Saying Tehillim in the car was a well-practiced habit by now — davening for good news as I sped through the city streets

October 2018

"Does your stuff… spark joy?” I asked skeptically. “That helps you get rid of clutter?”

“Yeah,” my coworker Allison replied. “It’s called the Marie Kondo method. You hold every item in your house, then ask whether it sparks joy. If the answer is no, you dump it. That way, you’re left only with the things that give you happiness.”

My fellow teachers and I were eating lunch in my classroom and discussing the new trend of minimalism that seemed to be taking over the Internet.

“Interesting,” I said, then took another bite of my salad.

“Her book is called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I have a copy in my classroom if you want to borrow it,” Allison offered, returning to her sandwich.

“I’ll think about it,” I answered, turning to my other coworker, Melissa. “Hey, are you still okay to cover my class last period today?”

“For sure,” said Melissa, looking up from her meal.

All too soon, lunch period was over, and the next batch of students filed in. We were up to one of my favorite biology lessons in the entire curriculum. After a short lecture on cell division, I taught the class a dance to model the steps of the process, then had them use Play-Doh to show what they learned. While they cleaned up, I pulled out a stack of worksheets for my last period class to work on with Melissa. When the bell rang, my students poured out the door, and I soon followed, running down the stairs to my car.

“Shir lamaalos, esa einai…” I recited as I drove through the north side of town to the doctor’s office.

Saying Tehillim in the car was a well-practiced habit by now — davening for good news as I sped through the city streets. We’d spent the past several months attempting surgeries and treatments, with no success. Our appointment today was to discuss a last-resort procedure with our doctor.