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 By Abraham J. Twerski, MD
Truth can be very elusive because the clever mental mechanisms you are endowed with may lead you to believe what you want to believe is true. Self-interest can distort your judgment, sometimes in ways so subtle you may not even recognize it, even during a careful soul searching. You may need an objective observer to set you straight—I know, I’ve been there.
When I was in my fourth year of medical school, I received a call from a hospital that a woman wished to see a rabbi. It was almost midnight when I arrived at the hospital, and I was directed to the neonatal intensive care unit, where a woman was standing next to an incubator. She told me that her newborn baby had a congenital heart defect that was not correctable surgically, and that the baby was going to die. She looked at me tearfully and said, “Why, Rabbi, why?”
Of course, I had no answer for her. I stayed with her, sharing the silence. Then I said, “Do you feel like praying?” When she said that she did, I said a brief prayer with her.
The next morning, I told my father about this and said that I could not help feeling angry at God. What was the purpose of this woman going through nine months of pregnancy, dreaming of the joy a child would bring her, only to be dealt so crushing a blow, to have to watch her baby die? Why does God allow so much agony for a futility?
My father said that we cannot understand many things that God does, and that we must have faith that, in the divine plan, everything has a place. “This woman is not the same woman she was. This painful experience has made a change in her. Although we cannot understand it, it was not futile.”
Then my father continued: “Are you sure that your anger at God is because of this woman’s pain? Might it be because of your own?”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“You are a rabbi,” he said, “and now you have added also being a doctor. You embody the two most powerful helping and healing professions, yet you felt you were unable to do anything for this woman. Was it perhaps your feeling of impotence that made you angry? Were you feeling more sorry for yourself than for the woman?”
I didn’t want to think that might be true. I didn’t want to think that I was so selfish, that instead of feeling the woman’s pain, I was nursing an ego wound.
But I could not escape the truth. My father was right. I was deceiving myself that I was concerned only for this woman.
I returned to the hospital a number of times, and I was there when the woman’s baby died. When she thanked me, I realized that I had not been totally impotent after all. I had given of myself and kept her from being alone in her distress.
I had thought I was feeling sorry for the woman, but in reality I was feeling sorry for myself. I could not have discovered this by myself. It took an outside observer to set me straight.
The above excerpt “Changing Self-Deceit into the Quest for Truth” by Abraham J. Twerksi, MD, is from Happiness and the Human Spirit: The Spirituality of Becoming the Best You Can Be © 2007 by Abraham J. Twerski. Permission granted by Jewish Lights Publishing, P.O. Box 237, Woodstock, VT 05091; www.jewishlights.com.
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Abraham J. Twerski, MD, a psychiatrist, rabbi and frequent lecturer on a broad range of topics including spirituality and self-esteem, is author of over fifty books, including Happiness and the Human Spirit: The Spirituality of Becoming the Best You Can Be, A Formula for Proper Living: Practical Lessons from Life and Torah (both Jewish Lights), Waking Up Just in Time, The Spiritual Self, and Getting Up When You’re Down. He is the founder and medical director emeritus of Gateway Rehabilitation Center. For more information, visit www.abrahamtwerski.com.
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