Broken pipes and the Fast of Esther

Today is a fast day known as the Fast of Esther.

Today is day two of us not having running water in our apartment.

How are the two connected?

It's nearing the end of my fast, my husband has gone out to shul (synagogue), the kids are tucked in bed (after a baby wipe 'bath' of sorts) and I'm sitting on the couch in silence at the battlefield that is my home which was attacked by two very small predators who consume most of my day.

I can't help but think, did I actually grow spiritually from this fast? Isn't that what a fast is supposed to do? What did I get out of it besides diapers, playing with kids and broken pipes?

In Judaism, we learn that the aim of the fast of Esther is to affirm that man does not prevail by physical or military strength, rather by lifting his eyes heavenward in prayer so that God might give him strength to prevail in the battle.

This statement is packed with questions, but I'll just tell you how I caught a glimpse of what the fast is all about today from some broken pipes.

We have no water, and you can only think of all the inconveniences that we might be facing as a result of it. The Abba came home today and upon hearing that we still have no water, replied with "Wow thank God."

What is he talking about? I wanted to bite his head off.

But he explained:

The fact that you don't have water right now, is a testament to the fact that God loves you!

Oh now I was really losing it.

Please explain my dear, humor me.

The Abba went on to explain to me that it's really quite simple. If God didn't love us, He wouldn't be involved in our daily lives. He would just give us everything we need, at all times, no matter what so that we would never have the opportunity to even ask him for a single thing. If he didn't want a relationship with us, it would be very smart to just cut us off from Him, by giving us all that we need. Smart equation.

The Torah teaches that this is the reason why the snake in the Garden of Eden was cursed to slither on the ground. Before the snake sinned, he was a walking being of some sort. After he sinned, the curse put on him was that he would slither on the dust of the Earth, which in turn means he will always have his sustenance there for him without having to turn to God to ask for it.

Man on the other hand was put in the situation where he would only receive his sustenance through hard labor and toiling, which really means he would have to ask God for EVERYTHING.

Now if you want a close relationship with someone, you would probably choose the second option, and obviously God did. He wants to be close with us and therefore at times it might seem like a harsh punishment, but really all His messages and opportunities for us to reach out to Him are acts of love. Just like a father punishes a child to teach him a lesson, it is only done out of love. If the father didn't care, he would not waste his time trying to teach the child lessons about life.

And this is what the fast day teaches us. We are meant to stop for a day and recognize that we do not prevail by physical strength, rather by turning to God. We won't get the pipes fixed by getting all flared up about the 'bad plumber' or 'bad management'. I'm sure there are buildings with tremendous management and top of the line plumbers who sometimes can't solve every problem. The bottom line is we have to do our efforts in this world out of love, call the plumber call the city and of course pray, and God will in turn see that we are putting in our efforts all the while recognizing that He is ultimately the only One in charge.

All day I was trying to tap into the spiritual energy of this holy day and I have to say it is hard at times when you are so engulfed in the mundane activities of life. Changing diapers, feeding, putting to sleep, okay so today there was no bathing but still. You can get wrapped up in all of that if you don't stop to think 'what are the messages here, what am I trying to accomplish with this fast?'

And that's the story of Esther in a nutshell. Finding God in the hidden darkness of the world. If I can connect to the deeper meaning of my life and who I am and what I'm living for from diapers and feeding and broken pipes, then I can break through any darkness the world brings my way and find meaning in everything from the small 'insignificant' things, to the big issues we are meant to face in life.

Thank God for those broken pipes.

Brush your teeth!

In desperation to get the guy to brush his teeth, I had to think up something really clever.

BUGS!

That's right, no lying as germs are really a sort of bug right? I told the little guy that we had to get the bugs out of his teeth. I'm happy to say the guy enthusiastically brushes his teeth now.

So I was trying to get in the mind of this little guy and began to think of how this relates to me? Here he is, this helpless little...guy...his entire life rests in my hands and pretty much anything I say or tell him to do he has to do it. But it's always for his good (provided that I am being a 'good' parent).

See this is exactly how we are with God.

We seem to think that we know everything because we've been classified as 'adults'. We think we know to the ends of the earth and back. Until we learn something from a mistake, and it hurts, and we promise ourselves next time we'll be more open to realizing we don't know it all, and then we do it again. Essentially this is the life of a toddler.

Sometimes we have to do things in life that we don't fully understand because we're essentially God's babies and don't 'know it all' and in the kindness that is Godliness, He speaks to us on our level. He speaks to us so we can understand what it is He knows is best for us.

We shouldn't fool ourselves, the same little guy who needs to be told to brush his teeth to get the buggys out, is the same person who has to go to work and put in a lot of effort to make money and then get paid and feel superior to the rest of the world because, well, now I am responsible and making my own decisions. And well yes, it is true, we do need to 'grow up' and take responsibility for our lives and make decisions like a free thinking adult. But we should never lose sight of the greatness of our Creator who knows far more than we will ever know. It is not to make us feel bad about ourselves, rather it should make us feel small like a child in the sense of humility and awesome to know that we are His 'babies'.

Who are we to think we know it all?

It's like the classic example of the small child who is taken to the dentists office with his father. The child is sitting in the chair with his father standing right next to him and the dentist begins to work. In the child's eyes, this mad man in a white suit is trying to kill him and daddy is just standing by his side and watching the whole thing! 'Why isn't daddy helping me?' the poor boy thinks to himself.

This is really the mind of a child! He is not able to trust yet that the father knows what is best for the child, even if it does hurt a little at times.

Our father, God, knows what's best for us, and sometimes it hurts a little. We can't always see it but there is a formula in being able to tap into it much more and it's simple. Just think of all the good in your life, all the blessings, and all the times where you really needed something and it came through or when something looked bad and ended up being the best thing for you. Think about what a great track record God has in giving you LIFE, and everything in between and realize that this too is just part of that beautiful tapestry.

When you're so close to the painting while it's being drawn you may only see a big mess, but when you stand back and look at it from a distance you see a beautiful masterpiece.

Every father wants what's best for their child. Sometimes God has to speak to us on our level, most of the time, it may seem like a daunting task but really all he's telling us is to brush our teeth, to get the buggys out, because He wants only what's best for us.

You might even cry...

Once upon a time, there was a foolish boy who had a bag full of beautiful marbles. Now this boy was quite proud of his marbles. In fact, he thought so much of them that he would neither play with them himself nor would he let anyone else play with them. He only took them out of the bag in order to count and admire them; they were never used for their intended purpose. Yet that boy carried that coveted bag of marbles everywhere he went.

Well, there was also a wise boy who wished he could have such a fine bag of marbles. So this boy worked hard and earned money to purchase a nice bag to hold marbles. Even though he had not yet earned enough with which to purchase any marbles, he had faith and purchased the marble bag. He took special care of the bag and dreamed of the day it would contain marbles with which he could play and share with his friends.

Alas, the foolish boy with all of the marbles didn't take care of the marble bag itself, and one day the bag developed a hole in the bottom seam. Still, he paid no attention and, one by one, the marbles fell out of the bag.

It didn't take long, once the foolish boy's marble bag developed a hole, for the wise boy to begin to find those beautiful marbles, one at a time, lying unnoticed on the ground. And, one by one, he added them to his marble bag. The wise boy thus gained a fine bag full of marbles in no time at all. This boy played with the marbles and shared them with all of his friends. And he always took special care of the bag so he wouldn't lose any.

And what about the foolish boy? Because he was selfish and careless, he lost all of his marbles and was left holding the bag.

If you wrote down all the things in your life that you have, from life itself to the trinkets you own, to the feelings you feel, would you feel grateful for such tremendous gifts?

Regardless of who you feel grateful to, you would feel pretty good. You might even start to cry.

Imagine what your life would look like (speaking to myself) if you walked around all day and thought "What is my responsibility?" Rather than thinking (speaking to myself) "What are my rights, what's owed to me?"

Can you imagine the profound impact it would have on your soul to always be thinking of what your responsibility is to your husband, your children, your friends, your community, your world?

You might think this is the way most people think, but a quick glimpse into the human psyche might prove differently.

What happens when you rent an apartment, pay money, money that you earned, worked hard for, and then everything from the front door to the fridge breaks within months? How would you feel?

Most of us would feel angry, hurt or used and we would probably be calling the lawyers before we called the landlord to see what can get fixed.

The Abba and I had the merit of living in the Holy Land, The Old City of Jerusalem to be exact, for a couple years. During this time we lived in one particular apartment known to many as "The Cave". The Cave was probably 100 years old, without exaggeration, and was beautiful as ever. But literally, everything in the Cave broke, front door, shower, faucets, floors, oven, fridge, light bulbs crashed from two story high ceilings onto the floor just missing my head! I'm oversimplifying the story by writing it in two measly sentences but I trust you get the idea.

The Abba decided this was going to be our opportunity for tremendous growth and enlightenment in our lives if were going to be sensitive to the messages we were receiving. I was apartment hunting.

We got to the point where when things broke, we laughed. The lessons we needed to learn were so clear! We needed to realize that none of these things belong to us, they are just gifts that can be taken away in a second. And each second they were being taken away! (This should not negate the idea of working hard for your belongings and feeling a sense of accomplishment for hard efforts, and most importantly taking pleasure in the things we have. To be discussed in a different blog!)

Recently the Abba took a trip to the Holy Land as I told you about, and after he came back we were sitting up talking, folding laundry, catching up, and he looked at me and said "You've changed". I gulped. "You are even happier now than you have ever been." I smiled.

But then I started to think, what is it that changed?

I thought and talked it out and came to the astounding realization that the only reason I am able to be more at peace now than ever before in my life is because I have somewhat, to a very minuscule degree, begun to internalize this idea of feeling "What is my responsibility to the world around me, rather than what are my rights?"

Imagine how your life would look if all day long you were only thinking, what is my responsibility to myself, to my husband, to my parents, to my children, to my community, to my world, to my creator?

Can you feel for a moment how your life would shift from the foolish boy with the marbles so scared to let go of his own, to the wise boy who gains infinity by giving to others?

No relationship can fail if each partner is thinking "what is my responsibility to this person" Every relationship can suffer if even one person is thinking "what are my rights in this relationship"

There lies a deep secret here in parenting, amongst many other things. If we focus only on what our responsibility is toward our child we will feel a deep sense of love and appreciation and if we feel that we are entitled to things in life or things are owed to us, we may find ourselves riding a roller coaster of disappointment.

I often cringe when I see ads that say, "You deserve the best." I mean let's face it lady (talking to myself) we were given this tremendous gift of life with all its beauty and pleasures and we did nothing to earn it! Nothing! We were born into it! And we 'deserve' it? Can you even imagine telling your child he deserved to be born? What does that even mean? We don't deserve anything in truth, we are just here enjoying and taking the incredible gifts that life has to offer. So we need to get outside of ourselves and stop thinking of what is coming our way and start thinking, "Wow, if I was given this tremendous gift of life FOR FREE, I wonder what my responsibility is toward this world?" What can I do for it?

Think about it. God knew what he was doing. He entrusted us with a gigantic beautiful awesome world, told us to find a spouse that is in itself a gigantic beautiful awesome task, and then to have children and that is a gigantic beautiful awesome thing and then to be part of society and change the world oh and on a side note perfect the world through morality and goodness.

That sounds like massive tasks that require a whole lot of responsibility! Alas, that is the design! God knew what He was doing. He designed the world in a way that only through taking responsibility for ourselves our husbands our children our society our world, would we be able to resemble Godliness, which in essence just means being a giver rather than a taker. Being the wise boy rather than the foolish boy.

Where do we start?

If you wrote down all the things in your life that you have, from life itself to the trinkets you own, to the feelings you feel, would you feel grateful for such tremendous gifts?

Regardless of who you feel grateful to, you would feel pretty good. You might even start to cry.

We can start by writing all those things down, feeling grateful. You will feel pretty good, you might even cry...talking to myself...

More money more problems?

I have been noticing a reoccurring theme this week in my life. The more we have the more we want.

This may shock my readers and I do suggest you sit down before reading this but, I do not own a television.

Are you there? Are you okay? Has the shock worn off?

I won't get into they why's just now but besides the obvious reasons, commercials, addiction etc. there are a plethora of very valid reasons the Abba (The Daddy) and I chose not to have one in our home.

We do, however, have family who owns televisions. Last week the Abba went away to the Holy Land to get some milk and honey. While he was away we stayed at my families house and without getting into too much detail, I'll just say by the end of the week I was signing Noam up for TAA, Television Addicts Anonymous.

It's interesting, at home he can go an entire day of reading, playing games, and hanging out with the Imma (The Mommy) and be just fine. But, when he's around a television, the more he watches the more he asks for. For some reason he cannot control himself and just watch 20 minutes. That 20 minutes makes him want another and another.

We're totally spoiled.

We all know it. We shouldn't feel guilty about it, we should take pleasure from it. Real, deep pleasure!

Do you ever find yourself complaining about your internet being down or your cell phone not working? Well come on, if you really think about what's happening in space to make your computer work on wifi and your cell phone have reception, you'd be laughing at yourself!

The more we have, the more we cannot comprehend what life was like without it and the more we want. It's a rat race really. One of my dearest friend and mentors in life recently cried to me about how her remote control car door was broken and she didn't know how she would go on! She quickly realized on her own that her fears of the manual car door future were quite silly in retrospect.

I'm not saying we shouldn't strive for more, for better. But we have to realize that if we appreciate the things we have, we can find true happiness. If we constantly look for the next thing, we'll never really live in the now. You cannot actually know if you will have the future, and the past is gone so in reality the only thing you DO HAVE is the now. So if we choose to live in the future, we're actually not living in reality!

Wow, that's scary.

We want to live in reality, and we do like nice things, and money, and we do want more and we do aspire for greater and better and that's all great. But in the process we have to figure out how to aspire and grow and climb while living and being in the RIGHT NOW.

Judaism says this is the secret to happiness.

TRULY APPRECIATE THE THINGS YOU HAVE.

So obvious, yet so hard.

It's not even a case of more money more problems then, it's really a case of more money more desire for more and less focus on appreciation for what we have now.

More money, more more more more more more more more more.....

Imagine you went outside. Grabbed your keys from your pocket, unlocked the front door to your car, got in, turned on the car and rolled down the windows; we're using our imaginations here. Pull out of the driveway, get onto the street and start driving. Now imagine that as you are driving there are no stop signs, no traffic lights, no lines on the road and hundreds of other cars on the same road you're on.

Now realize, this is the life of a toddler.

In their world, everything is new and exciting but at the same time there is so much to filter into their little minds. There is so much knowledge, action and experiences flying at their face at any given moment. I mean how would you feel? These little guys can't even control their own volume for heaven's sake! They don't know quiet from loud or slow from fast. They are bound to, actually they regularly bump into furniture, walls and even people. They often fall off their chairs, get hurt while playing without fail, and always find ways to hurt others even if unintentional.

You basically need to stay far away from them when they are awake if you don't want to get dirty, bruised or bloody.

Now when you put a child into an environment that is gated, safe and fun, you can be sure these little angels are the cutest little guys around. You could just eat them up!

Give them toys, books, activities, snacks or friends and they are so happy.

I spend most of my time with my toddler just guiding his actions in order to help him share, give, be nice, gentle, slowly, quiet, hold my hand, okay you get the picture right?

It seems that with the correct boundaries up in place for him, he's very happy, and lack of structure is destructive.

Life lesson:
Well it's pretty obvious that we can learn from our own children that what we may think we want (a life with no one telling me what to do, go and do as i please whenever i want wherever i want with whomever i want) is not at all what we actually want, won't make us ultimately happy and eventually will be destructive.

What we do want, and we may not even know it, is to have the structure in place, to have the boundaries up and then live happily within those boundaries.

It seems pretty simple and yes behold the most simple, obvious things in life, once again, are the most important ones to reevaluate constantly and the ones most often missed.

What we're really saying here is that ultimately it's the boundaries themselves that make us really happy, that really set us 'free'.

I've been very involved in sleep training my kids (without letting them cry - the baby whisperer in case you want to know) and I have been very adamant about their sleep. With my first child I decided to just feed and sleep him on demand and I quickly realized, without the proper structure, he and I were a mess! As soon as I put him on a routine schedule of sleep my life changed. It may seem pretty lame but I learned so much from this seemingly mundane or insignificant event in our lives. The moment I put him on it my husband said to me, "He's a happier baby now."

Everywhere I went people asked me, "What do you do, how do you do it?"

I had women tell me that they haven't slept in years because their children sleep whenever they want and are sleep deprived and are cranky in the day because of it.

And I realized through this that only through boundaries are we really free!

I was always a 'slave' for lack of better term, to my baby when he slept and ate and played sporadically throughout the day. Now that I know when my kids need to sleep I am able to plan around it and know exactly when I can do the things I need to do.

Someone once told me a parable that stuck with me for life and I'll share it with you to illustrate the point clearly:

Imagine you put a bunch of boys at the top of a mountain and threw them a ball. What would they do? They'd probably hang on to each other for dear life.

Now imagine you put a fence around the entire mountain so no one could fall off. What would you have? A game of soccer.


It seems, only through structure and boundaries, are we truly free.

On a very deep level this is really the meaning of Shabbat. One day where we are not a 'slave' to our phones, computers, television, shopping, errands, or even our blackberries. Just one day where we can just be really free. Shabbat is a day with many boundaries set in place (no cooking, no writing etc.) and at first glance we might think of it as a day only filled with restrictions. Why would anyone want that?

Because intrinsically we all know that the life we may think we want, with no one telling us what to do, is not what will make us happy, momentary satisfaction aside. We may think like toddlers sometimes but we all know that we'd rather have someone hold our hand to walk across the street than run 'freely' into a busy intersection.

The only thing we have to figure out as adults is who sets the boundaries now. Who knows best and wants to walk us across the street, holding our hand. Who cares so much about us that we should trust that they want only what's best for us?

It's the lack of boundaries that leads us to destructive behavior. It leads us to bump into things, get hurt and even hurt others. And I'm not talking about the toddlers.