It's All Good

Remember when I indicated that it can be hard to find something to be grateful for when life gangs up on you?

I am ashamed. I am ashamed in the face of my father.

My sister, M, had a final to study for. So naturally, she cleaned her room and baked a cake, made a slide show that she had promised a friend she would make but had been pushing off, and polished her shoes. Then she poured herself a big cup of coffee and decided to go through all of the old files on the family computer. It seemed timely.

She found a folder labeled "My Thoughts." It had last been updated in 2002. She opened it.

And this is some of what she found.

I want to thank HaShem for all the good that he has given me.


I’ D LIKE TO THANK HASHEM FOR GIVING ME THESE YISSURIM, SO THAT I CAN HAVE A GREAT REWARD WAITING FOR ME IN THE WORLD TO COME.


I want to thank HaShem for giving me this house, next door to a shul and a yeshiva, a with a ramp.


A rich man is one who is happy with his lot.


Looking for the Chesed in the “Ra”…if I wouldn’t be in my wheelchair, I wouldn’t learn my Mishnayos.


I keep saying to myself that “Mitzvah Gedolah Lehios B’simcha Tamid” (to rejoice always is very meritorious).


Everything is for the best.

I want to quote Christopher Reeves, “I am not my body, I am not my body.”


I’d like to thank HaShem for (my wife) and for my 10 healthy kids.



In 2002 my father was nearly blind. He was able to sit for a few hours a day in his wheelchair. He was able to support on hand with the other and type painfully and slowly with one finger.

And this is what he did with that one, nearly numb finger. He thought and typed out ways in which he could be grateful to Hashem for the illness that was robbing him of everything.

After 2002, my father could no longer sit in the wheel chair or move even one finger. But a friend of his just told us that once a week my father, bedridden and hooked up to feeding tubes and colostomy bags, would tell him what he was grateful for that week. He could barely talk, but he would breathe out words filled with happiness at his lot in life.

He had all the words even though he could not talk.

I, who can talk, am speechless.