An Unexpected Path to Wholeness
by Matthew Gewirtz • Short Hills, NJ

There are certain happy moments in our lives we will never be able to fully recapture, and certain tragic events that work their way back into our conscious or subconscious states of being no matter how much we try to repel them. They might have taken place days, months, or many years ago, but we remember them with exceptional clarity, as moments that somehow changed the very trajectory of our lives.

I remember such a moment like it was yesterday. I was sitting in the dark living room of my mother’s apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, physically exhausted and emotionally depleted—a lost, scared, and depressed sixteen-year-old kid. In the six years since my parents’ divorce had shattered my family, I had taken on far more responsibility than I could handle with far less support than I needed. As the second oldest child of four, I found myself struggling to fill the role of caretaker for my younger siblings and even, emotionally, for my parents. All the while I suffered, grieving for the time, now gone, when I felt cared for myself. There was nothing new about my feeling of loneliness that particular night, but somehow the manifestation of all my anguish weighed down on my sixteen-year-old self on that dark, spiritually chaotic night. Right now, I don’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, but that moment—its distilled misery and heartache—can feel like it is happening right now.

The breakup of my parents’ marriage, and its aftermath, was my introduction to suffering. It may not compare to the hunger and fear suffered by refugees today in Darfur; it may not come close to the struggles of people living in utter poverty in the town right next to my own, or to what it feels like for parents to lose children or children to lose parents to death. But I have learned in my work as a pastor that the last thing any of us should do when it comes to suffering is to compare our pain to another’s. Indeed, our own suffering can move us to provide healing for others and the world. But first we must feel that our own suffering is legitimate and actually own it.

That night when I was sixteen, I became conscious of my suffering—I allowed myself to feel the reality of my pain. As it turned out, it was the first step in a transformative process. I can see now that I would never have found my true passion had it not been for the journey that began with my parents’ divorce. Their painful parting wasn’t a blessing or gift by any stretch, but through it, my life was shaped and ultimately solidified. Slowly, by degrees, and starting that night, a hidden truth was revealed to me. I grew to understand that being a caregiver was what I knew how to do best. In the shadow of my personal crisis, ministering to others brought me great comfort. I was lost, and yet I was able to tend to the emotional emptiness of those around me. It was an astounding revelation. Up through the web of grief came remarkable clarity, and I began to see what the struggle had been about.

Does this mean I stopped harboring resentment about the past? Does it mean that one day I sat up and became a different person, liberated from my painful memories? No. In fact, I haven’t gotten beyond all of my resentment from the past; it still pops up and pulls me down when I least expect it to. The difference is that now I see it had meaning.

I take great joy in my work as a rabbi. But I still stare hardship in the face on a daily basis. In helping others through their grief, I am inevitably reminded of what it feels like to be defeated and detached from the most basic sense of normalcy. That in itself is a humbling experience, and one that always brings me closer to the wonderful, mysterious, and ever-present power of God in our lives. We are dealt our losses, but through the mixture of our doubts and beliefs, we gain the faith that allows us to rediscover our truth, direction, and purpose here on earth.

Grief does not end where clarity begins, but our grieving does have the potential to transform us when we cultivate spiritual clarity. When we deal with our suffering truthfully and completely, it is not that the pain is less real, but there is indeed a lesson to be learned and, even more, purpose and direction to be gained from it. Our whole trajectory can be changed through suffering. Our truth, which is often disguised or hidden by the layers of ego we use as a shield against hardship, starts to break through. We begin to fall apart, and in the process, we find the unique nature and purpose of our existence, and our reason for being put here on this earth. It is when we find this inner core that we start to transcend the pain and begin the journey down the road intended for us.

Matthew D. Gewirtz is a Reform rabbi whose congregation, B'nai Jeshurun, is in Short Hills, New Jersey.
Reprinted from The Gift of Grief: Finding Peace, Transformation, and Renewed Life After Great Sorrow, by Matthew Gewirtz ©2008. Celestial Arts, Berkeley, CA www.tenspeed.com.