Faith Amidst Suffering

Recently, a very difficult incident occurred in our home. Our father, who was healthy and whole, suddenly fell ill and collapsed.

Many prayers were said for his recovery, children and mothers prayed unceasingly, and we held round-the-clock Tehillim vigils. Since then, I have felt something in my faith in Hashem, His supervision, and His listening to our prayers crumbling within me. I'm afraid to voice the questions, but they are very troubling to me. I can recite that Hashem watches over and sees and that everything is for the good, but deep inside, doubts are eating away at me.

Is there a way to strengthen oneself? How can one continue to believe in such a situation? How can I not lose faith?

Thank you in advance

Y.S.B.

The Mistake of Job's Friends

I find it very difficult to answer your question. Although I have an answer in my heart, which may also provide relief to your crisis of faith, I feel it is unfair to explain or preach to others as long as I haven't experienced that trial myself. This is like Job's friends, who, even though they could quote and explain the depth and righteousness of the judgment, made a grave mistake in their approach to the subject. What was really required of them was sincere participation in their friend's sorrow and understanding of his pain, not preaching words, however true they might be.

Therefore, before I begin my words, I send from the depth of my heart a blessing for a complete recovery for your father among all the sick of Israel. And a blessing for strengthening in complete faith for you and all those around him, whose pain touches them personally. May the good Hashem accept your prayers soon and with mercy, and may He open your eyes to see and become convinced that He hears prayers, and that He and only He is the true merciful one.

In any case, perhaps I can also express words of faith here. Although I have not stood in trials as you have, like everyone visiting this world, I too have faced trials, and from those I have endured that did not break me but rather elevated and uplifted me, I find the courage and strength to respond to your letter, and I hope my words will be received by your heart. I will not quote from books that speak of the greatness of faith and trust, as you are surely familiar with them. But I will quote from my heart and from my pain and the pain of those around me, what I have learned on the subject of suffering.

Not to "Dwarf" Hashem

Faith in Hashem does not mean that Hashem's role is always to make my life pleasant and manage it as I would like. Hashem's plans for me are greater and more exalted than all my plans and dreams for my life. Believing in Him solely as someone who "agrees" with me on how my life should be managed is to dwarf Him significantly...

I imagine things as if my life is conducted on two planes. One plane is familiar to me, and another plane is the divine plane. In the plane familiar to me, my goal is always one and only, that things should proceed according to my wishes, and when it does not happen according to my expectations, I become angry, bitter, sad, and also fall into complaints (hidden or open) towards Hashem and His guidance of my life.

In the unfamiliar plane, the divine plane, Hashem manages my life in only one direction - that I fulfill my destiny and role in His world. That I merit to serve Him and His will.

These two planes often clash. Strengthening faith, in my opinion, is to equate them, or more correctly - to bring my plane closer to His plane, and to annul my will before His will.

A Small Scene of Sanctification

Even in a completely ordinary, simple daily episode, a hidden struggle takes place between the two planes.

When I go down to the grocery store, my goal is one: to find the missing product in my house, buy it as quickly as possible, and return home. However, it is very likely that when I go down to the grocery store, I will find a long line (how annoying), and not only that, a man will cut in line and enter before me (how shameless), and after all that, my product will be missing (a real disappointment), and I will return home empty-handed after half an hour of wasted time (I could have done much more useful things during this time). In my narrow and limited opinion, my goal was not achieved since things did not proceed as I wished, but according to Hashem's opinion, something completely different actually happened

The missing product in my house was merely the pretext. Around this pretext, Hashem crafted, especially for me, a testing arena. An arena where for half an hour, I could reveal and develop in me good traits of patience and judging others favorably, long-suffering, and accepting suffering with love.

According to His plan, this half-hour also plays a part in building my eternity, and it also constitutes a step in my private ladder that advances and promotes my purpose in the world.

Extracting Eternal Profit

Just as it works on the daily level, in a passing episode in the grocery store or on the street or in various seemingly random small and accidental meetings, with things against our will, so it also works on a broader level, in the larger episodes of life, which can last even for years.

For each person, personally, Hashem arranges events. Sometimes as in your case, they are surprising and painful.

In our plane, we want only one thing: for things to return and proceed as we wish. For the problems to resolve, for the sick to recover, for the bank deficit to be covered, and so forth.

In the divine plane, the goal is different – the aim is to pass the testing arena correctly. To extract from it the spiritual profits inherent in it, to grow and become closer to our true purpose.

Human suffering has many and complex reasons, and no human can encompass them all. One of them, brought here, is that each of the participants in the suffering has a lesson to learn.

Certainly, here too, even more so, the power of choice is active, to grow or to cease, to draw closer to Hashem or to distance oneself from Him, to progress or to retreat. Many make the mistake here and claim: such an ordeal is beyond my strength. Who can bear such a thing without breaking?

This Against That

I knew two people who went through a severe accident. They did not know each other, but the difficult incident they both went through was very similar. Both became almost completely paralyzed after the accident. Do we have any way to understand the depth and intensity of their pain? Could we find words to encourage those whose whole world, literally, collapsed on them?

I don't know what faith reassurances they heard, but what I know is that the way each chose to deal with their pain was very different from the way the other chose. From them, I learned the depth of the power of choice, and that the possibility of choice exists even in difficult and bitter situations.

One (and this is completely natural and understandable) chose to despair. Filled with bitterness towards the whole world, without any hope and no desire to live. A shadow of a man. The second (and this is only through the power of choice, an unnatural act of man in the image of Hashem), decided to rehabilitate himself no matter what. For years, he engaged in various healing exercises out of faith and hope for a better future. At present

he is already walking on his own, driving a car, healing people with one of the alternative methods, and he is one of the most optimistic and joyful persons I know.

He also openly declares that he thanks Hashem for what happened to him. He has no doubt that only because of the accident he progressed and achieved everything he has!

I also have personal examples from my own life, but this is not the place to detail them.

Mature Faith

All in all, if our faith in Hashem deals only with Him fulfilling our wishes, it is not surprising that it weakens when things do not go our way. Furthermore, there is a great merit in a crisis of faith. If my faith has weakened, it was probably lacking some kind of "backbone." It likely relied on inaccurate worldviews, like that Hashem's sole purpose is to fulfill my wishes.

And if so, it is good that it weakened! Now, with the breaking of my flawed faith, I will be able to build under it a more mature, stronger faith, as it better connects to the true way Hashem governs the world, my faith will no longer be the result of false imagination about His leadership.

Just Trust

After all that has been said, I have no doubt that your heart still hurts.

In the theoretical realm, we don't mind believing that everything has a lesson and comes to advance us, but when it hurts, for us or someone else, where do we get the mental strength to deal with the pain?

To illustrate the point, I'll use an incident that happened to me years ago. My two-year-old daughter became very ill and needed urgent hospitalization. We rushed her to the emergency room, where we had to hand her over to a doctor to have her connected to an IV. Imagine what a two-year-old child feels when her beloved parents hand her over to a stranger who cruelly sticks a long needle into her arm. Is there any way in the world to explain to her that we're seeking her good? Is there any doubt in the readers' hearts that our pain was not less than hers?

This terrible enigma in her eyes has no rational solution in any way. Only one thing in the whole universe can provide an answer to her anguished soul, and that is the trust she has in us. This trust, that we are indeed her loving parents, provides the answer to her question of how we could do such a thing to her. The answer is that we still love her and certainly know what we are doing.

If she has no trust in us, surely every such event will become "clear proof" that we hate her because only a hater could cause so much pain.

This is precisely our situation towards Hashem. As our trust in our Creator and Father grows, this trust gives meaning even to the most painful enigmas of our lives. Indeed, without it, our faith may be damaged to the point that we may even come to the "clear" conclusion that Hashem is hostile and an enemy to us, God forbid.

Therefore, in addition to many prayers for a complete and quick recovery and full salvation, which one must surely wish for all Israel, we must also pray that in every situation we learn what Hashem wants us to learn, that we draw closer to Him through everything and not distance our