Just because I'm losing, doesn't mean I'm lost.

Perhaps one of these days I'll change the name of my blog to "All about Noam".

Today we were in the kitchen, I was preparing dinner and Noam, propped up on a chair next to me, was cracking open pistachio nuts quietly to himself. I think I added that detail in for the mothers out there looking for some insight as to how to get dinner prepared with a toddler in your midst.

"I'm a bad boy." He says breaking the silence suddenly.

"What did you say?" I asked him in shock.

"I'm a bad boy." He repeated.

Now I'm not sure where he got this from as we are very careful in our house not to ever say such things but whatever the case, he said it.

"You are not a bad boy. You are a good boy, and sometimes you do things that are not good." I explained.

Judaism says that we are in essence good. We are made up of a body and a soul. Our soul wants to do only good things. Our body on the other hand, is designed in a way that makes us move towards our more animalistic desires. Now that is not to say that the physical world is bad and only spiritual lofty pursuits are good. In fact, the complete opposite according to the Torah.

The goal of this world is to take those mundane, physical things and make them into Holy acts.

It is important for us to decipher who we are versus what we do.

I am a good person and sometimes I make wrong choices. I am not my wrong choices.

Now I definitely believe that our choices make up who we will become but in essence, deep down underneath it all, we are all sparks of Divinity and therefore we are all made up of something that is somewhat 'perfect'. We do have the free will in this world to taint that beautiful gift we were given but that's the only way we can possibly get any reward from any of our good actions. It has to go two ways.

When my father in law passed away recently, I experienced something very profound. We were at the funeral home just prior to the procession and they let the family go in and view the body. To preface, I only realized later that I'm not sure if this is a Jewish custom or not and should have asked a Rabbi first but I'm going to share with you my insights as to what happened.

I was pretty nervous and I think my perception of death has been jaded by Hollywood that I was almost expecting to see something morbid. But that's not what happened at all. I looked over from very far away and all I could see was Zaidy's (Grandpa's) face, his body wrapped until his neck in his son's (my husband's) Tallis (prayer shawl). It was his beautiful face, just like it was a few days earlier when he was living. It was as if a white light was surrounding his face and he looked very much at peace.

Isn't that just so cliche? As I was writing it I thought to myself, how lame. He probably looked so white because he was pale from all the blood draining and the peacefulness was because he looked like he was sleeping.

It was just him, lying there with his eyes closed. There was no white light, no halo, no violin, no angels dancing around his face. It was almost as if he was going to open his eyes and say hello. It didn't' seem real at all. In fact, I think it was the most surreal thing I had ever felt in my entire life. But that wasn't the profound lesson. The profound lesson was the following:

What I was looking at, experiencing, was something we speak about all the time yet have no real way of touching.

For the first time in my life, I was looking at the physical world and the spiritual world all at the same time.

You see, just a couple of days before this moment I was in, I was speaking to Zaidy, laughing with him, and connecting to him. And now I was looking at his body, but 'he' wasn't there.

WHERE IS HE?

WHERE ARE WE?

It shook me to the core and I could only remain standing on my two feet for as long as it took me to run out of the room and find a chair to sit on.

If we are really sensitive to the reality around us, it is very simple for us to find where we are. We know it inside. We don't need some guru to tell us. We need to look deep within ourselves and realize the things we already know are true.

We know we are more than just this body. We know we are something much greater. And we know that just because we can't make huge steps towards moving in that direction, we can still make small steps and they are probably much more real and long lasting anyway.

Just because I'm losing, doesn't mean I'm lost.

Ouch

Whenever I accidentally hurt Noam, the most unusual thing happens. He comes rushing over to me, hugs me and doesn't want me to let him go.

I've often thought about this bizarre occurrence because really, if you think about it, it's the opposite of what adults do isn't it?

When someone hurts us, intentionally or not, we run away from them! We get angry at them, assume the worst and run the other way drowning ourselves in our own self pity.

What if we could learn from our children that the secret to healthy communication, with our friends, spouse even with God, is not to run away. What if we could learn from this that the reality is the people in our lives don't really want to hurt us they want what's best for us and we should embrace it. Even if it means swallowing up our own ego and running towards them with open, vulnerable arms.

The embrace is enough to leave us realizing and really feeling that the best remedy for our pain is to run towards the ones we love, and allow them to love us.

Perhaps along the way adults learn to stop trusting each other?

The guy trusts me because my track record with him is perfect so he knows he can always trust me. He may still come to me with a confused look like why did that happen but the bottom line is, he comes to me instead of running away.

Perhaps we need to figure out how to learn to trust again?

Team mommy gets the Gold

The music in the background is usually the tranquility of my day, but today it seems to be the thing that brings all the chaos together in one large symphony of crying babies and running water from the dishes. I'm scrambling to finish up the last of the dishes knowing that if I stop now I will never get to finish it today. The girl is propped up on her knees, tugging at me and whining to please pick her up as the guy runs around in circles, only a diaper on, and screams at the top of his lungs in a pitch even the music playing in the background can't seem drown out. Coupled with the sound of the hard running water and the cars outside honking, buses starting and stopping, I look up above my sink and glance at my sign that reads, "SMILE, LAUGH, YOU ARE SO LUCKY, GET OVER YOURSELF, IS LIFE SO HARD, YOU POOR THING, HEALTHY BABIES, AMAZING HUSBAND, GORGEOUS LIFE." See Bob is a Jerk post for reference. And I think to myself, no not what a wonderful world even though it is, I think,

"Wow parenting is hard work."

I'm not sure where anyone got the idea that parenting would be easy, or marriage, or relationships or really anything in life. But for some reason, so many of us still hold on to the idea that if we just do something right, read the right book, get the exact parenting tactic down, life will be very simple and serene, something like from the pages of a parenting magazine where the mother is wearing a wrinkle free linen suit in the middle of the day, her makeup is just perfect and her children are sitting next to her in a peaceful recline in their polished shoes while the light of day shines on their spotless, freshly cleaned floors.

I was recently out somewhere and an adorable girl who I've known for only a short while asked me, "How's life?" I told her, "Amazing!" She asked me what I do and as I began to tell her that I am with my two babies all day her face began to transform from one of delight to one of complete despair. She looked at me with so much empathy and said to me in the sweetest voice,

"You must be so tired!"

Yes, it's hard work. But it's like an Olympic athlete. He trains his whole life, focuses his entire strengths on just one thing, the gold medal. While he is training do you think it's easy? Do you think for a second he thinks to himself "when will this get easier?" The secret is that in life, our greatest pleasures come from the things that require the most effort. The more effort we put in, the greater the experience of pleasure we will feel. Who has more fun, the spectator watching the game or the Olympic athlete who is working so hard his body aches and cries for him to stop but he pushes through with his eye on the target? It seems that the spectator is having the most fun, besides he's the one with the beer in hand, body relaxed, couldn't get easier than this! It's true, that spectator is experiencing a dose of pleasure but the athlete is tapping into a much higher level of pleasure unmeasurable to the entire audience's experience put together. And I'm sure he's tired.

The deeper reality is that the pain he feels is actually the best feeling pain in the world. It's the feeling of accomplishment, of growth and of meaning.

Parenting is hard. We're tired. And it feels fantastic.

It's like my household's chaos is the American Hockey team in overtime and I'm team Canada. I'm going for the Gold.