I was called to a large school building to repair something in a specific room. This was on a Friday, when there was no school and only the secretaries were there. I entered the room and made the repair. When I wanted to leave I got confused. Instead of going back out the way I had entered, I noticed a different door that was labeled “EXIT.” I pressed down on the handle and opened the door. I went out, and the door closed behind me, leaving me stuck in a small hallway with no other way out.
The simplest thing would have been to retrace my steps, but the door had locked automatically, and in order to go out I would have to call someone to open it from inside the room. There was no one to call.
I called the secretary, but all I got was an answering machine. I disconnected the call quickly, because my battery was close to dying. I told myself to remain calm and to think logically: What would be the shortest call that could be of most benefit to me now, using the little bit of battery I had left? So I called my wife, told her I was stuck, and asked her to hurry to the secretaries to ask them to get me out.
She didn’t manage to answer me, because at that moment my phone’s battery died.
Baruch Hashem, the message was delivered, my wife came to the school to tell the secretaries, and they opened the door for me. I came out and breathed freely. “If the battery had died before I spoke to you,” I told my wife, “I would have remained stuck there all Shabbos.”
But she, with her strength of emunah, answered with a statement that was worth everything I had endured: “If the battery had died Hashem would not have brought you to this place, because He wanted you home for Shabbos.”
