Abba Knows Best

This Shabbat afternoon, I was helping myself to my third meal. By third meal, I mean third helping of lunch. Or was it my fourth? Anyway, as I was enjoying my delicious turkey and stuffing, the tryptophan kicked in and I began to get a little foggy. My head started nodding from a combination of exhaustion and turkey coma, yet I still managed to place large helpings of food in my mouth. I know, I'm very talented.
 
I started to stare blankly at my dining room table as the fog settled in deeper. Before I knew it, the entire dining room along with the table disappeared, and I suddenly found myself in a thick gray mist. As I stood up and tried to feel my way out of it so I could go lay down, I wondered if I had been teleported to San Francisco or Maine.
 
I lay down and fell asleep in half a second. Five minutes later, I was woken up by screams of joy or pain, but I was too tired to distinguish between them. I didn't bother to get up- the fog hadn't worn off yet. But, not to worry! My kids found me just fine. They barged into my room, each one nearly trampling the other two. Had I suddenly been teleported to Spain, so I could witness the horrific entertainment of the running of the bulls? I did a quick one-eyed scan of their bodies. No blood. My eyelid started dropping again.
 
The combined shrieks jolted my eyes wide open. Poof! The fog magically disappeared. They dragged me out of bed so I could revel in the joy of mediating/refereeing their argument. I still don't understand what their fight was all about, but before I knew it, I was sitting at the dining room table again, watching them eat.
 
As they ate and threatened each other in Hebrew (which I find terribly amusing,) I began to stare at my table again. This time, however, the stare was one of admiration. Let me tell you the story of my table.
 
When we made aliyah, we gave away my dining room table, because the apartment waiting for us already had a table, and the owners weren't willing to part with it. Instead of being a nudnik until I got  my way, I let it go for two reasons: one, I was sick as a dog from the pregnancy, and two, it was a table that my parents gave me when they got their new one.
 
So I let it go. When we made aliyah a few months later, I was extremely disappointed to see that the dining room table was old, worn out, and only had four chairs. Two of those chairs were being held together by a sheer miracle, and all of them were just plain ugly. Not only that, but I also found out that the table itself was narrower than my table, which made it very difficult to put large serving dishes in the center of the table. (Israeli tables are one meter in width.)
 
I began to kick myself for my stupid decision to let my husband do something without getting my permission first. I also began to kick him for it. A lot. For the next 2 ½ years, at least once a week (usually on Shabbat) I would lament the fact that I gave away my table with 8 chairs. Here we were, sitting at a rickety old table with wiggly old plastic chairs because I didn't speak up. My husband just reminded me that the owners were completely unwilling to part with it, and there was nothing I could have done.
 
Before we moved to our current apartment, we decided that we were going to buy a new table, even though the owners were willing to let us have theirs for free. Why, you ask? Well, the new renters wanted to bring their table with them. Seriously?!! That just made everything worse, as apparently I suffered in vain for over two years.
 
My husband consoled me by letting me pick out any table I wanted. Okay, that was a decent consolation. Soon after, we drove around the industrial area of Bet Shemesh looking for a furniture store. We found a store that was off the road and didn't have a sign on it. Why should it? That would just make too much sense.
 
As soon as we walked in, I saw it. It was love at first sight. Standing in the middle of the showroom was a gorgeous dark mahogany wood dining room table with six chairs. It beckoned me closer with its unique bronze inlay at the center of the table. The more I stared at it, the more I became entranced with its beauty. “You had me at hello,” I whispered to it. The chairs were also perfect, as they had dark chocolate leather upholstery, which would be easy to keep clean and stain-free. My parents' chairs had ivory fabric upholstery, and they were a nightmare to keep clean. Let's just say that they weren't kept clean.
 
To make the table even more appealing, it was on sale, and what woman can resist a good sale? The best part about my new love was that the width is 1.2 meters, which is significantly wider. I knew I would have no problem loading my table with as much food as I wanted. Within an hour, we walked out of the furniture store as proud owners of a gorgeous new dining room table and EIGHT chairs. Incidentally, I still have no idea what the name of the store is…
 
By now, the lesson should be obvious. If I had gotten my way and brought my original table with me, I never would have bought this beautiful new table. Hashem obviously saw the final outcome, and He knew that it would be worth it for me to stick it out for a while until I received what He had been wanting to give me.
 
But here's the surprise twist: if I had brought my table, I would have suffered tremendously with it as well! You see, the dining area of my previous apartment was very narrow. There was barely enough room to pull out the chairs as it were. If my original table would have been in that narrow space, it would have been ten times more uncomfortable, and we might have ended up getting rid of it anyway! It would have been even more painful to give it away over here, because I would have had the additional loss of the cost to have it packed and shipped!
 
That realization took me over three years! Talk about a slow learner.
 
All of us have situations that we look at and say, “If only I had done this, things would have worked out so much better.” Nonsense! Things are exactly the way Hashem wanted them to be, and eventually He lets us in on his master plan. When we realize the outcome was indeed for our best, we finally agree with Hashem's brilliant foresightedness and thank Him for it. Instead of waiting for our slow selves to finally understand what Hashem has planned for us, let's just sit back, relax, and remind ourselves that Abba knows best!