Making Peace with Pain

My sister lives very, very far away.

She moved away about six years ago.  Back then, I was still in high school, she had a few college credits to her name and she was taking off to join the man of her dreams and begin a very long period of schooling.

It is not just physical distance that separates us, either.  I am an observant, right-wing settler Israeli, a rebbetzin even, a 23-year-old mother of two who left her unsatisfying college and is only just deciding "what to be when she grows up" other than her #1 dream: being a mother.  My sister is a 26-year-old secular American, with just another two years before finishing her Ph.D in Audiology, living happily with her boyfriend and pet dog.

But sisters are sisters, and she is second only to my husband in the position of "best friend".

Still, we hardly ever see each other, and hardly ever speak.  All phone calls are initiated by her, except when I have something very important to tell her.  She's on my family "update" list, but personal e-mails are scant.  I'm terrible at buying presents in general, but I always feel bad about her in particular, because she always seems to find little things to let me know she is thinking about me.  Is it that I don't think about her?

I was at Rachel's Tomb last week, and something about the heightened emotion in the chamber... or maybe the spirit of woman buried miles from her older sister... opened this Pandora's box in my heart.  I prayed for my sister and found myself flooded with such longing for her in my life that I didn't know what to do with it.  The pain of our separation was deep and profound.  I wanted her to come back, and I wanted it now.  I was tired of walking around pretending I didn't have a sister and feeling a dull ache in my heart whenever other friends mentioned their sisters.

This spurred an e-mail outpouring of hearts between us.  And my sister, so different from me, eventually expressed exactly what the problem was.  We are both afraid of facing and accepting the reality of the pain of separation.  I had been either ignoring it or living in a bubble of hope that it would end someday; she had been mostly ignoring it, bulldozing through life as she is wont to do.  Every time we saw each other all we did was think about the pain of that separation instead of truly enjoying the time we did have together.  And in so doing, we made the separation that much more total.

While I was still upset in the midst of this conversation I bitterly said to my husband that I don't understand why bakasha (request) prayer is supposed to be good for you if all it does is open up this chasm of suppressed pain and false hope.

...Turns out that's exactly why it's good for you.  To take out that dirty laundry, shake it out, scrub it and let it dry in the sun.  Maybe learn something.  And maybe heal a wound you had never allowed yourself to treat for fear of the pain it would cause.

I hope that the result of that painful prayer session will be a better, healthier and more open relationship with my sister and a true acceptance of our situation.  I wrote to her that it is like the contractions of childbirth: the more you fight and try to suppress it, the worse the pain is.  If you accept it, you are able to see it as the blessing it is, and even if it is uncomfortable and not what you wanted, realize that there is a reason it is this way and it is for the ultimate good--maybe for the person involved, and maybe for the world in general.