Today was a rather emotional day. My cell phone buzzed as I was beginning to teach my class and it was Art telling me that his dear LaReine had died an hour before. I had visited her just one week ago and had seen how frail she looked. The call reminded me how life can change drastically in such a short period of time. Relationships can turn into memories as the body fades and releases the soul.
This evening, I spoke to Charlie's cousin, Michael, a cellist with the Dallas symphony. A few weeks ago, his life changed overnight. He awakened one morning with sudden hearing loss, a form of deafness that results from an unknown cause. He can no longer play for the symphony but has assumed full time duties as the personnel manager.
Later in the evening I spoke to my 43 year old niece who is facing by-pass surgery of four arteries and hopefully once that is accomplished, a kidney and pancreas transplant. Her childhood diabetes has finally ravaged her body.
So it should have been a completely depressing day...but strangely enough it was not. Art talked about how peaceful and lovely his wife looked when she died and about how much he loved her. Cousin Michael talked about how much care and loving he had received since he lost his hearing and about how he was discovering the true bounty with which he is blessed. My niece talked about her hopes for the future and her desire to remain positive. None of the three had succumbed to despair, each was able to redefine a challenge into a moment of growth.
Maybe that's one of the truths of life. There are challenges to face, losses with which to deal, but they can also be seen as moments of growth. We can use our challenges to grow in our ability to see how much we have rather than how much we have lost. We can use them to grow in our ability to see what really matters in life. And perhaps we also learn to recognize that we are not in charge of what ultimately happens to us, but we can put our trust and faith in G-d that we will be okay.
In his book Words to Live By, Rabbi Sydney Greenberg stated, "The cardinal irreverence in Judaism is to be afraid of life, for when we fear life we betray a lack of faith in G-d. Faith in G-d does not mean to believe that sorrow will never invade our homes or illness never strike us and our loved ones. Many people who cherish such a naive belief are due for heart-breaking disillusionment. It is these people who will say to you: 'When my mother died, I stopped believing in G-d.' They believed the wrong things about G-d to begin with. To believe in G-d is to have faith that he will give us, amidst all vicissitudes, the strength to endure, and the power to hold on and see it through, the capacity to translate even our trials and our tribulations into moral and spiritual victories."
May we learn to kindle our faith in G-d and redefine our challenges as opportunities to discover our spiritual strength. May we be able express our gratitude for the strengths that we do possess and the bounty that fills our lives.
Shabbat Shalom.
Very well said.
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