The Lord Is My Shepherd, Why Do I Still Want

The Lord is My Shepherd, Why Do I Still Want?

By RABBI PAUL PLOTKIN

Summer had always been my favorite time of the year. Traveling, time off work, and especially the time up at the lake in Canada . . . but not that summer. My wife of twenty three years decided she was unhappy with our lifestyle and wanted out of the marriage. I was in a state of shock. My life as I had known it was over. All the shared dreams, all the plans, all of my basic assumptions were shattered.

I had just returned from leading a tour of Israel. No one on the tour had known exactly what was wrong, only that the Rabbi’s wife had at the last minute been detained by work and could not come. No one knew that at the end of each day’s excursion, I would cry myself to sleep. I was all alone in my deluxe, yet very empty suite.

To make matters worse, I was scheduled to spend the week after the tour with another couple, in Paris. The location was a choice my wife had made, and which I begrudgingly went along with. Now I was with them, but alone, in a city that was chosen for her pleasure. The sense of aloneness, the pain of the changes, the irony of the locale were more then I could bear. Yet my friends had planned the trip with us and were looking forward to that part of the vacation. They had been taken into my confidence regarding the family crisis, but insisted that I come with them. I kept up as strong a front as possible, while I continued to cry like a baby each evening.

On my second day in Paris, my first time on the Metro—indeed at the very first station—I felt a tightness on my body centered around my jeans pocket. I reached down for my wallet and discovered it was gone. I had been pickpocketed. My money, my documents, my credit cards and license were all gone. If there was palpable sadness before, and an overwhelming sense of vulnerability, there was now the sense of having been personally violated, as well. I could not wait to get out of France. I arranged for the first flight out.

That first week back I was informed that my wife would call and ask that we go public with the separation so that "she could go on with her life." I resisted. In fact, I was in denial that it could really happen. We had agreed to keep things under wraps for the summer while we pursued therapy and time apart. But the call came through as I had been told it would.

Later, alone at the cottage, the ancestral retreat that had all my life been my refuge and sanctuary, I was left to contemplate the shambles of my once successful and accomplished life.

I was mired in self-pity. How could this have happened to me? I wondered. Other people got divorced—not me. My life would be hell. I would never love or be loved again. My professional life would be compromised.

Who would want a divorced Rabbi? I thought. What will happen to the kids? How will I be able to afford their education?

There was no limit my mind’s creativity at manufacturing fears. I didn’t eat. I barely slept, and I was filled with nervous energy and a constant sense of pain and fear. The pain was so real, I could point to its exact location on the front of my chest wall.

In this angst, and with increasing fears, I got up one morning to begin my daily prayers. I donned my prayer shawl and phylacteries and began to pray as I had been doing every day for the thirty one years since my Bar Mitzvah, only now I had a special message for myself.

"Okay, Paul " I said. "It’s put up or shut up time. All these years, you’ve preached of the power of prayer. You’ve talked of how people in crisis could reach out to God for solace and strength. Now it is your turn. No one should feel alone if they believe.

"If there was a listening and compassionate God, if He was, as Rabbi Harold Kushner had taught, the source of strength to get you through the crisis, then now was the time to call on Him.

Go daven (pray) as you always did, only this time see if it can help, I told myself.

I had thrown down the gauntlet—would I be helped?

I began the morning prayers, the same prayers I had said faithfully and regularly for more than three decades. The words were the same, but the speaker was altogether new. It didn’t take long.

A few pages into the service, I began Psalm 30.

I extol you O Lord, for You have lifted me up . . .

The words got my attention.

Lifted me up.

I certainly could have used some lifting from the valley of my despair.

O Lord my God I cried out to You and You healed me.

I was crying out—would He heal me?

O Lord, You brought me up from the depths, preserved me from going down into the pit.

The psalmist was speaking to me; no, he was speaking for me. He understood, he’d stood at the edge of the pit, he knew the fear of falling in. We were kindred souls. He understood me as no one else. What would he say next, how did he handle it, I wondered. And then came the line that changed me:

At night one goes to sleep crying; in the morning there is the ringing cry of joy.

There was an immediate change in my mood. A weight was suddenly lifted, a heaviness that I had lived with for days was gone. I could feel the lightness. Like a banging headache that lingers to the point where you feel you will suffer with it forever. Now it was suddenly gone, leaving a real feeling of quiet and physical peace. For the next few minutes, I felt better. The cloud had lifted. Mysteriously, I no longer felt alone or helpless or doomed. Sunshine had entered and was illuminating me from the inside. In a split second, I had received an answer. There would be a future. I’d get through this. I got a pen and underlined the sentence.

In the days and weeks ahead, when the blues would strike, when the melancholy, fears, and uncertainties reemerged, I would return to that one line and regroup. I would again lose the negativity, regain a positive focus, and stabilize myself for the events that life had in store for me.

If the story ended there, this book would probably never have been written, but another surprise was waiting for me.

I was with a colleague on a long drive. We were recounting our summer experiences. Mine, which I just related, were by now very public and well known. His were a lot more private. He had been going through a lot of changes, as well, and he was searching for a way to cope. He told me that in addition to his daily prayers, he had begun to meditate. He took it very seriously and felt its benefits. His form of meditation required focusing on a statement. Being a Rabbi, he felt he should find a Biblical verse to meditate on. He searched all around for a verse that would resonate with a sense of calm. A verse that would speak to him in such a way that he could draw positive energy from it.

Curiously, I asked what verse it could be. Imagine my shock and surprise when, from all the wonderful and powerful verses in the Bible, he quoted the Book of Psalms, my chapter, my verse. I was shaking in excitement."

When we stop, I want to show you something," I said.

At our next stop, I opened the trunk of the car, took out my Talis and Tephilin bag, removed my prayer book, and opened it to Psalm 30."Look at it," I said, "and notice what is underlined."

He and I had discovered the same line in the same psalm, as a comforting message to our personal pain. It was then that I knew I had to share the power of the Book of Psalms with everyone.

Psalms has a long history, in both Judaism and Christianity, as being the source of our liturgy. Perhaps it is because, unlike the rest of the Bible, in which God speaks to man, Psalms is a book in which man speaks to God. The psalmist, be he King David or be she some gifted poet, is in the end a human being, who underwent some life experience and wrote about it. They are like you or me, but they were blessed with the sensitivity of soul, and the talent of pen, to articulate their experience. We will see later that whether it was recovery from illness or loss, or dealing with fear or depression, they came through the experience and left us a summary of their soul’s experience. When we read a psalm, we benefit from their experience. We hear their pain, feel their solace, and gain their strength and faith in the face of suffering and loss.

It is my intent to capture the voice of the psalmists. I want to further articulate their feeling and apply it to our circumstances today, by sharing a story that reflects what the psalmist is saying. If the reader can pick up any chapter in this book, read the verse(s) I have chosen, and then use my explanation or story to find the comfort I found in Psalm 30, then my work will truly have been, for me, a blessing.