| Real Life |

A Chanukah Miracle

By Sarah Gold | December 27, 2016

Photo: Shutterstock

he First Chanukah

Our wedding memories were three weeks fresh. I set up our own menorah in our own apartment with its bare white walls unstained carpet. The smiles on our faces were still timid as we lit a single candle. The glow from the candle the newness and the excitement encapsulated the moment before it became lost in the sea of eternity.

“And by next Chanukah we’ll probably have a baby” I told my husband with a dreamy sigh. Everything was so perfect why shouldn’t it continue to be so?

The Second Chanukah

I guess life’s definition of perfection didn’t match my own.

I sat by the menorah brokenhearted and confused. My husband and I said Tehillim together and I choked down my tears. After he left I stared deep into the flames trying to derive comfort and hope. Our second Chanukah. We’d had a baby.

The stillness of the night mocked my restless tossing as I attempted to control my panicked breathing. The doctor’s morose words suffocated my peace of mind. “You have a very high risk of losing this pregnancy.”

I was already in my fifth month when the doctor had uttered his grim prognosis but his words were not new. Plagued by a rather large hematoma (blood clotting) behind the placenta the doctors had been predicting doom since the beginning of the pregnancy. Yet the baby developed fine and the hematoma had begun to shrink. By the time I was four months I had been breathing easily. Until the results of the newest ultrasound that is.

“The uterine membranes are caving in from the hematoma.” The doctor’s words continued to haunt me that sleepless night “If you make it to 24 weeks the doctors could try to save the baby in the NICU.”

What had the doctor said? If. If I make it. I was 21 and having my first baby — anyone would be nervous — but what about having a baby that would not live?

I shivered as my mind transported me to the scene that had taken place less than three weeks ago a short time after that frightening meeting. It was a few days after our first anniversary. My head fell back on the pillow exhausted as I heard the snip of the umbilical cord being cut. My baby was detached from me born after just 22 weeks facing the slim odds of an impossibly challenging world. Our little girl held on to life for a few hours.

Before the chevra kaddisha arrived my husband and I were alone in the room with our tiny bundle cherishing the moments we had to be parents. We gazed at her tears flowing freely writing volumes through the silence between us.

Then my husband broke the silence.

“This is what Hashem must feel.”

The revelation his words brought pierced my heart. I hadn’t yet stopped to give a thought to the Ribbono shel Olam Who was not only experiencing my pain along with me but Who also on a constant basis sees His children come before Him prematurely — falling short of their potential. My baby might have been premature in this world but in the World of Truth she was a perfected holy neshamah. For how many people though is it just the opposite?

And Hashem must watch them make their poor choices every day. Oh how I know what He must feel! That was what I felt as I stared at my premature baby girl: My child how I wished to hold you complete and mature how many dreams I had for you how I longed to give to you my whole life long. And now this longing has been replaced by an eternal longing of could-have-beens.

“I know how You feel!” I cried by the Chanukah neiros the image of my premature baby in my mind while the flickering lights beckoned closeness to the One Above.

“Ki archah lanu hayeshuah” my voice choked and for the first time its meaning was not lost on me. The concept of Mashiach had always felt distant but now it penetrated my core. As I stared into the burning candles my own heart burned with a fire of understanding. How could I long for my own personal yeshuah when the Shechinah was suffering?

The Third Chanukah

The third Chanukah proved far less moving. My emotions had become numb my heart calloused in response to the difficulties that had transpired the previous year. I had grieved my loss and had my hopes dashed month after month as we waited for another pregnancy. Over the summer my 12-year-old sister became critically ill passing away a few weeks later.

I discovered I was pregnant shortly after Rosh Hashanah only to be told a few weeks before Chanukah that I had miscarried.

The miscarriage was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Until then I had held on to my emunah davened with fervor fought with all my strength to move on with life with a smile and to embrace every moment…

But after my miscarriage emunah tefillah joy — all seemed impossible. I looked into the Chanukah candles. They seemed to beg me to derive strength and comfort from the Chashmonaim who had moved ahead despite facing an impossible foe: fighting a war against the mighty Greeks who outnumbered them.

Someone had told me a pasuk to say by the Chanukah neiros that was a segulah for having children. I summoned all my strength and managed to whisper: “Elokim Tzevakos shuv na Habeit miShamayim u’re’eh u’pakod gefen zos — Hashem please look down from Shamayim and remember this vine.”

Somehow I even managed a tear.

The Fourth Chanukah

My husband and I prepared to light the menorah when a thin wail emerged from the back room.

The baby.

I brought the pink bundle out to join us for candle lighting. She was less than three weeks old, adorable and perfect with round rosy cheeks.

Tears of joy and thanks blurred my vision as I stared at my baby, tears that turned into diamonds as I looked at the candles. There could not have been more perfect timing.

After my husband left and the baby fell asleep, I pulled out Strive for Truth and began to read Rav Dessler’s inspiring words about Chanukah.

“There seem to be no prospects of conquering the yetzer hara, but that’s just the point! The very realization that ‘There is no way out’ elicits all reserves of strength. This is the power that, with heavenly aid, crushes all obstacles.

“This is the secret of the Chashmonaim’s victory… There was no way out. But having no other choice the Chashmonaim entered the fray. And because they did, they gained heavenly aid beyond the bounds of nature… If we do what we must do against all odds, succor will come from a higher world…”

I stopped and reflected on these words. The previous Chanukah I’d come to the point of “I can’t.” I was barely even able to daven. But shortly afterward, I had decided that I would remain strong, pick up the shattered pieces, and begin to rebuild. I strengthened my emunah and focused on the brachos in my life as I put on a smile.

Davening, though, had been difficult, simply since it was difficult to hear the answer “no” time after time. But then something had inspired me to try again…

The phone rang. It was the doctor, calling with the results of the latest ultrasound that had attempted to decode why I was having hematomas and miscarriages. I had been waiting for the call all day.

“Hello?”

“Hi, this is Dr. Sharon calling with your procedure results.”

“Yes?” I held my breath. Perhaps the mystery had been unraveled.

“Everything seems to be fine. Both situations, as far as we are concerned, were flukes. There is nothing we can do to help you from here.”

“Flukes?” I nearly shouted. “How can that be? There are no other tests or medicines I can try?”

“No, there is not much research on hematomas, unfortunately. We wish you luck. Have a good day.”

“But—”

I heard the dial tone.

I began thinking. On the one hand, it was good news. Nothing was wrong with me. On the other hand, I was being thrown back into the ominous unknown — trying again without knowing what the next pregnancy would bring, perhaps suffering disappointment and heartbreak once again.

“Not much research has been done on hematomas.” That’s what the doctor had said. So where did that leave me, where should I turn now?

I knew the answer, and in my helplessness I felt it more than ever before.

Hashem.

Only Hashem could help me.

The clarity brought me so close to my Creator. Only He could change the situation, only He could give me a healthy pregnancy. I began to reach for my Tehillim when my yetzer hara piped up with his say. “What’s the point? You’ve davened so many times already. Maybe you’re just not meant to have children. Why should this tefillah be any different? Remember all those Shemoneh Esrehs, those tears by the candles, those nights by the aron kodesh, even by your sister’s hospital bed: where have they gotten you?”

I’d been ready to throw in the towel when the midrash about Moshe davening to go into Eretz Yisrael entered my mind. Hashem had to tell Moshe to stop davening because if he had davened just one more tefillah, He would have had to answer him.

Some bakashos take one tefillah and they are answered.

Some, ten.

Some, twenty.

Some, one hundred.

Some, even more.

“Ribbono shel Olam,” I’d cried out, “Please let this be the tefillah that will bring up with it all those Shemoneh Esrehs, the tears by the candles, the nights by the aron kodesh, even the ones by my sister’s hospital bed.”

I davened like I never had before with an emunah I did not know I possessed.

“No one else can help me. You’re the only One who can give me children and a healthy pregnancy.”

That month, three months after my miscarriage, I became pregnant. And what’s more, it was a normal, healthy, hematoma-free pregnancy.

“Yes,” I thought, “I forged ahead with my emunah and Hashem greeted me with… A Chanukah miracle.

I beg to differ with the common saying that Hashem only gives a person nisyonos they can pass. Often times, our challenges are too much for us. But if we summon our last reserves of strength and forge ahead with emunah, Hashem will take over from there and help us accomplish the impossible. It’s all there in the burning flames.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 523)

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