Recording Available Via Telephone Dial: (605) 475-4799 | Access ID: 840886# | Reference #: 1693 I received an email from someone expressing her feelings when, in her opinion, she failed her test in emunah and bitachon . Those same feelings are shared by many people, and we have to know how to deal with them. She wrote: I have been working on the Shaar HaBitachon for over a year and a half. I spend time every day hearing about it and thinking about it and I really thought I had it. I smile at traffic, I see Hashem’s hand in my blessings, I rely on Hashem for parking spots and I’m always saying Baruch Hashem. And I’m really an excellent preacher. This week I had a very big test and, though I have been studying for a year and a half, I think I got a 20 on it. I gave myself 10 points for knowing Hashem runs the world and 10 more points for knowing that once we picked the best doctor we had done our hishtadlut and so I didn’t second guess him, even though complications arose. But I’m so worried. I can’t find that calm reliance I thought I had. I’m so scared, which means I have a lack of bitachon, which means I don’t get the guarantee of bitachon. And on top of worrying and being scared, I’m upset at myself over my failure. What a mess. I know having real bitachon requires a lot of work, but I’ve always been such a good student. I’ve been working so hard on it. I can’t get myself to be happy. I can’t thank Hashem for my worries, although I’m trying very hard to. I talk the talk but I can’t walk the walk. Is my grade accurate? That was the end of the email. A man I know called me with the same feelings when he was given the biggest challenge of his life this past month. He was given a negative report by a doctor that every person hopes he’ll never have to hear. He said he thought he had so much emunah, he thought he would be able to handle anything, but he totally fell apart. He felt like he had no emunah and everything he ever learned went totally out the window. I told him, just because you didn’t initially react like the greatest Rabbis of all time, doesn’t mean that you don’t have emunah. When hearing negative news, some people are able to accept the will of Hashem after an hour, some after a day, some after a week and some after months. But the common denominator for all of them is the emunah that they have inside of them which gives them that ability. Getting down on ourselves that we don’t have emunah is a ploy of the yetzer hara to get us depressed. Every person who has been working on emunah has so much of it stored inside of him. It just takes time to come out. This man called me back a couple of weeks later and said he had never been so strong in emunah in his entire life. The emunah kicked in in full capacity. “Don’t get me wrong,” he continued, “I still have my ups and downs, but it’s definitely my emunah that’s keeping me going. He then told me about an episode that he had and the course of action which he took that helped him immensely. Once he was diagnosed, he got an appointment with one of the top doctors in the country in that field. After consulting with him and testing and getting a surgery done, the doctor then said, “I was wrong. This never happened to me before, but your sickness is in a different part of your anatomy. You’ll have to go to a different specialist to handle it.” This meant a whole new set of tests, new doctors, new hospitals. But he started once again from scratch and made a new hishtadlut . And then he ran out of steam being bounced around from person to person, continually having to give his information. He felt he couldn’t handle it anymore. He told his wife, instead of spending the next day on the phone with physicians, like he has been accustomed to doing, he needs to go to shul and talk to Hashem. So he went into a private room in a shul and cried to Hashem for hours. He said, “Hashem, You have shown me how nobody knows anything. We are all helpless and completely in Your hands. Instead of analyzing every word of every doctor, which is just too much for me to bear, I’m going to continue making a good hishtadlut , but I’m giving over the mental work to You. After his heartfelt tears and recognition of Hashem’s control, he was a new man, ready for anything that could possibly come his way. Emunah is never an all or nothing endeavor, it’s a slow and steady process. The knowledge begins in our brain, but has to travel to our heart. Rav Yechezkel Levinstein once said, the distance between the brain and the heart is about 50 cm, but to take an idea from the brain and to penetrate the heart and truly feel it, could take 50 years. The woman who wrote that email probably scored a great mark on her emunah test. For not responding immediately with emunah, I would take off about 5 points. It takes time to kick in, but it is there, and it will. We need to keep working on our emunah on a daily basis. Every little bit helps and every little bit is cherished by Hashem and will be rewarded greatly.