Baruch Hashem, I am considered well-to-do, and I live in relative comfort, with a good par- nassah. The products I market sell well and are especially successful in meeting the needs of those who use them. Thus I have constant orders and sales, and I am extremely busy, always in meetings and dealing with contracts with producers and buyers.
I don’t know how it happened: Was it just the general drop in the market, or did the war add to it? Whatever it was, I paid a high price and lost a lot of money. Perhaps this whole nisayon was ordained min haShamayim because I was feeling a bit too good about myself. Perhaps it was too clear to me that I had a good parnassah because I have good connections with the right people and because I had the smarts to find the necessary products at good prices and to sell them at prices that would please everyone.
And thus, some time ago, orders started dwindling. People realized that they did not need specifically me in order to obtain the products they needed. In the beginning it was a dribble: smaller orders than usual, the phone ringing twice a week instead of twice a day. But there was still a flow of income.
The more time passed, however, the fewer orders came in, until during a period of three months there were no calls at all. No orders and no sales. Nothing! As though I had disap- peared off the face of the earth.
I looked at my bank statements and knew that this could not go on. I was in the red, and the situation was simply impossible. I was not worried about merely losing out on luxuries; the situation was very bad. You wouldn’t need much of an imagination to see me lacking food and knocking on the doors of the gabba’im of tzedakah funds.
That night, I experienced literally the description of the unfortunate man who said, “I slept like a baby,” meaning that I woke up every two hours to ask for food. I could not sleep, thinking about my financial state. Even when morning finally came, I had no rest. I was overwhelmed and had not a shred of an idea for a solution to the problem.
B’rachamei Shamayim, I came to realize what I should have understood long ago: I am not the one bringing in this money! I was only doing hishtadlus. This was the case all along, and this is what would always be. Only Hashem provides for us and sustains me and my family. He and no one else. Only because of His great goodness had we been lacking for nothing, and He would save us so that we would not lack for anything ever again. My profits did not come from human beings of flesh and blood, even though it seemed that way. They came only from Hashem, and they would continue to come only from Him.
Even with all this chizuk, I felt like a pendulum. One moment I was relying completely on my Father in Shamayim, and another moment I was in over my head in worry. I worked on myself to raise the percentage of time when I was in a state of emunah. This took two weeks of learning Shaar Habitachon and seeking chizuk from every source I could find...until a day came when I was feeling really good. Yes, Abba was taking care of everything for me, and there was no reason to worry. Everything was okay. I trusted in Him one hundred percent!
That day, when I was truly at peace, an old client called me up, someone who hadn’t been in contact with me for a very long time, and asked to make an especially large order, larger than any order I had ever had. The profit from this order was the sum I would have earned had I worked as I always had, for three months!
I saw with my own eyes how He alone provides for us and answers us. Thank you, Abba in Shamayim! Thank you for the tangible lesson in emunah.
