Getting Through Grief By Choosing Joy

MyLife Essay Contest

In my lifetime, I have met dozens of people who have ceased to acknowledge G-d’s existence because a benevolent G-d wouldn’t allow certain things to happen. Dead kids, war, the Holocaust, bad politicians, hangnails, you name it. If there was a G-d, these things would never happen. For a while, I was even one of these people. Looking at me now, it’s hard to believe, but under that sheitel is a mind that once couldn’t wrap itself around the presence of a living G-d. Under my long sleeved shirt is a heart that once shut Him out. While I realized I was wrong when I had barely entered adolescence, it wasn’t until recently, over a decade and a half and a few babies later, that I realized why I was wrong. The revelation had nothing to do with G-d. There was no prophetic dream, no angelic message, no strategically placed sunbeams. The answer was entirely intellectual; arduously achieved, but intellectual all the same.

As a teenager I didn’t have much of an excuse to turn my back on G-d’s existence. He had never done anything to me, personally. I was affronted on behalf of humanity. I came from a secular background, so my day to day life didn’t change much, I just got cockier. I was fourteen and completely in charge of my own life and destiny, parents and teachers notwithstanding. I don’t remember when or how, but that false confidence fell away eventually and left a void of loneliness. Deep inside of me was a loving knowledge of G-d that was not rational or learned. It was an innate connection to my Creator hidden beneath my own intellect. In the Tanya, the Alter Rebbe calls this the Ahava Mesuteres – the Hidden Love. The Tanya says that the Ahava Mesuteres wakes up when a Jew’s connection to G-d is challenged. Not only had I challenged the connection. I tried to sever it.

Years later, I would come to refer to the Tanya as, “Operating instructions for the soul.” In his definitive work, the Alter Rebbe laid out the details of how the soul interacts with both G- d and humans. Therein would I find the resolution to the conflict that pushed me away from G- d as a kid and later I would find information powerful enough to strengthen my spirit for the greatest challenge life could offer.

My life story is not particularly unique for a modern Chabadnic. After a secular, though culturally Jewish childhood, I went away to college where I experienced Judaism in different forms through different campus groups until I found the Chabad house and realized that’s where I belonged. I met my husband before I became religious and we made the journey together and then got married. Of course, as individuals, we were unique, but we were writing a biography common among Crown Heights couples and were happy to do so. It wasn’t until after our second child was born that our life deviated from the template.

The best day of my life was not my wedding or any of the days of my children’s births, it was just a Shabbos in the winter of 2008. Everything was simple and perfect. I spent the day at home with my family; my adoring husband, my sweet, precocious two and a half year old son, and my delightful, darling five month old daughter. We played together, ate our favorite foods, and took a long, restful Shabbos nap – a practice that has always highlighted the weekly holiday for me. Within only a few hours of that treasured ritual, I would begin living every parent’s nightmare. Sitting on a stool in the St. Luke’s Roosevelt ER, I heard four words that would draw a border in my life. My time in this world will forever be demarcated as the time before and the time after a doctor whose name I didn’t know told me, “Mom, the baby died.”

The day after her inexplicable passing we buried Adelle Shayna. A part of me went into the ground with her that day and never came out. Part of me will lay forever in the earth, dirt in my eyes, stuck in winter’s cold, staring up from far, far down. That piece of me will never go higher, never be reconciled. I will carry that piece forever. I deserve to.

But I had a choice. I could carry that piece, or submit to it and let it carry me. Of all of the reasons to eschew belief in G-d, losing a child was certainly among the most justifiable. I could let my loss consume me and get carried away by depression. Away. Far from G-d. Tanya teaches that it is joy that brings us close to G-d and sadness is a barrier to the Ahava Mesuteres. But sadness and heartache were completely logical. How G-d could do such a thing was not. Tanya also teaches us that the actions of the divine are beyond our comprehension; that G-d’s infinitude is outside the realm of human perception.

Only fitting then, that my daughter’s name exalts the breadth of G-d’s existence. “Ad,” means, “infinity,” and “elle,” one of G-d’s names. “Shayna,” is “beautiful.” My daughter’s name was her life lesson to us – G-d’s infinity is beautiful. His inability to be contained within the boundaries of the human mind is what makes Him wondrous. I could turn away from G-d forever, I could spend my life trying to figure out why Adelle Shayna’s time was so short, or I could accept that not only did G-d exist, but that His existence and His reasoning were completely baffling. It was my head that saved my heart, for I chose the latter. I knew in my mind that G-d’s reasons were beyond my reasoning, and my mind soothed my aching heart.

Truly, my knowledge of my ignorance is the foundation of my life sustaining faith. Every day, I choose to embrace that I am but a puny speck to the endlessness of the Al-mighty. If I had maintained the certainty of my youth, my perspective of my place in this world would be a lonely one. Without G-d, I would be adrift in a massive, random, roiling ocean; a life with no reasons but the ones I could eke out. Learning Chassidus taught me that G-d’s motives were real, but they were His alone to know. G-d’s omnipresence meant all things happened according to His jurisdiction. Not only is G-d in control of everything, G-d is everything.

Where, then, does Tanya say my responsibility lies? Chassidus had given me the tools to be comforted, but Chassidus wanted something in return. Chassidus wanted me to make the leap from comfort to joy. The Alter Rebbe said in Tanya that to truly serve G-d with my whole heart, I needed to be happy. In the face of grief, I had given G-d faith, wasn’t that enough? Wasn’t it enough that I was soothed? No. Tanya tells us that a strong connection to G-d is established in happiness and that happiness is rooted in active faith. Thinking of G-d, knowing G-d is in everything is the root of joy. Exaltation brings exultation.

Joy meant knowing that G-d is everywhere. Joy meant knowing that even my despair was G-dly. My very human grief gave me a window into the existential yearning for G-d described in Tanya. To know what it meant to be without showed me the importance of uncovering what I had, but was hidden. Deep in the earth, being stirred by the cold wind was my Ahava Mesuteres. As my faith was put on trial by the most bitter of challenges, the love living within me stood in defense. The verdict was an enigmatic joy fueled by the unconditional acknowledgement of the oneness of G-d. It is a joy rooted in my heart, but planted by my mind, growing forever skyward.

About the Author:

Yael Hanover is a writer, public speaker, and Kallah teacher. Yael speaks to audiences large and small about Jewish life, love and loss. Her blog can be found at yourethefunnyone.wordpress.com and she can be contacted at HiImYael@gmail.com. Yael lives Florida with her husband and four sons.