When you stop trusting someone-for whatever reason, you tend to put up a wall to protect yourself…or at least I do. Then I have to really work at letting them back in. They have to tear down the wall little by little. Or I have to open a door in the wall.

Sometimes, however, I find that if I open it even a crack…just to see what will happen…I’m given another reason not to trust. So I slam it closed again. (Sometimes that isn’t the case…)

The biggest problem with this issue of trust (of lack of trust) comes with the fact that it’s lonely on the other side of the wall all by myself. I’d love to throw a key over and make it easier for the other person to get in-sort of give them a “key” to what they have to do to regain my trust and open the door. Yet, I’m afraid to do that. So, I’m stuck alone and closed off.

Additionally, the wall tends to push against me, making me feel claustrophobic as it keeps my feelings and words and thoughts inside. I’m afraid to let them out. So, I can’t really be free…free to be me…to express myself.

Yet, for the most part, I’m a very trusting person. Until I’m given enough reasons…repeated reasons…not to trust. Why is it that I often can trust those I hardly know, but I sometimes find it hard to trust people I love the most? Maybe because those I care about most – love the most – have the greatest capacity to hurt me and to cause me to lose trust in them?

I’ve been in New York City for the last two weeks with my son while he attend the American Ballet Theatre summer intensive. Last week he was exhausted and dehydrated. So, I’m worried about leaving him with someone else this week. I need to trust that he will be okay. I need to place him in God’s hands and trust that all will be well. I need to trust that there is good reason for me to go to the kallah. This year I even have a sponsor paying for me to be there, so I have to trust that there is a reason for that as well.

So, today, this short post is about trusting…in God…in a plan…in the fact that it is all working out as it is supposed to…that all is well…that all will be well. Just trust.

Maybe this is because of the high degree of trust I try to achieve in God, in “destiny,” in things working out they way they are supposed to, in a Divine Hand in life. And I like to trust people, too, to see the good in them rather than the bad.

However, this week my trusting nature was called into question. Or maybe it was put to the test. And I really didn’t like it at all. And it made me question my ability to judge a situation or a person’s intent, which made me very uncomfortable. Plus, I really hated not trusting another person. I felt almost guilty for feeling that way, although I might have had good reason.

You see, I’ve been trying to find an apartment in New York City to sublet or rent for seven weeks this summer while my son attends the American Ballet Theatre summer intensive. (He auditioned in San Francisco and was accepted with a scholarship. I just have to brag a little…) This, however, meant him giving up his last summer at Jewish camp, much to his real dismay, and me giving up going to the Aleph Kallah (much to my dismay) so I could chaperon him in New York. All this to say that finding an apartment in Manhattan when you live in California is not so easy…especially when you are on a budget.

The budget part meant that we were looking for the cheapest apartment possible. We found a pretty decently priced apartment being sublet by a lovely women, and we thought we might take that. However, we were also looking at several other apartments that were much cheaper. Surprisingly cheap, actually. And these low prices eventually caused my husband and I to question whether or not the whole deal was a scam to take our money and run. We had visions of my son and I arriving in New York having paid for an apartment but with no apartment waiting for us.

With one “landlord” in particular, I spent several days and many hours trying to verify who he was and if he was reputable. He gave me references who wrote back to me using the same broken English he did. When I asked if I could send a friend to see the apartment, he said he was going to Hawaii and didn’t like all my questions. Hmmm.

That caused me to wonder about another landlord who refused to tell me anything else about herself other than that she owned the unit she was renting. She might have been fine – upright, legitimate, honest, but I seriously considered if she was just the opposite. I began to think taking her apartment, which was extremely convenient as well as cheap, was a big mistake as well.

All the while my mistrust grew. And I felt worse and worse.

Needless to say, I’ve decided to rent the more expensive apartment with the woman I can find on LinkedIn and who has been open and forthcoming with me about herself and her apartment. But the whole experience made me really wonder about what seems to be a fine line between trusting and not trusting.

It doesn’t feel good not to trust, yet you must have some degree of, lets say, discernment about people, especially in business dealings. Yet, seeing the good in people brings out the good in people, I believe.

And trust is imperative in manifesting what you want in your life. You must trust that it is coming to you already. And if it doesn’t arrive, you must trust that there is a good reason that it hasn’t; you must trust that something better is on its way instead.

And I feel you must trust that God has a hand in your life, otherwise it might feel too difficult to deal with some of the things that happen. I believe that trusting it is all working out for the best is the most elegant, if you way, way to get through life.

And maybe that’s why I took the apartment with this woman as well. Everything seemed to point towards subletting from her. The other deals felt shady. My intuition said, “You thought her place was perfect. Trust that it is.”

And she’s a musician and involved in theater. A good connection, I think…My daughter wants to work in the theater business as a costume designer. And her apartment is in the Village. No view of the New York skyline, but seven weeks of living in the heart of the artsy fartsy part of Manhattan – just where I belong with all the other writers. (And she talked about sitting in a particular chair in her apartment by a window and writing. How much nicer will that be for me than in some high-rise building, right?) And instead of a cold apartment with no homey touches, we’ll have her actual home opened to us. What really could be better?

So, I’m trusting. And I’m trusting that my intuition was right about the other so-called landlords as well. Maybe that’s less about mistrusting them than it is about trusting my gut instincts, my intuition. And there’s the lesson. We must also trust our intuition. More often than not, we know…We just have to trust that we know.

While my web master and I have been struggling with an unknown problem that has stopped me from being able to import all my Blogger posts to WordPress — and I surely don’t want to leave all those old posts behind, I’ve also been struggling with the unknown in terms of my son. My last post was about him as well. Only then, we were getting his little light to shine. Now his light is dim again, but this time because he has been sick with an unknown illness. First we thought it was viral…then bacterial…then viral…then bacterial…then viral…now bacterial again. He went to camp — his favorite thing in all the world besides dancing — only to have to come home after 8 days and 3 days in the infirmary. He was home for 8 days, one of which was spent in the hospital. We even had a moment or more of thinking he might need surgery. Then, suddenly he was back at camp and seemed fine. Six days later, he was back home and sick again.

He rises with no fever. Then his temperature goes up. His eyes are red. His hands and feet have peeled. He has had pain in his hip. He has had a cough — it came, it went, it came again. We’ve seen an orthopedic doctor. We’ve seen an infectious disease specialist. It’s a mystery. We’ve done blood work, x-rays, MRIs. Nothing…well, a little anemia…then that was gone. A little problem with his kidneys…nothing to worry about. A little something called rickettsia, but we were told that wasn’t the problem. Now he’s being treated for microplasma with an antibiotic. His cough is better; his fever is higher.

As a mother, I spend my days and nights worried. I’m living in the unknown zone. It’s unknown, because I’ve never been here before. It’s unknown, because we don’t know what my son has. It’s unknown, because from day to day we don’t know what my son’s symptoms will be like.

And all I want is for my child to be healthy. I wanted him to go back to camp and enjoy his time there. He did. He came back sick. Now I want him healthy so he can start dancing again. I want him to be able to let his light shine. I want him to be okay…healthy, vibrant, able to do whatever he wants.

My sister has a daughter who has been ill since she was 11. She’s 24 years old. They have diagnosed her with all sorts of ailments and diseases. No one has found the original source of her problems. No I understand what my sister and my niece have been going through. They have been living in the unknown zone for 13 years. I don’t know how they have stood it.

I hate not knowing. And at times like these, although I pray, I have a hard time trusting. Fear finds a way to wiggle in to my mind and heart. And then I worry. I hate to worry. Worry does no good and creates no good. I try to be positive, to create with my thoughts, to do all I can to manifest answers and healing. But not knowing is so very difficult.

So, I can only see this time here in the unknown zone as a lesson in patience and trust. I have to trust the doctor to figure out what is wrong with my son. I have to trust that all of this has happened for a reason, including my son missing camp. I have to trust that not knowing right now in this moment is okay. I have to trust that soon I will know…that answers will come. I have to trust God…and not lose my faith.

Much has happened. My husband lost his job. I missed out on two really big radio interviews. We put our little somewhat feral kitty to sleep. My daughter’s panic attacks have continued, maybe even worsened.

Oh, some good things have happened, too. We went to New York for a Thanksgiving family reunion. I received a tithe check from a church where I often speak. One of my book projects is being considered by a publishing house.

But somehow, it’s those bad things that are stuck in my head, and with them comes my struggle with a Kabbalistic teaching: Gam zu l’tovah. This, too, is for the best.

Sometimes it’s really hard to see why something that happens to us is for the best, at least in the moment when it is happening to us. When we look backwards after a time, often it’s easier to understand how that event was for the best, how it got us to a new – possibly better – place we might not have made it to otherwise. It’s harder to see these things when you are still so close to them, when you are still living them.

Now, I can see to some extent why my husbands lost job was for the best, but, on the other hand, I still have a hard time mustering clear vision on this particular event. He hated that job. It made him miserable. He needed to be out job hunting, and he wasn’t going to put his whole heart and all his effort into finding a new job as long as he stayed in that job. So, losing the job was a good thing. However, with no job, we, as a family, find ourselves in financial peril. I have a hard time seeing that as a good thing. Mind you, he’s doing some contract consulting work, which will keep us going for a while and gives him a feel for doing consulting work, but the fact that he doesn’t have a steady income represents a scary reality for us. Contract work only lasts so long. Our financial situation wasn’t so great before he lost his job, and he isn’t making as much as he was when he held down a full-time job. Plus, in the meantime, all my work has dried up as well leaving us, once again, dependent on his salary. It’s difficult to see this as a good thing.

It’s harder for me to see anything good about me missing two radio interviews. I could rationalize that I wasn’t ready for them. I almost paid for some media training for the second one – a great opportunity to be on a BBC World News talk show, but I didn’t because of my husband’s job situation. I was waiting for the interview to actually be scheduled – which never happened – before committing to the training. (Surprise, surprise. Anyone who knows anything about conscious creation (LOA) knows that I wasn’t focused on the interview happening but on it not happening. I didn’t trust that it would come true. I didn’t have faith.) I suppose that it could be a good thing the interview didn’t come through, because maybe without the media training I would have made a fool out of myself. After the first missed interview, my agent said, “Something better will come along,” and it did…and then it went away. I don’t yet see the good in that. Maybe one day I will. Maybe the BBC will call me up to speak about a topic I would prefer to speak on. As my husband said, “At least now they know who you are.” That is a good thing, but an interview under my belt would have been better. I wish my vision was clearer on this one.

As for putting the little kitty to sleep, I suppose the good in that was that we put her out of her misery – she was sick and possibly suffering at that point. And we then committed to the other kitty that had adopted us and totally adopted her. We took her for her vaccinations and allowed her to sleep in the house at night. Now we have a pet. We lost our dog last year and were left with these two cats – one feral and one our neighbor’s that decided she liked our house better. Now she is ours (Our neighbor is happy about that, by the way.), and we have a pet again.

I sometimes wonder about my books – why they haven’t yet been published. I suppose this too is for the best. I’ll understand why eventually. Maybe I haven’t really figured out how best to write them, what approach to take. Maybe as the years have gone by my perspective has changed enough to significantly improve how I will write them. Maybe for one of my projects that had a publisher and then lost a publisher the first one wasn’t the right one; this one considering the manuscript might be perfect. Maybe I didn’t have the time then to do what it would take to market and promote my books. Now my kids are older and I’ll have a bit more time. While I still find it hard to see how this is for the best, I can refocus my vision and find the good if I try.

I’ve wondered about my daughter – why she had to experience her best friend’s suicide last summer and now suffers from panic attacks. How could that be for good? I suppose one day we’ll know. Maybe she’ll help other people who lose friends to suicide. Maybe it will stop her from ever committing suicide herself. Maybe the fact that she has had to go into counseling for her attacks will giver her insight into herself she wouldn’t have otherwise gained at all or wouldn’t have gained until she was much older. It’s hard, though, to understand how a 15-year-old having to suffer such a tragedy can be for the best.

The issue, I believe, revolves around having faith even when we can’t know the reasons why something happens to us or to others. Faith requires trust. When we have faith, we don’t have to “see it to believe it.” We just believe it. We trust. We don’t have to understand it to believe it either. We just do. We have faith. And so, the Kabbalists said we must have faith that everything is happening just as it is supposed to happen. No matter what befalls us, we must trust that “gam zu l’tovah.” And one day, maybe the reason why will be revealed to us. Ken yehe ratzon. (May it be God’s will.)