To Stand Upright

This past Friday was our monthly Family Shabbat at my temple, preceded by a Religious School dinner and a Tot Shabbat. A full evening to be sure. I normally don’t show up for Tot Shabbat unless it is between Torah Study and services on a Saturday morning, but a friend of mine who has a 7-month-old son was planning on attending and since she is a fairly new member I said I would come for Tot Shabbat so she knew someone. And then I stuck around for the dinner. By the time services rolled around at 7:30 I had already been at temple since 6 and I was not only tired and had a headache, but I was beginning to feel a bit down. As a single person who would like to be in a relationship and as a Jew-by-Choice who does not have a Jewish family, it is sometimes difficult to be around so many families celebrating Shabbat. I have friends at temple who are like family to me, that is something I am incredibly grateful for, but sometimes it makes my own situation that much more lonely.

Thus with all of that on my mind and informing my thoughts and mood, I sat next to my wonderful and patient friend during services last Friday and when we reached the G’vurot in Mishkan T’filah I was struck by the profound nature of the interpretation by Rabbi Richard Levy that appears in the linear service (Shabbat Evening II) instead of the literal translation. This wasn’t the first time that the words of this prayer have resonated with me beyond the moment they are said, but that night they were especially powerful. After a long week of deadlines at work and a mood that swung high and low, sometimes multiple times a day, I was exhausted and more emotional than I was prepared for. I’ve included the text of the prayer below:

We pray that we might know before whom we stand,
the Power whose gift is life,
who quickens those who have forgotten how to live,
having implanted within us eternal spirit.

We pray for winds to disperse the air of sadness,
for rains to make parched hopes rise again.

We pray for love to encompass us
for no reason save that we are human,
that we may blossom into persons
who have gained power over our own lives.

We pray to stand upright, we fallen; to be healed, we sufferers.
We pray to break the bonds that keep us from the world of beauty.
We pray to be open to our own true selves.
We pray that we may walk in a garden of purpose,
in touch with the power of the world.

Praised be the God whose gift is life,
whose cleansing rains let parched men and women rise again.

Rabbi Richard Levy
(From Mishkan T’filah, G’vurot, Shabbat Evening II)

I recall a previous Shabbat, sitting next to the same friend, coming to the passage that states “...that we may blossom into person who have gained power over our own lives” and feeling the slightest of nudges and seeing the briefest of smiles, and I felt not only the support of my friend, but almost as if God had reached down and given me that nudge. It may sound hokey or even crazy, but that’s what I felt. So, when we came to this passage again last week I felt overwhelmed with emotion, knowing that the previous weeks had been a great mixture of happiness, frustration, sadness, joy, energy, and exhaustion.

“We pray to stand upright, we fallen.” This line, more than any other, is so full of meaning for me at this moment in my life. It does not say “We pray that God makes us stand upright,” or “We pray that someone will come along and prop us up” or even “We pray that we may prop our own selves up.” It simple says “We pray to stand upright.” As anyone who has suffered through bouts of depression and anxiety can tell you, this isn’t something that you can get through alone, but it also isn’t something that you can just ask someone else, even God, to fix. Whatever you need to do to stand upright again... well, you do it. You may do it grudgingly, you may fight it stubbornly every step, but in the end all you want is to stand upright again.