Bagging for Trouble

I’m starting to wonder if Hashem puts me in crazy situations with crazy people, just so I can write about them. On the other hand, maybe He’s trying to tell me that I’m the crazy one. Maybe there’s a Bat Kol (Heavenly Voice) that calls out every day: “Racheliiiii! You are crazyyyyy!” I sure hope not.

Yesterday, I met a real character. I took my mini zoo with me to go food shopping after school. They always complain that there’s nothing to do at home, so I decided to punish myself and entertain them with an afternoon out. Maybe I am slightly crazy. Between the baby crying because he wants to get out of the stroller and run around, and three other ones who were really running around, and my full shopping cart, and my oldest one complaining that he was so bored, it was tons of fun. By the time I got to the checkout line it was an hour later, and I had six more gray hairs.

There was a lady in front of me with tons of groceries, but they were pretty much on the other side of the checkout. She was standing there, bagging them as if she were on vacation. (What, do you expect someone else to bag your groceries for you? Spoiled Americans!) I stood there for a minute, watching her and trying to make my kids stay within my range of vision. The baby was freaking out.

After another minute, I said to her, “Excuse me, can you please pay, and then continue bagging your groceries?”

Bag Lady looked right at me and said, “No.” I almost fell down from the shock. “Look. There is no place for you to put your stuff,” she told me.

“Don’t worry about it. I will bag them right where I’m standing,” I responded.

“No,” she said again. It took me almost a minute to recover from my repeated shock.

“I have five kids!” I was getting mad.

“I have ten,” she retorted. Amazingly, she wasn’t religious. My blood began to boil. I started shooting her daggers with my eyes.

I asked the check-out guy to tell her to pay.

He just sat in his chair like a lump of clay.

I was about to tell her off, but my Hebrew isn’t fast enough to pull it off.

Ooooh, I was getting so mad!! Then, all of a sudden, I heard the Bat Kol ring out again: “Hey, you! Crazy Lady with the five wild boys! Aren’t you a student of Rav Arush?”

I turned around and looked behind me, just to make sure that I was the one being addressed. I pointed to myself and looked up at the supermarket ceiling questioningly. “Me?” I mouthed silently.

“Yeah, you,” the Bat Kol answered, “Get your act together, big talker.”

It was right. How could I yell at this woman? Wasn’t I supposed to have emuna or something? Oh, yes, now I remember! Emuna is that thing where we’re supposed to believe that everything comes from Hashem and is for your ultimate benefit. How inconvenient – just as I was about to get all ballistic on her.

To be honest, I didn’t have emuna at that moment. It took all of my mental strength to keep my mouth shut, especially when she decided to pay with three post-dated checks, which took nearly ten minutes, during which she was standing there, doing absolutely nothing. Actually… my mouth wasn’t really shut. It was hanging open the entire time as I watched the check fiasco. But, I wasn’t saying anything!

When the lady finally left, I started to calm down and think about the absolutely ridiculous situation that I had just failed. Okay, maybe it wasn’t a total failure. Maybe I didn’t really calm down, either. I would give myself a D+, because I didn’t let her have it. I humbly admitted my failure and berated myself for having reacted like a fool.

Rav Arush says that when a person is tested, all of his spiritual awareness is taken away from him at that moment. And, there ya’ go. It seems kind of unfair. But, you know what? It makes sense. How could we have free will if we clearly saw that our challenges were for our best? That’s why emuna is everything – we have to work on building it up every day, so when the challenges come and we’re left frustrated and clueless, we have our emuna readily available, to keep us calm and in check.

By the time I actually got a moment to breathe, it was after 10:00 at night, and I was exhausted. When I finally sat down to relax, I realized that I hadn’t even tried to figure out the message that Hashem was trying to give me. Obviously, He was trying to tell me, no, yell me something.

Luckily for me, I got the answer before I passed out on the couch. I realized that what annoyed me the most about Bag Lady was that she acted as if she were the only one in line; no one else mattered. Talk about chutzpah! And, then, Hashem let me have it: “How do you think I feel when you put your personal needs before Me?”

Whoah. I started racking my brain, trying to find out what Hashem was referring to. As it turned out, I didn’t have to rack that hard. I realized that many times, I get so busy in the mornings, that I don’t do my daily prayers when I should. Obviously, this is saying to Hashem that my laundry and dishes are of higher priority than speaking with Him in prayer, G-d forbid.

So you see, class, that everything – absolutely everything – we go through has a purpose for us to learn and benefit from. Now, if only I could figure out why the lady that nearly took up two parking spots at the market this morning refused to straighten out her car when I asked her to. And, on top of that, she yelled at me! Seriously!