Missing the Angels

While packing to leave Israel, I made the decision to ship my stuff via the post office rather than doing a lift. It was much cheaper than hiring a shipping company, but my problem was getting the boxes to the post office. I had no car and even though the post office was only a ten minute walk, I had too many boxes. For the first four boxes I packed, I managed to walk it, but for the second shipment of 11 boxes, of which four were books, I realized that there was no way I could carry them to the post office. A friend offered to drive me to the post office, but the scheduling was really problematic. We finally found a time.

He came over, we packed up his car, and drove up to the post office. He waited at the gate at the end of the driveway while I went to ask the guard to open it so we could unload. The guard looked at me and said that I didn't have time. In typical Israeli fashion, the post office is open until 4 pm everyday except the day we came (a Wednesday I think) when it closed at 2 pm. It was 1:56 pm and the guard told me I didn't have enough time to unload the boxes before he locked the door at exactly 2 pm.

After getting over my stunned disbelief, I argued with him and got him to open the gate. We managed to unload the boxes though he he did lock my friend out without opening the gate for him to leave. I was astonished that he couldn't wait the extra minute for me to unload in a country where nothing ever runs on time.

Two months later, in America, the boxes started to arrive. The first shipment of four arrived intact, but the second shipment of 11 didn't. The boxes were beat up. The boxes containing the books were the worst. One arrived empty, the side split open and then pushed back in place. Of the four boxes of books, one came complete (though repacked by the US post office), and of the other three I received only 10 books. The worst part of it was that these were many of my sifrei Kodesh, my religious texts.

When I went to talk to someone at our local post office, he told me he'd gotten complaints that day from two other people who'd received boxes from Israel. Apparently, the container containing my boxes had gotten thrown around and there was a lot of damage to everything in it. I had mailed another 10 boxes a few weeks later and they all arrived without a problem. It was only those 11 that were damaged.

The guard at the door was my angel and I'd missed it. If I'd listened to him and not shipped the boxes that day, they probably would have arrived without a problem.

It's so difficult to realize when the roadblock in your path needs to be climbed over and pushed through or if it's there to turn you to another path. Even more so during stressful and difficult times in life.

Photo courtesy of Sal de Mar