One of the perks of having a blog about Bitachon is that people share their stories with me. What I love most is that the stories are from regular people like you and me about the usual kinds of things that happen to people like you and me.
The following story was told to me by my friend Rivkah. As soon as I heard it, I felt I could relate to it right away, and knew I wanted to tell it on The Bitachon Blog. She graciously allowed me to share her story with my readers.
Good parking spots are hard to come by at the train station. By leaving a bit earlier than other commuters, Rivkah is able to find a good parking spot on most days.
On this particular morning, however, Rivkah was running late.
Her boss had called with an emergency at 2 AM the night before. He told her to take her time in the morning, after the trouble he had caused in the night. But parking spots did not care how little you slept; they were just not available if you weren’t there early!
So Rivkah, tired and groggy, rolled out of bed, almost as bright and early as usual. On her way out the door, her sister called to ask about something important. Her schedule set back by a few more minutes now, she finally headed out.
As she was driving, Rivkah spotted an acquaintance walking to the station. She offered him a ride, which he gratefully accepted.
They arrived at the station and searched for a parking spot in the first lot. By this time, though, the lot was already full. Rivkah dropped off her passenger, and proceeded to the second lot to find somewhere to park her car.
She finally found an empty spot at the far end of the second lot. As she pulled in, she saw her train at the station. She quickly ran toward the train, hoping to squeeze in before the doors closed. Though she thought the conductor had seen her and waved her in, the doors slammed shut in her face as she arrived at the train.
What happens next?
I’ll bet you expected that she miraculously made the train after all, or the train crashed, or she had a life-changing experience on the next train.
Well, what really happened next was more spectacular than any of those!
Rivkah stepped back from the closed train doors and said to herself: “It is very clear that for some reason unknown to me, Hashem wanted me to miss this train! Everything that could have gone wrong - did. This was clearly orchestrated special for me - to miss the train!”
This is real Bitachon!
Stories that end happily ever after are beautiful and often inspirational. In those types of stories, the reason becomes very obvious. The real challenge is having a relaxed and accepting attitude even when there is no “happily ever after”.
How did she do that?
Rivkah shared with me the secret of how she was able to react this way. She has been thinking about Bitachon ever since going to a class on the topic by Chevi Garfinkel, and also subscribes to The Bitachon Blog. When these sort of things happen, her reaction is a Bitachon reaction simply because of her Bitachon awareness!
Silly things - like missing the train - are a huge source of stress for many people. Though in hindsight they may seem inconsequential, in real time they can trigger strong emotions like anger, frustration, and even panic.
The key to remaining calm, cool, and collected is … Bitachon!
Even though I may not understand why things are happening or I would have wished for something different, I know that it’s all part of Hashem’s plan. Nothing happens by accident or by chance. My life, every little part of it, is tailor-made for me!
If you have a Bitachon success story, I would love to hear it!
Here's my bitachon story. Please forgive me if it's long, trust me, it's a condensed as possible!
ReplyDeleteMy husband, 4 children and I were told by a beis din a date on which we were to convert. It was to be about 2 months out. We were very excited to finally have a date after so much hard work, devotion, and struggle. For those two months, we were constantly e-mailing and calling the rabbi on our beis din trying to get in touch with him to find out the time of day, the location and any last minute details we might need to take care of before the conversion could happen. We didn't want anything to go wrong. For two months we heard absolutely nothing in response to our repeated attempts to make contact. At the encouragement of our rabbi, we began planning our wedding, and doing what we thought needed to be done based on what little information we had been given at the time the date was given to us for the conversion to take place.
Friday came, we thought our conversion was to happen on Sunday, we've planned our wedding for later that evening. We're so excited, we're about to plotz! This is to be our last Shabbos as goyim! We couldn't be more excited! Friday morning around 11 am. our rabbi calls us. There will be no conversion on Sunday. No wedding. Nothing. The beis din hadn't been checking their e-mails or phone messages for 2 months and only one of the rabbi's on the beis din was our point of contact, so none of the other rabaiim even had a clue as to what had been transpiring for the past Three months, the date given to us, and the date changing to accommodate needs of one of our family who couldn't do it on the original date given. The conversations about pertinent details, etc. Now we're supposed to move out of the state in a week! The following Tuesday through Friday the packers will be at our house, we're loading our stuff onto the truck on Monday and leaving town on Tuesday. There's no time for a conversion and a wedding now! My reaction to all of this is: "We've missed something! There's something in our life that we've overlooked, that we've missed, something not right that we need to fix in order to be able to convert! Hashem wants us, He's ready, He's accepted us, we've just overlooked something!" So I put it out of my head and thought I would know when I see it what we had missed.
I started cleaning off a bookshelf to get rid of whatever needed to go before the packers come b/c we had too many books and it's too much weight. As I went through my bookshelf, I found many books that would fall under the category of avoda zarra (idol worship) in content. So I took them all off the shelf and filled 2 boxes with them. At this point, the last thing we had heard from the Beis Din was that they would be in touch with us sometime in the middle of the week. This book purging happened motzei Shabbos.
On Sunday, every rabbi in the community in which we lived was on the phone with New York and their contacts there. On the phone with the Rabbi of our Beis din, on the phone with financial supporters of the Beis Din. By Sunday afternoon, we had a date to come be converted on Thursday at 4:00 pm and we were told to start planning our wedding. Which we did.
My bitachon point here is that when we had so much riding on something so huge in our lives, and it didn't work out, my first thought was that it was for a reason. As soon as those books left our house, within the hour we got our call from the rabbi giving us a definite time and date for our conversion. I trusted Hashem had a plan and He was using this to speak something very huge and significant to me and I had to listen, trust and do! B"H! We are converted, married, and Jewish now!
Chava, I know what a huge dose of Bitachon you must have needed to get through this. And I know you had it too, because I spoke to you when it was happening, even before it was all resolved!
DeleteI really like your point about Hashem waiting for you to fix something or take some action. There are many times in life when Hashem is just waiting to shower us with good. He just wants us to show our commitment first, whether it be a specific mitzvah or a more general belief and trust etc. I also can point to times in my life where I encountered a challenge and felt that a blessing came through the challenge which was directly related to it.