‘I Work Here’

First published on chabad.org

Thoughts During My Appointment at the Fertility Clinic

“I don’t want to go,” I said to my husband, catching my breath. I sat on the bed sobbing. I hit my fist against the pillow, “I hate this.”

Ariel is smart. He knew the only thing to do was to listen and cry with me.

Ten days earlier, my doctor gave me a grim prognosis. Come back in 10 days, he told me not that hopefully. It will be good, I said and stormed out of his office, heading for my consultation with the high-risk pregnancy department.

We needed to go in the morning for blood work and an appointment with the doctor, and I just couldn’t do it. I don’t want to sit in a small room and have a doctor tell me about my body. I don’t want to be a victim to this hospital anymore. I just can’t walk back in through those sliding doors. For years, I have put myself through these nerve-wracking appointments in the quest of a baby. I can’t do another.

“Do I have to go?” I asked Ariel, sounding like a 5-year-old not wanting to go to kindergarten in the morning.

I closed my eyes and let the tears flow. I decided to feel beyond my body to the depths of my soul. A sense of confidence filled me.

I told myself, “You work at the hospital. You are going tomorrow because people need you there. There are patients waiting for you to smile at them through your mask and be there for them in a vulnerable moment.” My head rested on the same pillow that moments before I had been punching. I needed to sleep. I told Ariel, I have a big work day tomorrow.

I walked in the clinic and grabbed a number. I sat down next to a woman. I asked her how she was doing like we had an appointment scheduled. She told me she is afraid that she messed everything up; she took her medicine 20 minutes late. I told her I have done that before and I understand because it also made me a ball of anxiety, but added that 20 minutes shouldn’t make a difference. I looked her in the eyes and said, “We can’t mess this up. This is G‑d’s blessing; we are just building a vessel for it.” We laughed about how crazy the COVID-19-induced isolation is making us feel and how this was our big social outing.

I waited in line for the secretaries. A woman asked the secretaries where the lab was and was told to take a right then go straight then make a left.

The quote came to mind from the Bal Shem Tov: “It is worth it for a soul to come down to this world for seventy or eighty years just to do a favor for another.” I left my place in line and told her that I could show her where it was. She thanked me for taking her. She would have certainly found it on her own, but it’s always better to feel guided than wandering around.

She asked me if I work here. No, I laughed. I mean yes, yes I do.

Now back, in the end of the line, there was a woman who was frantically pacing back and forth yelling at people for butting the line. I rolled my eyes. How rude of her. We are all going through a lot. Who does she think she is?

But then I caught a look of desperation in her eyes. It reminded me that “I work here.”

“Are you here for the blood test?” I asked her. “Yes,” she told me. The blood-test department officially had closed 20 minutes ago. The poor thing was waiting to get her paperwork to go take her blood test and was afraid to mess it up.

I took her to the front of the line and in my grammatically awful Hebrew stuck out my arm and pretended to draw blood, and said she is here for a blood test. You need to please help her now. The secretary gladly helped her and the woman who we had pushed out of line now understood.

I love my job.

Ariel and I had an hour before our own appointment with our doctor. We hopped in a cab and went to a huge park. The serene waterfall and fresh air was an intense contrast to the bustling clinic. Ariel sat under a tree and learned the deepest secrets of the Torah from Torah Ohr and purified the air.

We work here. We are here for a reason beyond what we can possibly fathom.

I prayed the morning prayers next to the waterfall while Ariel studied. As we stepped out of the hospital scene, we were reminded of who we are beyond this infertility world. Just two happy people sitting in the sunshine.

This is what prayer is for me. It is going above the intense atmosphere of whatever the situation is and rising above. Remembering who I am beyond this scenario. Reconnecting with the calm, and at peace, true me. Then I can reimerse in the scenario and bring healing to it rather than be hurt by it. Through prayer, taking time to go above, I can empower myself and others rather than be a victim to my life.

We left the world of prayer and Torah study recharged and ready to go back to work.

As we waited to see the doctor, Ariel encouraged me to say the Rebbe’s chapter of Tehillim. Afterwards, it still wasn’t our turn.

A sweet, mostly bald, freckled girl was waiting for the same doctor. I asked her how she was feeling? “Thank G‑d,” she said, raising her hands.

I told her I also lost my hair in chemo five years ago. When I told them I live in Tzfat, her father said that we are neighbors! They live in a village near Tiberias.

She showed me her artwork on Instagram. The page was all in Arabic. Then I understood this sweet girl lived in an Arab village. We smiled and laughed and praised G‑d for his miracles. She told me she is here to do fertility preservation because “to have kids is my biggest dream.”

Her sincerity and obvious joy in saying these words reminded me of a younger version of myself. Her spark of hope and innocence that it can be so simple fanned my spark of hope. Through being poked and prodded and injected, my innocence that it can be so simple faded.

She is a cancer warrior but not an infertility warrior yet. She has not yet been harassed endlessly with statistics and worst-case scenarios and fertility disappointments. I remembered how I used to feel innocent and hopeful and open to miracles. I thanked her for putting me back in touch with my innocence and my hope.

My three-minute meeting with the doctor proved to be the most uneventful part of the day. Come back on Thursday, told me. He added unless, of course, you are willing to reconsider ways to build a family.

The tears of five years of fighting for this body to live and then carry life couldn’t be expressed. I closed my eyes and reconnected to the part of me that knows with an innocence that this body can carry a pregnancy. The certainty that filled me as I immersed in the mikvah waters as a bride and surfaced crying tears of joy from this inner knowing that this body will carry life. The part of me that knows that those statistics were not done on my body. That as a daughter of our matriarch Sarah, I am above all statistics.

I don’t know what G‑d has planned for me. I do know that G‑d loves me, and I am not wandering aimlessly. I am being guided. I will trust the advice I gave my newfound sister. “You can’t mess it up. This is G‑d’s blessing.” And if He wants it to be successful nothing can stop that. My job is just to build a vessel and trust G‑d.

I am a soul that was chosen from all the generations to be placed in this precious generation—the generation of women who get to welcome redemption.

I don’t know exactly what my mission is.

When I pretend to know, I am in a slingshot. Happy outcomes and worst-case scenarios. My imagination slings me back and forth between being a new Momma carrying my baby on my back as I walk the cobblestones of Tzfat and the horrible scenarios the high-risk department warned me about.

I want out of the slingshot. I don’t want to be a victim of my imagination. I want to open my eyes to the goodness of this moment. The power of what is possible, the new life being born—something from nothing before my very eyes. The Rebbe told us we need to simply open our eyes to the Moshiach reality. I feel that I have been in a dream for so long (more like a nightmare), and I am ready to open my eyes and look at this healed world in this beautiful moment.

I see life through a haze of thoughts. Is my miracle finally about to take place? Will it fail? Will I have the stamina to keep going? STOP. STOP THE TAPE. There is something far more beautiful waiting to be seen outside of this scary movie. It’s called my life. The one that is right here right now. The wind is blowing and waiting for me to feel it—the love of a Creator to his creation waiting.

I work here. My soul came down to this world on a specific mission. When I pretend that I know what my work needs to look like, I suffer. When I compare my work to others, I suffer. When I am open to the mission G‑d is giving me—in this moment and this moment alone—I am free.

As my imagination starts running wild about everything that can go right or wrong and my stomach does somersaults, I remind myself that I work there. I cannot wait to go back to the clinic on Thursday. There are smiles I will get to share through masks, blessings to receive from the receptionist in the form of paperwork and a wink that says hang in there.

There might be tears I need to cry in order to clear my lenses once again. There may be spontaneous moments of laughter at the sitcom with its daily drama. Who knows what work will be waiting for me, but that’s exactly the point. I don’t need to know what it will look like. I just need to know it is always for me with love, and that G‑d needs me there because, after all, I work for Him.