God, Fix It Already!

I have been learning Rabbi Arush’s teachings on emuna and saying thank you for years already. This knowledge has only deepened this past year, as I became the Editor for the English website and began translating Rabbi Arush into articles on the website. You might think that with all that experience, I have got the “cat in the bag” so to speak, and I live with perfect emuna, and I am happy and calm all the time. Not exactly! I am just like you – with ups and downs, difficulties and breakthroughs, mistakes, teshuva and starting over again. 

This week, I realized during my personal prayer session one day, that I had been making a critical mistake when saying “thank you” which I would like to share with you. The real sinister thing about this mistake, is that I didn’t even realize that I was making it! And my guess is, that I am not alone. 

Now, I understand that his mistake is why I had been saying “thank you” for a long time on a particular problem, without real progress. Rabbi Arush is very strong when he promises that if you say thank you, you will be saved! It’s a spiritual law, no different than a law of nature! But you have to say it with truth. Well, I thought I was doing just that! I mean, I know all the ins and outs of saying thank you – I live, breathe, learn and teach it every day, thank you Hashem! So, nu – what was going on?! 

For a long time already, I have had a very great will to fix this particular problem. I suffer so much in my daily life because of it, in every aspect of my life. I am not alone; my family also suffers greatly because of this problem, and knowing that they are suffering only adds acid onto the wound, thus fueling my desire to rectify the situation even more. 

I also know Rabbi Arush’s teachings about ratzon – desire and will. I know that I am supposed to scream out: “Hashem, I want to fix this! And I am not giving up until I do!” And I did that plenty! 

Then, Rabbi Arush started teaching weeks ago already that if you want to fix the problem, and G-d who loves you and never wants to see His children suffer wants to fix the problem even more than you want it fixed, and if even with all that, the problem still remains – then you have to throw your hands up and recognize that G-d, who sees what you cannot see and knows what you do not know, sees that this is really the best thing for you, with all the factors that you do not know! Accept it with emuna, and say thank you! So I threw that into the mix. STILL NO CHANGE. 

So what was the problem? Learning a concept like this, and even teaching it, is so easy to do. LIVING IT – that is hard! Only after weeks of chewing on this concept, did I suddenly realize – even though I was saying thank you, and trying my hardest to accept the situation with love, hidden very deep within the daily prayer to Hashem, entangled in the daily teshuva and really praying with my whole heart over the problem, and practically screaming: “G-d, I want to fix this so badly!!!” was the rest of the sentence I knew I couldn’t say but really and truly, I still felt it: SO, NU, WHY HAVEN’T YOU FIXED IT ALREADY, G-D?! 

Until the moment when the lightbulb went off in my head, I didn’t even realize it was there! It was so buried in the knowledge that the feeling was wrong, that I completely denied its existence. But in that moment, I admitted that I really did feel that way. I really had not 100% filled myself with the emuna that G-d is in control, and therefore, this problem just has to be good! Deep down, I was still frustrated and angry about the situation, and that unspoken feeling was encumbering my prayers, and preventing them from being accepted. Prayer is accepted according to the emuna in it – and the real truth that I didn’t even see, was that I was praying with the total heresy of complaining about why Hashem hasn’t fixed the problem yet, seeing that I have prayed so long and said thank you, and have such desire to fix it! I was literally the textbook case mistake – without even knowing it!!! 

So, I poured my heart out in teshuva, and apologized that I really felt that way, and I am sorry that I denied it, and I apologized for my thoughts and questions about the way You are running my life. And then I said thank you that I hadn’t been saved until that moment – because otherwise, I never would have learned this crucial lesson! Of course, I had to do teshuva! Thank you, Hashem, for not letting me continue to make this mistake, and teaching me now! 

Need I tell you that THAT NIGHT – the problem was fixed?   

You see just how important it is to ask Hashem to help us to say thank you properly, to give us the emuna, and to save us from the Evil Inclination before us and behind us, who is constantly trying to trip us up. Without Hashem helping us to serve Him, even with the knowledge of what we are supposed to do – we won’t be able to really, truly do it. Maybe this is part of why Rabbi Arush is so strong to just pray for emuna, and pray to be able to say thank you with our whole heart – because it seems so easy, but it is really, not so simple at all!  

A reader's followup question about this article is in Part 2.  

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Rachel Avrahami grew up in Los Angeles, CA, USA in a far off valley where she was one of only a handful of Jews in a public high school of thousands. She found Hashem in the urban jungle of university. Rachel was privileged to read one of the first copies of The Garden of Emuna in English, and the rest, as they say, is history. She made Aliyah and immediately began working at Breslev Israel.  

Rachel is now the Editor of Breslev Israel's English website. She welcomes questions, comments, articles, and personal stories to her email: rachel.avrahami@breslev.co.il.