When I was in high school, only 17 years old, my life changed forever.
I experienced a rebirth. An awakening.
On a beautiful spring day, I set out on a fun filled shopping excursion with a couple of friends. We had money to burn and closets to fill. No better way to spend a day, right?
How did I get here?
Where are my friends?
G-d, are they crying? Why are they screaming?
Slowly, the numbness in my body began to fade and I started feeling the pain. My jaws and teeth were the first to start hurting. I guess they were clenched during the impact. Then the achiness started in all different parts of my body. I felt like I had been beaten up.
Then I noticed the blood.
Blood was dripping onto the ground in front of my face, forming a small puddle under me.
Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad!
Please let me live!
Oh why did I waste my life? What have I done?
Oh what am I going to show Hashem? What have I done in my life? I need a zechus! I need to get into Gan Eden.
Oh what will I say? What can I show?
At this point I was frantically searching through my memories searching for something special, some good deed that will save me, some defense to get me into Gan Eden. I could find none. All the things that I had always thought made me special were utterly useless to me. All the pieces of me that I thought were so important were pathetically inadequate. I realized at that moment how much Hashem has truly blessed me with. All those things that I thought I had going for me- those were gifts from Hashem. Now I needed something that I could show Hashem. Something that would make Him proud. But all I could think of were little, regular mitzvos that I did that day. Nothing special.
Why have I been so stupid?
How could I have been so blind?
Why would I sin? WHY?
Why did I argue with my father when he asked me to stay home today?
The ambulance arrived, they put me on the stretcher. My father suddenly appeared. A Jewish man had called my parents. He saw that my friends were incapable of doing it, so he called my mother and gently told her that I had gotten into a little accident. She thought he meant I scraped my knees. He also took care to pick up my bag from the ground (covered in blood and tread marks) and give it to my friends so that no one would steal it.
May Hashem bless everyone in Am Yisrael with health, strength, happiness and success, and may we meet in Yerushalyim at the Beis Hamikdash soon.