Someone offers to pour you a drink. Poised with pitcher in hand, she says, “Say when.”
You watch the liquid rise in your glass until there’s just the right amount. “When!” you announce. In other words: “This is enough for me.”
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could say “When” to some of life’s more difficult episodes?
On an intellectual level, we understand that the tribulations that come our way are for our benefit. The suffering may be intended to serve as an atonement for our sins, clearing the way for eternal bliss in the World to Come. It could serve as a wake-up call for some much-needed introspection and change. The pain or aggravation might be a substitute for a larger form of affliction, r”l, to ourselves or others.
There are all sorts of reasons for suffering. Though we may not know what they are, we know that it all comes from our loving Father and therefore has a positive and necessary purpose.
Still, it hurts.
When the problem seems to have gone on forever… When the pain reaches a level bordering on the unbearable… When we passionately long for an easing of our suffering… Our overwhelming impulse is to lift our eyes heavenward and cry, “Enough!”
Whatever lesson You mean to teach me, I’ve got it.
Whatever atonement is happening, I’m good.
All I ask is for this situation to go away, asap.
But sometimes, it doesn’t. Despite all our pleading and supplication, the difficult situation remains firmly in place. That hoped-for shidduch, or baby, or salvation still fails to materialize. The persecution and hate continue to threaten.
That’s when we’re forced to recognize that, just because we’ve had enough, it doesn’t mean that the One Who decides these things necessarily agrees with us. He has a whole different calculation, absolutely correct yet usually invisible to our mortal eyes.
I remember when one of my children, then about two years old, came home from playgroup with half her face swollen to grotesque proportions. The playgroup teacher suggested that the culprit might be an insect bite and recommended that I apply cold teabags to the area. I don’t remember if I did so or not. All I know is that, after a nap, my daughter’s face was even more severely swollen than before. We rushed her to the Emergency Room.
There we were told that she had an infection that had attacked the soft tissues in the face. The prescribed treatment was ten days of a powerful antibiotic. Skipping even one dose of the medicine, especially during the first half of the treatment regimen, the doctors explained, could allow the infection to penetrate the soft tissues of the brain. With this in mind, they insisted on hospitalizing my daughter so that they could administer the antibiotic through an IV line for the next five days, after which I could complete the regimen at home.
Duly following this plan, my daughter was released five days later feeling and looking substantially better. I was scrupulous about giving her the remaining doses, her health was b”H restored, and there the story ended.
Now, let’s imagine the spiritual equivalent of such a scenario. Picture a spiritual ailment whose remedy involves a certain amount of powerful “medicine.” After a short time with the treatment, you may feel ready to shout, “Enough!” You’re tired of suffering. You feel more than ready for the symptoms of your affliction to ease.
However, like my child in the ER, cutting the treatment short could be extremely dangerous. Though we may not know why, the Doctor has determined that we need every single dose of that life-giving antibiotic. To achieve the desired result—life itself—we have to complete the regimen.
We have to stay the course.
Timetables
Our human timetables are different from Hashem’s. In our ignorance and human frailty, all we know is what we can personally perceive. Thus, we may feel ready to stop the “treatment” long before it’s had the needed spiritual effect. We may want to halt the process before all the pieces are in place to bring about the desired outcome.
The only One who knows exactly when to say, “Enough!” is the One Who created both the affliction and the remedy.
In Mitzrayim, the Jewish people toiled and suffered for a long time. To those enslaved men and women, it must have felt endless. Hashem had initially declared a period of exile and persecution lasting 400 years. Then, seeing His chosen ones about to dissolve into the fatal, fiftieth level of impurity, He cut our suffering short (though not, Chazal tell us, without implications for future painful exiles), and whisk us out of there early.
Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the only One Who knows when we’ve truly had enough. That’s because He is the only One aware of every tiny detail of our lives and our histories, going back generations. His is the Mind that holds the map showing the entirety of the road and where it leads. An intimate knowledge of every twist and turn which humanity, with Klal Yisroel at its heart, has traveled, is traveling, and will travel in the future.
In our lives as individuals and as a nation, He is the One Who connects all the myriad dots that we can’t even guess at, to create a picture that we had no idea was in the works.
The Reason Why
There are times when we’re fortunate enough to be able to figure out at least a portion of the “why” behind our suffering.
When an older single, upon finally entering the married state, realizes why she had to wait so long for her bashert, and how much readier she is for this new relationship now, than she was back when she first entered the arena of shidduchim. How much better are her chances for a successful marriage with the tools she’s acquired through her life experience and the increased self-awareness that comes with age and, yes, with suffering. It wasn’t easy being alone for so long, but the suffering was all in a good cause: her long-term happiness.
Getting fired from a job can be very painful, yet that pain may be a stepping-stone to much greater contentment in a different job down the road. Raising a child with special needs can feel excruciating at times, yet it often brings out tremendous strength, compassion and grace in the parent, qualities that will benefit them in every area of life. And all this is quite apart from the fact that any troubles we experience may be parlayed into a tool to help others similarly afflicted… Which, after all, is one of the reasons we were put here on earth.
Purely intellectual understanding doesn’t take away the sting of whatever we’re going through. But it can minimize it. By placing our suffering into a larger, broader context, knowing that there’s a heavenly plan spanning thousands of years and many generations that only Hashem is privy to, we can gain perspective. We can remind ourselves that He knows what He’s doing. And that, even though we’re hurting, we can and must cling stubbornly to our trust that He’s doing it for our own good.
And believe with all our hearts that, one day, He will declare, “When!” to halt the stream of suffering… and replace it with an everlasting joy