What I Feared Has Come to Me

“For the thing I feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me.” A Burning Question It is a simple question, but it burns. How can it be that just when blessing starts to flow, something goes wrong? The marriage match is moving forward. The income is finally breathing. Peace is coming back into the home. And right then, as if a hidden hand were pulling everything backward, something breaks. It all looks like chance. But anyone who has lived through it knows this is not chance. Something deeper is going on here, and it needs explaining. When Suffering Becomes Home Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya (the classic book of Hasidic thought), writes in his holy letters that the soul needs vessels in order to receive the divine light. Usually these vessels are spiritual: commandments, Torah, prayer. But there is also a vessel of the inner self. Is the inner self ready to receive the blessing when it actually arrives? Is it prepared for it, and calm enough to hold it? One of the foundations of Hasidic teaching is this: “Habit becomes second nature.” Think of a person who has lived for years in hardship. Money is always tight. There is no peace in the home. The body is always straining. That person gets used to it. And the habit is not only on the outside. It goes inside and becomes part of who they are. The inner self comes to know itself through the struggle. Who am I? I am the one who struggles. And if that is true, what happens if the struggle ends? Here is the frightening paradox. Calm is the blessing itself. But a soul like this feels the calm as a threat. It is unfamiliar. It feels “not real.” Then, without any plan or thought, the inner self looks for a way back to what it knows: to the pain, to the struggle, to the place where it knows who it is. “What I Feared Has Come to Me”: The Fear of Good Job’s words are well known: “For the thing I feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me.” People often read this verse as a kind of prophecy Job made about himself, as if he himself called down the evil that came upon him. But the simple meaning of the verse goes deep. It is not talking about punishment. It is not talking about a decree from Heaven. It is describing a state of the inner self. His fear was not of the bad. His fear was of the calm. He feared the emptiness that is left behind when the storm goes quiet. He feared the question “Who will I be without my struggle?” And so “what I dreaded has happened to me.” The fear itself does something. It invited the ruin back, so that he could return to the state he knew. The same happened with the generation in the desert. The Jewish people left Egypt through a great miracle. Yet after a year they were already crying: “We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for free!” Egypt! The house of slavery! But there, they knew who they were. Their redemption, with all its light, felt too big for them. It did not feel safe. It felt almost “not real.” “We Were Like Dreamers”: Living Inside the Miracle The Book of Psalms says: “Then our mouths will be filled with laughter... we were like dreamers.” When the complete redemption comes, we will feel that we were like people in a dream. But even now, whenever help arrives, small or big, something in us does not believe it. “This must be a dream. Surely the other shoe is about to drop.” Hasidic teaching speaks of “the bread of shame.” This is the embarrassment of receiving good that we did not “earn.” But there is a deeper layer inside us. Sometimes we push the good away not only out of shame, but out of fear. We are afraid that if we believe in it, it will be taken away. We are afraid that if we get used to it, it will end. And then what? The Work: Giving Yourself Permission This is the real work. It is not only to pray for help. It is also to learn to receive that help when it comes. It is to build a vessel of the inner self by letting the inner self believe that the good is real. The calm is not a trap. The blessing is not a stranger. As the Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement, taught us, Hashem always pours out good. The only question is whether there is a vessel to receive it. And that vessel is not only commandments and prayer. It is also a simple, inner faith: “I deserve to live inside this good. This is the true state of things. Not the pain.”