It all began a couple of weeks ago, when my husband asked our friendly neighbourhood carpenter to turn a large bookcase in the guest room into two smaller units. For various reasons, we couldn’t schedule a time for the carpenter to come by and dismantle the unit, until finally he called Thursday morning and came over.
As soon as he stacked the contents of the bookcase on the floor and pulled the shelves apart, it dawned on me that we were going to host two families (including my in-laws) for Shabbat and this room was where the in-laws were supposed to stay! I have no idea how something like that could have slipped my mind less than an hour after planning a menu and shopping for all these guests, but there I was, staring at a room brimming with books and toys and no place for people and beds. Talk about hospitality!
There wasn’t much to do at that point, since the carpenter said he would not be able to finish the job before Shabbat. That was when I had one of my recently discovered minain moments.
What’s a minain moment you may ask? David Hamelech in Psalms (121) says, “I will lift my eyes to the mountains; from where will my help come? My help comes from G-d…” The Hebrew word minain – “from where” can also be split into two words and read as min ain – from nothing.
Dead-end situations, in which there’s nothing you can do, often trigger anger or despair. Instead, we can choose to view such events as divine signals that someone else is running the show. By giving up the illusion of control and acknowledging G-d’s presence in our lives, we can actually “make room” for Him to step in and help us along the path that is more fitting than what he had originally chosen. Since encountering this perspective, I’ve come to call dead ends “minain moments.”
Back to our bookcase. When my husband came home after a l-o-o-o-o-n-g day at work and saw the state of the guest room, he was speechless. I owned up to the mistake and, although he was visibly upset, he exerted himself to stay calm. Both of us viewed the events as a test of our ability to take things in stride and control our tempers.
To make a long story short, guess who showed up half an hour later with one of the two bookcases ready? Chaim the carpenter told us he had made an extra effort to get at least one of the units done, so that my husband could properly perform the mitzvah of honouring his parents.
We were able to store most of the stuff in the new bookcase and give the room a semblance of order. Our hosting plans were back on track. Meanwhile we got some valuable character training, while getting a glimpse of a true mentsch.