A few years ago, when my wife and I had just moved back from Israel, our son Benny was about two or three years old. I’ll never forget one Sunday afternoon.
We were sitting together on the couch, talking, when suddenly we realized something every parent dreads: it had gotten too quiet. We looked at each other, wide-eyed. “Where’s Benny?”
We jumped up and started searching. I glanced down the hallway and saw that the bathroom door was shut. My heart started racing. I ran to the door and tried opening it, but it wouldn’t budge. Somehow, as I learned later, the cabinet drawer inside had swung open and jammed the door shut from the inside.
We started banging on the door. “Benny! Benny, are you in there? Say something!” Nothing. Complete silence.
Panic set in. Of course, a child stuck in a bathroom doesn’t necessarily spell disaster, but you hear stories where, G-d forbid, a child leans too far over the toilet or trips and cannot get up themselves. My wife and I were screaming, pounding on the door. I threw my weight into it over and over, trying to break it down.
Then, in a moment of clarity, we remembered something: Benny loves ice cream. So we began shouting, “Benny! The ice cream truck! It’s outside! Ice cream!”
A second passed. Then—Movement. A voice. “I want ice cream! I want ice cream!”
We heard the pitter-patter of his feet. He reached the door and started banging from his side. “Daddy! Daddy!” I banged back, “Benny! Benny!” We were both crying now. “Benny,” I said, “Just close the drawer. Just close the drawer and I can open the door.”
Of course, at two years old, he didn’t understand what I meant and he kept crying. We called 911, and the fire department came with their tools. They broke down the door, and finally, we were reunited. We held him close, crying, overwhelmed with relief and gratitude.
Later, my wife said something I’ll never forget. “You know, we’re all in our own bathrooms.” At first, I didn’t understand what she meant.
She continued. “We’re all locked in situations. Maybe we can’t find a shidduch, maybe we’re struggling to have children, maybe we’re sick, or in financial difficulty, or trapped in emotional pain. And we’re pounding on the walls, crying, begging Hashem, ‘Open the door!’ We’re desperate for Him to answer.
“But Hashem is right there—on the other side of the door. And He’s saying to us, ‘My child, just close the drawer. Take one step. Just one small step.’
Our Sages put it this way: “Open for Me an opening the size of a needle’s eye, and I will open for you an opening like a grand hall” (Shir HaShirim Rabbah 5:2).
All Hashem asks is that we begin and show a tiny sign of effort, of willingness to move, to grow, to change. And when we do, He does the rest. He opens the floodgates of blessing and brings us back into His arms.
As we go through Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, as we stand in prayer and ask Hashem to open doors for us—doors of success, health, blessing, forgiveness, and peace—let’s first ask ourselves: what drawers do I need to close this year? What’s the small act I need to take? What is holding me back from Hashem’s open arms?
Because He’s right there, banging from the other side, crying with us, and waiting to hold us again.
