I ended yesterday’s newsletter promising to report back on whether I ever fell asleep. Judging by my inbox, a lot of you were curious.
I did get some sleep. I would have gotten more if not for the receptionist, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
I did the sleep math again and set my alarm for 9:15. I had a procedure scheduled for 10:30, which seemed like enough time to shower, daven, and get to the appointment.
Back in bed, my mind promptly started racing again. It turns out you cannot spend an hour writing and focusing and then simply shut your brain off. Eventually I dozed off.
But Hashem had other plans.
At 7:55 my phone rang. It was the doctor’s office, calling to confirm the appointment. They had already confirmed it three times the day before. They had also called me the previous morning and woken me up then, too. And now, at 7:55, they were calling to ask whether I would like to come in earlier. This is now the second time in two days that this office has woken me up, but who is keeping tabs?!
I wanted to yell into the phone that no, ‘I would not like to come in earlier. I NEED TO SLEEP!!’ and then throw the phone across the room.
What I actually did was hold my tongue and tell her, as sweetly as I could manage at that hour, that I would come at the scheduled time.
Then I lay there fuming, silently giving her a piece of my mind. An hour and twenty minutes of sleep, gone. How dare she. Didn’t she know the rule about not calling people before 9 AM?
Except why am I angry at her? She wasn’t sitting there thinking, “How can I ruin Miriam’s morning?” She was just doing her job.
She was the shaliach sent to disrupt my sleep.
She is not the only one out on assignment.
The plumber who gives you a window between eight and twelve and shows up at four.
The person who takes the parking spot you were waiting for with your blinker on.
The delivery guy who marks it delivered and leaves it at the wrong house.
The neighbor whose sprinkler runs across your walkway every morning at the same time you leave for work.
The driver who cuts you off on the parkway.
The office that calls at 7:55 in the morning.
It’s easy to look at each of these people and decide they’re the reason your day went sideways. We get annoyed and frustrated, and we blame them.
The driver who cuts you off? The plumber who shows up late? The person who takes the parking spot you were waiting for?
They’re all just puppets.
We spend so much of our lives arguing with, getting angry at, and wanting to take revenge on the puppets, all the while forgetting to look at the One pulling the strings.
