Have you ever felt alone? Like really alone. Has it ever seemed like one thing after another is going wrong and you are at a loss with how to solve it? Worse, maybe it’s even your fault.

Then you get to the light at the end of the tunnel and it’s a train.

And the black feeling of hopelessness starts to seep into every area of life.

But the worst part is that tangible feeling of loneliness. Abandonment not just as a lack of connection but as a living thing. When you daven, try to change, add more learning, but it’s radio silence. A time when nothing seems more true than to ask keili keili lama azavtani?

That feeling of disconnect can be worse than the actual difficulties. You want to connect, to turn to your Father in heaven. You want to feel that love, but it’s like you are numb to it. You want to find comfort in the fact that even if everything seems lost, He is there for you. But nothing. Emptiness.

It’s so hard. So difficult.

It’s hard. It’s so hard.

There’s no switch that flips. The pain doesn’t dissolve. But there is one truth that has kept me from drowning in it. To know that feeling something, no matter how convincing, doesn’t make it reality.

Imagine your beloved child. A child you love more than anything in the world. Imagine the moments you felt overwhelmed with love for them. Maybe it was their first cry or when they wrapped their tiny fist around your finger. Imagine your eyes welling with tears as you walk them down to their chuppa. Imagine the love you feel at that moment. How its warmth fills your entire focus. How you wish you could bestow all the good in the world to them. How your only desire is to shield them from every bad thing that can come their way.

That love is but a reflection, a small facet of Hashem’s love to you. You may not see or feel it, but that is the truth.

The truth is that although we don’t feel it, it’s there. He is there.

Perhaps that doesn’t make it any less painful, and we may still not feel it but we won’t fear or despair.

Because with that truth for the question lama azavtani we can answer gam ki eilech bgai tzalmaves lo ira ra ki ata imadi.

Mordechai Penner
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