190 - Before Pesach

I confess that I don’t make many physical preparations for Pesach. Cleaning the entire house is beyond me. Even cleaning the entire kitchen is more than I can realistically manage. We don’t change dishes or blow torch the ovens or even pack away all the non-Pesach food. Usually, I clean out a cabinet for the Pesach foods and move the toaster to the basement. Since we are seder guests - the first night at my husband’s aunt, the second at his parent’s house - I am responsible only for making two kinds of charoset, and assembling the items for the second seder plate.

This year I’ve been thinking more about spiritual preparations for Pesach. I have become increasingly aware of the commandment to feel as if I, personally, had been in bondage and had been freed. This is the story we are to tell and retell every Pesach. This I what links us to those who were and are slaves - in bondage to anything or anyone.

As someone living with chronic illness and disability, I too am enslaved. I must keep trying, again and again, to make peace with what I have lost and to find contentment in what remains. This is my own haggadah - my own story. This year, I pray again to sing on the far side of the Sea of Reeds.

One Hundred Ninety

Before Pesach

When I sojourn in my mitzrayim of illness,
Locked away in the narrow place of pain,
Breathless and trembling, I seek You,
I search for deliverance.

Long have I labored beneath whips
Of loss. They snatch away sunlight
With their lashes of cold reality.
Remove this overseer from my days.

Free me to a kinder place.
Let my time there be transformed,
Elevated to serve You alone,
To sing in peace.