After years of facing a closed door, I now stand on the other side

I'M

in shul, the same one I’ve always davened in. Same table, same white tablecloth, same people sitting in their time-honored places. I’m davening out of the same machzor as last year and the years before that, but somewhere at the beginning of Mussaf, it hits me that everything is different.

I’m standing for Shemoneh Esreh and around me I hear sniffles, people pressing their faces into their machzorim, a cloud of intensity hovering above the women’s section. I’m saying the words slowly, unhurriedly, and it dawns on me that I’m not caught up in the intensity. I feel light and calm. There’s none of the desperation I usually associate with the Rosh Hashanah tefillos; I’m not trying to push my own pleas into the words that speak of His Kingship.

Everything is different. I’ve been helped. I’ve been touched by His mercy. I know He can help. After years of facing a closed door, I now stand on the other side.