Q:
How can a person improve his ahavas Hashem if he is overcome with grief because of the fact that his daughter was born mentally retarted?
A:
How can somebody work on love of Hashem if he has a child chas v’shalom who is born retarded?
And the answer is, if somebody gave you a mansion, a palace, full of expensive furniture and he also gave you a big bank account; he gave you also stocks. He also gave you a house full of antiques, of priceless paintings, I don’t believe in these things, but suppose he gave it to you anyhow.
And here in the midst of your palace, in your mansion, suddenly the toilet sprung a leak and it dripped downstairs and it ruined your dining room; it ruined the carpets and the walls.
Now what are you going to do? Are you going to say to the man who gave it to you, “Look what you did to me! You gave me a leaking toilet and it ruined my dining room!”
So he says, “Alright then. If you don’t want it, so give back the palace, give back the investments, give back the jewelry, give everything else back and that way you won’t have any argument against me.”
Hakodosh Boruch Hu says, “I gave you only a daughter? Didn’t I give you also yourself? Are you retarded? Is your wife retarded? What about being happy with that? Who says you have to have normal children? Am I obligated to give you normal children?”
So because a child is retarded, therefore Hakodosh Boruch Hu is to be ignored for all that He did to you?!
Now, suppose this man with the retarded child feels that he has a lump some place in his body, an unwelcome lump, and he is very worried. And he goes to a specialist and the specialist examines him and he says, “I am afraid that we will have to do something about this.”
Now, he goes home, and he has two things; he has a retarded child and he has a lump. And he is very much worried about the lump. And then he goes again to the specialist and they make a biopsy and the specialist calls him into his office and says to him, “I’m sorry to tell you that nothing is wrong with you.”
Now, he walks home on the air; he is so happy he doesn’t know what to do! So the fact that he got relieved of that lump is such a happiness that he doesn’t feel right now any anger because of his child.
Now, you don’t have any lump; you are living a normal life. Hakodosh Boruch Hu is sparing you in hundreds of thousands of ways; so many difficulties people are suffering in this world that you don’t have. So just because of a child that is retarded, therefore you can’t love Hashem? It’s a blindness! It would be a gross lack of gratitude if because of a burst toilet pipe you are not going to thank the man for the mansion that he gave you. And therefore, nobody has any cause to be ungrateful to Hashem. And so the mitzvah of loving Hashem is possible to fulfill in any circumstance in life.
TAPE # 440
