Rebbetzin Esther Offengenden
What matters most to you in life? What comes first? Your husband or a passerby on the street? Your own children or the neighbors’ children? Home or work? The love of those close to you or your neighbors’ respect?
Most likely, you were able to answer these questions immediately, without thinking. Perhaps they seemed rhetorical to you. Your answers to these questions are your scale of priorities, your system of values. You feel comfortable when you recognize that your everyday life reflects these priorities, and most likely feel uncomfortable when it does not. But do not despair. Two things are needed for a sense of inner harmony:
| 1) Have a clearly articulated system of values. 2) Be confident that you are acting in accordance with that system rather than contradicting it. |
A typical morning for a mother who needs to get everything done is quite stressful. Every child needs attention. She has to make sure the older children get ready and do not forget anything, and get the younger ones ready and dressed herself. Everyone must be fed and sent off to school on time. Besides that, of course, she herself has to wake up, get dressed, and at least have something to drink.
But early in the morning, normal children generally want to sleep and are incapable of hurrying. One gets absorbed in reading in the bathroom; another is terribly hungry, even though just a minute ago he left the kitchen declaring that he did not want breakfast; the third has lost a button, and the fourth cannot find his notebook. And so on and so forth.
As she runs from one child to another, Mom issues orders, gives stern looks, and grows a little ferocious. Suddenly the doorbell rings. Mom stops shouting, adjusts her head covering, and opens the door with a calm smile. The neighbor’s son, Bronstein, is on the doorstep, asking to borrow a bag of milk. Still smiling, Mom hands him the milk and asks warmly:
- Do you need anything else?
The boy leaves, the door closes quietly behind him, and one of Mom’s sons says in his wake:
- Oh, why am I not a Bronstein?!
A little test. How many times a day do you think your children have reason to wonder, “Why am I not a Bronstein?”
The answer “not once” means that you have either achieved perfection through a tremendous amount of work on yourself, are not being entirely honest with yourself, or have no children.
Any other answer shows that you are an ordinary, good woman who has become a little confused about what really matters to her.
Interestingly, we do have reserves of patience and goodwill to draw on. The question is what we spend them on. Almost every woman keeps herself in check at work, but at home….
Rav Moshe Feinstein often said that only G-d and a man’s wife know his true character.
We often hear complaints about not having enough time for the family. Sometimes, to improve the situation, it is enough simply to remind ourselves more often of our priorities, among which any woman will put caring for her husband and children first. After all, the people we love most receive the least love only when we do not care what becomes of that love, of those people, and of ourselves.
I often admire one of my neighbors. When I see her during the day, she is dressed very simply. But once I needed to borrow something from her late in the evening. When she opened the door, I did not recognize her at first: an expensive suit, carefully coordinated makeup.
- Yes, of course, this is how I look every evening when I have dinner with my husband! my neighbor answered my unspoken question. And now, excuse me, I have no time to chat—my husband is waiting...
As I walked home, I thought:
- For this woman, the answer to the question “Who matters more to you?” is clear. When she answers “my husband,” she will be telling the plain truth.
To be continued