A New Heart For Yom Kippur

There is something that happens when you train.

You develop this strange relationship with the word impossible.

There are moments when your body tells you, This is the limit. You cannot run another mile. You cannot hold this pace.

And the fascinating part is, training doesn't teach you to pretend those limits aren't real. It forces you to feel them, to know exactly where they are.

But it also teaches you that where the limit is today doesn't necessarily determine where it will be tomorrow.

You push. You struggle. You keep showing up. And slowly, something that once seemed impossible becomes possible.

I think that can help us understand something about the Avodah of Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur asks us to look honestly at ourselves. We say Vidui. We acknowledge our mistakes. We regret them. We commit to doing better.

But maybe there's another piece.

Yom Kippur asks us not only to confront what we did wrong, but to confront the painful distance between who we are and who we desperately want to become and maybe even more so feeling that gap as a real distance that we must bridge in order to get closer to Hashem.

I want to be closer to Hashem.

I want to daven differently.

I want to become more of the person Hashem wants me to be.

And yet, I am limited.

There is something incredibly vulnerable about allowing ourselves to really feel that.

We spend so much of our lives trying to solve problems. Work harder. Try another strategy. Find another solution.

But sometimes we encounter something that we simply cannot fix.

Imagine a mother who has lost a young child and would give anything in the world for one more moment to hold that child again.

She can't.

Imagine a father sitting next to his 19-year-old son in a hospital. His son needs a new heart. For months they wait. Day after day, he doesn't know what tomorrow will bring.

The doctors can do everything medically possible. The parents can hope. They can daven.

But that father cannot give his son what he so desperately needs.

He cannot make a heart appear.

There are moments when all of our strength, determination and effort cannot create the miracle we want.

And there is tremendous vulnerability in just recognizing that.

I can't do this.

But maybe those words don't have to lead us to hopelessness.

Maybe they lead us somewhere else.

Hashem, I can't do this without You.

Perhaps that's part of the Avodah of Yom Kippur.

To recognize the distance between where I am and where I desperately want to be. To feel that distance deeply.

And then to do two things at once that almost seem contradictory.

We push and we daven.

We take responsibility. We do everything we can.

And at the very same time, we admit that there are places we cannot reach through willpower alone.

We say:

Hashem, I'm going to do my part. But I need You to carry me where I can't go.

That 19-year-old young man is real.

His name is Mikey.

For four months, his family has been waiting, hoping and davening.

And this morning, Mikey received a new heart.

A new heart.

I keep thinking about that phrase.

Maybe that is exactly what we should be asking Hashem for.

Give us a new heart.

A heart that can live with both realities.

A heart humble enough to recognize our limitations, but courageous enough to keep wanting more.

A heart that can look honestly at our imperfections and still not give up on who we can become.

So this Yom Kippur, don't choose ten things.

Choose one.

One area that feels impossible.

One small step.

Take that step and then daven:

Hashem, this is as far as I know how to go. Please help me take the next one.

Let us do it for Mikey. A small thank you to Hashem for blessing us with this priceless gift showing us that sometimes the impossible really does happen.

Sometimes Hashem gives us a new heart.