Anxious heart

Today we are preparing to leave Israel. In my last post, I backtracked to a tour we had done pre-covid, pre-separation from our group and guides. It was nice to just be surrounded again by the experience of Israel and all it offers the mind, heart, and soul. I will be doing several more posts in order to ”catch up” all I missed from being sick with Covid. But today’s post will be different.

I want to share with you that I find my heart extremely anxious today. We have done our best to think of every possible problem while we travel to Tel Aviv and make our way through security at the airport. I hope and pray that we will be able to come home but until we are on the plane, there is no way to say for certain we will be allowed to fly and no longer considered a health risk by Israel’s Ministry of Health. Even if given permission to leave, I am anxious about my weakened state for the rigor of twenty-four hours of travel. I know I must not show any signs of illness or we will be turned away. When we leave the hotel today at 5pm, we will have a two hour drive to Tel Aviv by taxi. Then, once at the airport, we will have a four hour wait in line to get into the airport (yes, just to get into the airport – and yes, this is normal, so be thankful for such ”short” lines at your U.S. airports). Once ticketed and allowed to fly, we will make our way to check in and we will board the plane, God-willing, at 12:30 a.m. The plane is scheduled to fly at 1 a.m. and it will be a twelve hour flight, arriving at JFK at 5:30 a.m. Eastern time. From New York, we will catch a Delta flight to Minnesota, leaving at 8:30 a.m. and arriving in Minnesota at 10:30 a.m. So almost 24 hours from when we leave today, we two weary travelers will be home, God-willing. Pray for us and for all travelers, all seekers, all pilgrims, all who are weary and separated from family. Pray for all you do not have a home to go home to and pray for those weakened by long-term and chronic illness, pray for those who grieve over the loss of their loved ones that they might find comfort and love in their neighbors, pray for those in war zones, for those struggling to survive amidst human tragedy and grave atrocities wrought by the evil of greed ever-present in this world – for these are people truly in need of our prayers today.

I can’t wait to say to our kids, ”Here we are! We are home!” In Rabbi Brad’s book, ”You don’t have to be wrong for me to be right” (which I highly recommend for all humans who want to become more human), he talks about Mitzvah. I want to close today’s post with an excerpt from his book. It feels right to share today because here I am, here we are, in this life together, wherever we all are, we can show up for one another and that’s what has happened for us all along – good people doing good things and showing up for us, and for one another:

When God calls out to Abraham, Abraham responds with the Hebrew word hineini – “Here I am.” This is mitzvah. It’s how you feel when your sick kid wakes up in the middle of the night and you have to get up the next morning to go to work. ”Here I am,” you say to your child, no matter how tired you are. We all need mitzvah in our lives, or life becomes shallow, disconnected, without meaning. We need to feel able to be there for the people we love and the things in which we deeply believe, which we hold sacred. Our capactiy to say ”Here I am” is tied to the feeling that other people will say it to us. I know that in the middle of the night when one of our daughters wakes up sick, Becky will say hineini for me. For us to be truly stonrg, we need someone who is giving us strength. When my father had a stroke and I flew out to California to be there for my mother, I was able to do that because a friend drove two hours to be there for me. We always need to be in both positions, demanding the hineini response from ourselves and demanding for ourselves that others say it to us. When its either one or the other, we get into ruts. If you’re always giving it, you get burned out and resentful. When you’re always demanding it without giving it, you’re selfish and immature. Mitzvah is a critical principal in the journey of the seeker. When Abraham says “Here I am”, he is saying, ”I am present, I am fully here, how can I help?” It doesn’t matter where we apply that in our lives, to our children or to God, as long as we live that way and have that response to the sacred parts of our lives.
(p. 58, You Don’t Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield)