G-d’s knee-to-know messages

You know about my knee. It’s a painfully short story made long. I tripped during the warmup at a Krav Maga session, fell embarrassingly badly, and have struggled for three months since. The good news is that it’s slowly improving, the swelling is starting to reduce, it’s less painful to the touch, and I have (finally) managed to go back to gym.

That having been said, long after the physical wounds heal, I will undoubtedly be burdened by the emotional baggage of it all. Not because the event or the treatment was traumatic, but because of the confident advice that I received along the way.

“It’s G-d sending you a message,” my wife was predictably first out the blocks. “And you need to hear it!” I know better than to argue, and listened as she set out the conversation that she and G-d had no doubt had about me. “Maybe think of taking on one thing that you don’t do, but should. Something small.” Sound advice.

But then she also told me that the injury was clearly G-d telling me to slow down. So determined was He that I was doing too much, He took the extreme measure of smashing me in the knee to slow me down.

And so, bravely, I asked her if perhaps G-d was telling me that I needed to take on one less thing. “Maybe,” I thought out loud, “I need to stop performing the morning hand washing ritual on waking up. Something small like that?” There are times when she thinks I’m funny. This, it turned out, wasn’t one of those moments. So much the contrary that I was surprised that the conversation didn’t end with me nursing two knee injuries.

A few weeks ago, I was invited to join a social media content creator for lunch. Given that he was in the country to speak at a Jewish religious event, I was surprised that the lunch was taking place at a non-kosher restaurant. For whatever reason, he annoyed me from the get-go, an irritation that peaked when I asked him why he had chosen to travel to a dangerous destination after South Africa. He was prepared for the answer, and in responding, he dramatically raised his hands to the heavens, looked upward and said, “Because G-d is sending me there!” “Really?” I mumbled, “Did He also send you to Tashas for lunch?”

G-d it seems, speaks to everyone but me.

The truth is that although He has never told me where to eat lunch, He has guided me every step of my journey. He has made it plain to me what my “mission is”, and course corrected me when I needed it. To suggest that this isn’t the case would be to deny not only His truth, but my own.

I’m aware that the “message from G-d” approach might be perceived as a coping mechanism. It’s unquestionably easier to endure some of our challenges when we’re confident that our suffering has purpose and that there’s a G-d-like reasoning behind it all. Especially if it makes no sense to us mortals.

When it comes to my knee, I have no idea if the message from G-d is for me to slow down or speed up. I don’t know if it means I’m doing too much or perhaps too little. Or if it means that I’m carrying too much on my shoulders or too much on my stomach.

What I do know that is that there are some situations, in the interest of my healthy knee, peace of mind, and happy home, that I accept without question that the message from G-d is what my wife says it is.