Self-inflicted injuries

L'Shana Tova, All! I hope the coming year is both happy and healthy. I know we're excited about this year's coming blessings - the biggest one being that for most of it, I will not be pregnant any more (oh, and there's a baby too ;-))

It is time to consider, in the Christian terminology, what we have done and what we have left undone in the past year. I've made a few major screwups, and am presently paying the price for them, at least in stress and anxiety, and the embarassment of owing others my contrition. While I'm not yet ready to write about the details, it occurs to me that it is both a blessing and a curse that almost all the major crises in my life have been self-inflicted. It is a curse, of course, because shooting yourself in the foot is neither smart nor credibility inspiring, and you look like an idiot. Plus, you get to pay the price of whatever mistakes you've made, and many of mine have not been small.

On the other hand, it is blessing because up until now (and forever, G-d willing), I've only shot myself in the foot, never the head. None of my self-made disasters, no matter how traumatic, idiotic, terrifying and terrible, have ever been left me irretrievably lost, or caused me suffering from which I was unable to recover. Disappointment, embarassment, sorrow, shame, pain, yes. But I've never had been broken by something outside myself that I simply couldn't address. I think my situation is probably easier, if way more humiliating. I wish, however, that I could give myself the clean slate that I am taught to believe G-d gives. But I fear that would require direct divine intervention. The best I can hope for is to aim for the ground next time I'm determined to do something idiotic.

Shalom,

Sharon