Transform Your Walls into Doors
This past Monday, I thought I was going through a door, but I hit a wall.
My bags were packed and I was ready to get on a flight that evening to go back to America from Israel, and then I got a positive test for COVID. And as a result, I've still been in Israel and only leaving tonight.
At that moment for me or for anyone, when your bags are packed, you have a plan and you're ready to go and all of a sudden, your plan doesn't go as you want, it feels like I literally hit a wall.
It took me a number of hours to reframe and reaffirm for myself an important message: I didn't hit a wall, but went through a door.
Seeing a door in place of a wall is one of the secrets of life that King David explains in Psalm 30. He says, "God lifts me up when I'm down." The Baal Shem Tov, a great mystic, explains that the word for being down also signifies a door, a delet. Sometimes we think we hit a wall and we bang on that wall and bang on that wall and we can stay angry and upset. For an hour or two when I received the news of the positive test and then I was not getting on the flight, I was angry and upset. King David awakened within the realization that I am not facing a wall, but a door.
God pushed me through another portal to create a new opportunity. I stayed with my father and stepmother and it served as an opportunity to get some much needed rest in quarantine, fulfill the mitzvah of honoring my mother and father, spend time writing and learning a little bit more and share Shabbat with other members of my family.
We will all experience disappointments and surprises. Those are moments to reaffirm our faith that they are not walls but doors. God is saying, "Be fully present in this moment." Yes, it may not be what we planned, but find some light and a silver lining. When we shift our perspective, we realize that there's no point in getting upset because God is giving us another door to walk through to grow a little bit more and find new ways to reveal Godliness inside ourselves and in the world.