Doing it for Hashem

Up until Rosh Hashana, I kind of felt like my life had been in a holding pattern, or ‘go slow’ for a number of years. Internally, things had changing, and were changing a lot. But externally? Apart from yet another house move a couple of years’ ago (which for me, is almost more routine than not) – nothing else had moved.
 
One of my kids still had her asthma and eczema issues, despite all the prayers I’d put in to it. One of my kids still had her particular ‘issue’, again, despite all the prayers I’d put in to it. We were still struggling to make it every month on my husband’s (actually pretty good for Israel) salary. I still hadn’t had any more kids, and still wasn’t sure that I’d have enough ‘stuff’ to fill my day and not be bored or feel meaningless once the girls went back to school. I was still struggling with a bunch of minor, but debilitating health issues.
 
I was still debating the whole ‘get a job / don’t get a job’ thing. The whole ‘write a book / don’t write a book’ thing. The whole ‘make more physical effort / just wait, and let G-d sort it out in His own time’ thing.
 
But then, after Rosh Hashana, a whole bunch of things started to get unstuck all at once. After years of ‘leave it alone’, I got some very clear messages that it was time to take the kids somewhere, to someone, to at least go through the motions of trying to sort out their various issues.
 
I got the same message for myself, albeit in a completely different way, and after years of praying or even not that any more, I decided to try and pursue some sort of ‘action’ to see if anything could really be done to have more kids.
 
I’m not talking about conventional medicine, which is a very last resort for me because it only treats bodies, and souls don’t usually get a look in at all.
 
Instead, I went to a faith healer in my village, one who I’d checked out thoroughly, and who is a very G-d-fearing person.
 
But even doing something like that, I wondered if I was ‘doing’ too much. I had a whole debate with myself in my personal prayer, wondering if my ‘doing’ meant I was tacitly saying that prayer didn’t work, or didn’t work very well.
 
At least so far, the faith healer has been a very good messenger for us from Hashem. She diagnosed a whole bunch of issues that had been leaving us all feeling less than 100%, and switched us on to an even healthier diet. (If you’d have told me a year ago that I’d be eating the way I do know, I would have laughed you out of the country. But I digress…)
 
We’re none of us ‘fixed’ yet. I don’t know if we will be. But however it plays out, it’s actually been a very positive experience, Baruch Hashem, and one that’s brought all of us nearer to living the way G-d wants us to live.
 
But all this ‘doing’? I was still uneasy. Is that what G-d wants from me after all?
 
Then my youngest got Strep Throat two days before we were meant to go to the UK for a family wedding, and I found myself ‘doing’ something else that I hadn’t done for years: taking my daughter to a doctor, who gave her antibiotics for the first time in her life.
 
If I hadn’t been having the craziest, most sleep-deprived week ever, I probably would have first called my Rav to see what to do; but as it was, once my daughter started hallucinating little people coming out of her duvet, I grabbed her and ran off to the nearest GP I could find.
 
And Baruch Hashem, the pink stuff worked. Not instantly, but by day two, the hallucinations had stopped, the incredibly hot temperature had gone, and I was able to put her on a plane to the UK.
 
Again, thinking about it afterwards, I felt very confused. I knew the antibiotics had been the right thing to do. But how was that possible? OK, I still prayed half a book of tehillim for her; I still did a pidyon hanefesh (redemption of the soul) with the charity box I had from Chut Shel Chesed, Rav Arush’s yeshiva. But I knew in my soul that the situation also required some ‘doing’.
 
And for quite a while, that realization was bothering me a lot. If a person really has emuna, isn’t prayer enough?
 
Maybe I’m on a much lower ‘emuna’ level than I thought? Maybe G-d is changing the status quo all over the place just to show me that, and to help me ‘do’ a bit more, and to stop thinking that I’m on a higher level than I really am?
 
 I really didn’t know. I really still don’t.
 
After I came back from my trip to the UK, the ‘doing’ impulse woke up in quite a few different areas and for the first time in years, I realized that I really was keen to ‘do’ something again.
 
I was keen to paint a few walls in my house. I was keen to visit some new places in Israel that weren’t just holy sites. I was keen to write a book about finding ‘real’ happiness. I was keen to do a ceramics class.
 
But I waited for a while. I waited for a month, and I kept praying on it to see if all this ‘doing’ was just a reaction to being out of Israel, of whether it was rooted in something real, something holy.
 
The message I got back was amazing: Do it! Do! But do it for Hashem, this time, not for yourself.
 
Strange to say, that wasn’t really what I wanted to hear. I wanted G-d to tell me that I should just sit back and let Him do it all.
 
But I realized then, and I’m still trying to work it all out now, that there are some things that G-d wants to ‘do’ via me.
 
So I started writing my book, called ‘The Happy Workshop’ and I’m already up to chapter six. I booked the ceramics class – even though we are really tight at the moment – because I honestly feel that G-d wants me to do it. I bought the paint for the kitchen. And I’m doing it all not so much because that’s what I want, but because I think that’s what G-d wants.
 
It’s a very strange thought.
 
But then, G-d didn’t create Jews to be hermits, who sit alone contemplating creation from a cave. He didn’t create me to sit passively on my sofa, waiting for Him to fix everything around me (which I still feel is a bit of a shame…)
 
He created me to do His will. I was happy just praying. I was happy with the status quo. I was happy not ‘doing’. But He, in His wisdom and mercy, appears to be telling me to ‘do’ now.
 
But to remember, that I’m not doing it for me. Now, I need to do it for G-d.