I received the following message before Shabbat:
“Shalom Sivan, my name is Anat. I was supposed to get married this coming Wednesday. Unfortunately, I found out I have corona. I completely fell apart. I entered isolation immediately in my room, a room in which my bride’s dress and veil and many other accessories had been organized and were ready for the wedding.
“I became depressed but then I remembered something you published about Chani Weinroth, the young mother who died from cancer, who said: We need to separate between necessary and unnecessary suffering. I felt that this had been written for me.
“My necessary suffering was clear: postponing the wedding, entering isolation, placing my relatives in isolation, treating the headaches and other corona symptoms that had begun to appear. Despite all of this, I had to cope. That was clear.
“But there was also unnecessary suffering to which I was likely to sentence myself: to cry about it all Shabbat and to imagine the ‘Shabbat kallah‘ that I had planned with my friends, to stay in the room with all the wedding accessories, to not answer friends who were calling since I did not have the strength, and of course to argue with all the people closest to me and get angry since one of them had apparently infected me with the virus….
“I understood that I could prevent myself from indulging in all this unnecessary suffering. I got up and began to arrange my room for Shabbat. I spread a white tablecloth on the table and asked for the bouquet that my groom had sent. I even began to plan another wedding date.
“Within a few minutes, I already felt better. And the moment that I allowed others to help me, I discovered how much they could ease my distress, even from a distance. I am now waiting for the end of two weeks’ isolation with a minimum amount of necessary and unnecessary suffering, while praying for a happy and healthy wedding.”
