The Best Teacher
She has grown to genuinely appreciate her infertility, for it’s been the best ‘teacher’ when it comes to learning humility, patience, and emuna...
It’s been two years since I wrote ‘Maybe Baby’, one of the first things I ever wrote for the Breslev Israel website. That article touched on some of the enormous struggles that I was having over my infertility: I struggled to believe that prayer was effective; that Hashem was kind; that I could be happy with my lot, even when I felt such a tremendous ‘lack’ in my family life.
When I was writing that first article, I’d only just started learning about the principle of thanking Hashem for the very things that cause us the most pain. And I have to say that when I started trying to ‘thank’ for my infertility, it really started to help almost immediately.
But some things are so deep-seated, they don’t get unstuck, resolved or sorted out overnight. Even after I spent months and months thanking, I would still have bad days, when I felt so sorry for myself and so empty inside. The time of the month was the worst. Each month, I’d be convinced that something was going to happen – and I’d be absolutely devastated when nothing did.
The hardest part was the uncertainty about how much effort, or histadlut, I should be making. My spiritual guide – who has always been right about everything he’s ever said to me – had clearly told me not to go to doctors. But as year one stretched into year two, and still nothing, it got harder and harder to trust that I’d been given the right advice. I wobbled and wobbled about my ‘emunat tzadikim’; I nearly fell off completely a couple of times, G-d forbid, but Hashem always pulled me back before I did, said or believed anything too disastrous.
But by Rosh Hashanah 2008 – having watched one friend after another go to doctors and get pregnant and have babies – I cracked, and made an appointment. It was awful, for a lot of reasons. First of all, I felt terrible that I was going against my spiritual guide’s advice – but I simply couldn’t get any peace from the nagging thought that ‘maybe’ Hashem wanted more effort from me after all.Secondly, the doctor himself was terrible. He sat there with a kippa on his head and droned on and on about aborting babies if there were multiple births. He also made it clear that he thought I’d been stupid not to come earlier. “If you will do what we tell you from now on, I guarantee you’ll have six children by the time you are 40!”
I cried and cried in the car going to the clinic, and on the way back. But I decided I had to at least find out what was wrong. I did all the tests, had the scans – and the doctors couldn’t find any reason why it wasn’t happening.
That’s when I stopped going to the doctors. I suddenly realised that there was one reason why it wasn’t happening – namely, Hashem – and that making more effort wasn’t going to make a blind bit of difference. I had to learn this lesson a couple more times, with various ‘alternative medicine’ practitioners before I really got it. But when the last lady I went to simply couldn’t understand why her remedy which ‘always worked’ for everyone else simply wasn’t working for me, I finally put up my white flag.
I finally accepted that Hashem didn’t want me to have more children; didn’t want me to try to circumvent His decree by going here and there; and also (the really hard part…) did want me to be happy with His decision.
But initially, that was so hard. It was so hard to have concerned friends nag me about not ‘going for help’. It was so hard hearing people complain about their pregnancies, or about the heavy responsibility of caring for so many children. The most galling thing of all was when a formerly close friend of mine started IVF, conceived twins the first time, and then started preaching at me that I lacked emuna, and that if I only had more faith in Hashem I too would have more kids.
That last one hurt so much, as I truly believed it was a message from upstairs. But how many years can you carry on believing ‘it’s going to happen’, without it starting to eat your soul out from the inside?
It’s not that I believe it can’t happen, G-d forbid. I know if Hashem wills it, it can happen tomorrow. It’s just so far, He hasn’t willed it. And I have no way of knowing if that’s going to change in the future.
But in the meantime, I had a challenge to learn how to be happy with my lot – and I begged Hashem to help me live up to it. And He has. He showed me that I’m not the sort of person who can cope with a lot of noise, mess and physical exertion – I need my quiet and my space, not least to sort out all the spiritual issues I’m still trying to fix.
He showed me that before this long, seven year stretch of infertility, I didn’t really appreciate what a gift my children are. They are so very, very precious to me now, precisely because I no longer take them for granted. And He also showed me that my infertility was probably the main thing that humbled me, and got me closer to Him.
I’ve had other ‘presents’ recently; if I’d had more children, I never would have realised that I wasn’t living in the right place. When you can whinge about your lack of sleep, or go on about the price of diapers, you are never short of something to say. But when you can’t use your kids as a social icebreaker, that’s when you really see if you have something in common with your peers. And I didn’t. And that clarity ended up being a tremendous gift, when we realised we had to move a few months’ ago.
Hashem also gave me the clarity of realising that my ‘worth’ as a person isn’t defined by my job, or my role. For two years, I sat at home, jobless, waiting to ‘be’ a new mum again. And when that didn’t happen, it forced me to understand that even having babies, important as it is, isn’t the reason I was put on this earth.
So what was the reason?
In a nutshell, I realised that I am here to fix my soul. Not to make money, bake cookies or win prizes for being parent of the year. But to fix my soul, and return it to my Maker in a better state.
But most of us will do anything to avoid having to face this reality. We look around for things to keep us busy, and give us prestige, and to help us feel like social ‘successes’ – but actually, by doing all these things we end up being the most profound failures. We fail to grasp what we are meant to be doing down here; namely, fixing our souls.
And the more challenges I have, the more things don’t go my way, the more ‘awkward’ I feel that not only do I no longer have anything resembling a career, I don’t have anything else to keep me ‘occupied’ full time, as my kids get older – the easier it is to work on my soul.
I still thank Hashem for my infertility, but now, I really mean it. Now, I really appreciate that it genuinely is and was a gift, the best possible thing for my soul. It’s been the best ‘teacher’ I could have, when it comes to learning humility, patience, emuna and appreciation.
My seven years of infertility have shown me that so many of us have a fundamentally wrong misconception about what emuna really is. Emuna doesn’t mean that you believe that Hashem will do what you want, that you pray and He will automatically answer. Emuna means that whatever Hashem does, you try to be happy about it, and you try to believe that it’s the best thing that could be.
8/22/2010
the opposite “problem” Dear Rivka,
I have the opposite “problem”!!! I was never one to really yearn for kids, but did since that is what “one does”. Hashem blessed me with 3 fast and easy pregnancies and beautiful babies before I could know what was happening: and then they started to grow up. The nisayonot came thick and fast, and I was not coping: in fact: I turned into an ugly and fearful monster that ended up in therapy.
That was my opening to turn to Hashem, hitbodedut, and the rest is almost history ….
8/22/2010
Dear Rivka,
I have the opposite “problem”!!! I was never one to really yearn for kids, but did since that is what “one does”. Hashem blessed me with 3 fast and easy pregnancies and beautiful babies before I could know what was happening: and then they started to grow up. The nisayonot came thick and fast, and I was not coping: in fact: I turned into an ugly and fearful monster that ended up in therapy.
That was my opening to turn to Hashem, hitbodedut, and the rest is almost history ….