Miracles in the Minutiae Texts From Hashem, via Diana

Denise Berger

Every Friday there’s a “Shabbat Shalom” text from Diana, often before I wake up. She’s been sending them religiously for years. The first text came as I was beginning to mourn for my Mom. Leaving the shiva visit, Diana said, “You’ll be hearing from me,” and gave me a hug. I awoke a few days later to a “Shabbat Shalom” text with a little heart emoji and figured this must have been what she meant. It was nice. I sent a quick text back and went about my day. The next week there was another text.

The week after that there was another. And so on. By now our texts are part of my Friday routine, a scheduled smile in my week. When the cat jumps into the dryer as I’m doing laundry, I plan to send Diana a picture. When the house painters decide to cover all the windows and doors with sheets of plastic so I’m essentially sealed inside, I know that by the time I send a recap to Diana, it will seem funny.

I’ve always been a person who has super close friends. Diana and I are not super close, so this form of friendship was new for me and an unexpected gift. Sending a text to Diana is the behavioral equivalent of getting dressed and doing my hair; I don’t know her well enough to greet her in my emotional pajamas. Especially while grieving, behaving like a normal person felt just as therapeutic as being able to curl up into a ball and cry; it kept me connected to the part of myself that was still functional and gave me something to build upon.

The texts from Diana also reassured my heart in a way that even my very clos- est friends could not. I tend to totalize my feelings. Most of the time this is great because my nature thankfully tends towards the optimistic. But in the loss of my Mom, feeling like love left the world, it would have been natural for me to totalize that feeling as well. When surrounded by dear close friends, depression could easily have rationalized that they are exceptions, that the world is inherently cold and dark and I just got lucky with these individuals.

Diana’s texts didn’t allow that. Diana’s texts are typed by Diana’s fingers and sent through Diana’s phone, but they are messages from Hashem, paper airplanes from Him reminding me that the world is good.

Were Diana simply doing this out of sympathy, it would have been appropriate for the texts to stop after the unveiling of my Mom’s grave. The official period of mourning had ended. The texts didn’t end. The paper airplanes from Hashem now trail banners, joyfully proclaiming that the goodness of the world is consistent, steady, reliable, and unending.

Sometimes we think— or at least I think—that acts of chesed have to be these big grand time-consuming gestures. So, too, we tend to envision v’nahafoch hu as some kind of large-scale sweeping change. But that’s not necessarily true. The reality is, that sometimes, thirty seconds a week can transform someone’s experience.