too much. Miriam gave one example and we know there are many worse stories of family breakups. Then there are the mothers who come close to–or end up with–a nervous breakdown because of twins, a special needs child, etc.
That being said, it can be a helpful way of approaching a challenging situation.
I am not sure that this is a middle ground. Either we believe that Hashem has a divine plan and it is all for the good or not, no? Either a nervous breakdown is a sign that someone was given more than they can handle, or it is a sign that the community as a whole failed in the opportunity provided them to give help to a fellow Jew, or it the breakdown itself is part of what a person needed in this world for whatever reason. It sounds cruel when speaking about someone else, but I am not sure that Chazal lets us believe any differently in terms of what is “emunah”.
What I should have said at the very beginning is that R. Wagensberg stressed that all of these lessons and ideas are soomething we can only apply to our own challenges and pain; never someone else’s.