When Everything Goes Wrong

It is currently motzei shabbos (saturday night) and I am utterly exhausted! This shabbos was a horrible series of misfortunate events.   On my way to Monsey, my friends and I got stuck in two hours of traffic. When candle lighting time came, we were essentially in the "hood." Eighteen minutes until shabbos to go, the guy driving decided to polymorph into a race car driver. 120 mph, five run red lights, and a panic attack later we made it into Monsey territory. During that car ride I said tehillim, did teshuva, and prayed harder then I ever had before. I must of said the shma a hundred times. Who said yom kippur only comes once a year??

Thank Gd, we made it into the eruv so we could carry our belongings, which we did for about a half-an-hour until we got to the house we were eating by. Luckily, we made it during the middle of the meal. Here, I figured the hardships had ended. Only if! I had some amazing chicken soup, but that was when my head started to spin. Was it from the panic attack from before? Maybe some left over anxiety, I told myself. Uh-oh. I started to feel nauseous... and that was the dreadful moment when I recalled I had just been taking care of a friend with a stomach virus two days prior. 

I politely left and went to the house I was sleeping at and laid down. As I got into bed I felt my body say, "nope!" I ran to the bathroom on right on time. For the rest of the night I was figuratively "praying to the porcelain gd". Luckily, however,  I managed to get two hours of sleep in between every dash to the bathroom to throw-up. Lets not call it a very pleasant night. In the morning, I was achey, tired, and still nauseous. I definitely had a fever.  By then, my extremely amazing friend had woken up and was taking care of me. She was a life saver! Coming in and out of conscious, I finally woke up at four in the afternoon with no fever. On getting out of bed, I decided to go to sudat shlishi (the third meal) and get some hot tea to sooth my woes.

Once at the meal, I felt a gazillion times better. I was in very good company. Many people walked over to see how I was or just to introduce themselves. People I've seen before stuck around to play Jewish geography (to see where we had last met). In fact, one of the men there recognized me. We used to attend the same conservative synagogue in NJ about five years ago! Talk about coincidences! I have to say during shabbos, just about everything that could go wrong did. We almost didn't make it, we nearly died in the car ride there, and I got a stomach virus. Nevertheless, on the flip side, we made it, we didn't die, and I only got a fraction of the stomach virus (which lasted a quarter of the time) that my friend had had. My amazing friend, who was taking care of me, had been saying all shabbos long, "Gd is greater then we give him credit for." Boy do I agree!

Epilogue: On our way to the Brooklyn bound bus, we were running late (could anything go more wrong?!). When we finally got there a congregation of people slowly amassed. Turns out the bus was running late too! Eventually it got there, but it was filled! No more misery, I cant handle it! I was telling myself. I could have not possibly waited for the 12:30 bus in one piece. Well, lo and behold, my prayers were answered! An empty bus was following the full one by ten/fifteen minutes. Not only did we get a bus, but we got an empty one so I could lay down on the seats! What was even better then even that, though, was the offer we got at the bus stop. A girl, who had been staying at the same house as us, had her car at the bus stop. She offered to drive us from Boro Park to where we lived in Flatbush. What a miracle! 

When everything goes wrong, you start to realize how much and how often everything goes right. Gd is truly greater then we give him credit for!