By Mendy Lipsker

For years, I regularly shared positive thoughts and words of encouragement with others. Sometimes it was a short quote. Sometimes it was an idea about Emunah and Bitachon. I never really knew who might read it at exactly the moment they needed it.

Over the years, rabbis and shluchim would tell me that they had used one of my thoughts or quotes in a sermon or shared it with their communities. And many times, someone would message me and say: “Mendy, this is exactly what I needed to hear today.” Those messages always meant a lot to me.

I just never imagined that one day, I would be the person who needed those words.

Earlier this year, I suffered a stroke.

And then came the next morning.

There is something very different about waking up the morning after a stroke. You open your eyes, and you’re still the same person. You have the same family. The same responsibilities. The same business ideas. The same dreams. The same music you want to play. The same things you wanted to accomplish yesterday.

But life is suddenly not the same.

Your mind wants to get up and continue exactly where you left off, but your body isn’t cooperating the way it did before. Things you never thought twice about suddenly require tremendous effort.

And there are questions nobody can answer. How much will come back? How long will it take? What will I be able to do again? What will tomorrow look like?

And yet, you still have to get up. You have to find the strength for that morning. And then you have to find it again the next morning.

Suddenly, all those years of sharing messages about positivity, Emunah and Bitachon became something completely different. I wasn’t sending someone else an encouraging quote anymore.

Now I had to live it.

When Emunah and Bitachon Become Real

In recent years, Emunah and Bitachon have become an especially strong pillar of strength in our community. We learn about them. We speak about them. We share stories about them. We encourage one another with them.

But there is a difference between speaking about Bitachon when everything is going according to plan and relying on it when you genuinely don’t know what tomorrow will bring.

Hashem gave me an extraordinary gift during my recovery. I have not had one depressed day.

That doesn’t mean every day has been easy. There have been difficult days. There has been pain, frustration, exhaustion and uncertainty. There have been moments when I knew exactly what I wanted my body to do, and it simply wouldn’t cooperate.

But I never stopped believing that tomorrow could be better than today.

For years, I tried to give other people encouragement. Perhaps without realizing it, I was also building something inside myself that I would one day need.

Positivity was no longer something to post. Emunah was no longer something to talk about. Bitachon was no longer just something to learn.

Now I had to live them.

When Ordinary People Become Extraordinary

And then I discovered something else. I discovered people.

Family, friends, rabbis, shluchim, business associates, neighbors and members of the community showed a level of caring that even my family and I sometimes couldn’t believe. People came to visit. People called. People checked in again and again. People offered help without being asked.

Some people didn’t have anything profound to say. They simply showed up. And sometimes, showing up is the most profound thing a person can do.

We often hear that difficult times show you who your friends are. My experience taught me something a little different. Difficult times can show you just how much goodness has been surrounding you all along.

These people didn’t suddenly become caring because I had a stroke. That goodness was already inside them. My situation simply gave them an opportunity to reveal it.

And watching that happen changed the way I look at people, and the way I look at life. Because it made me wonder: Why do we sometimes have to almost lose something before we realize how precious it is? Why wait until walking becomes difficult to appreciate walking? Why wait until you need somebody to discover how valuable friendship is? Why wait for a crisis to tell someone, “I appreciate you. Thank you for being part of my life.”

Recovery has taught me that some of life’s greatest blessings are the things we once considered ordinary.

Maybe they were never ordinary at all.