People who go through periods of difficulty in their lives hope and pray every day for those difficulties to end. They imagine how great it would be to get the salvation they are so eagerly anticipating and they can’t wait for that day to come. It does happen sometimes that instead of getting a salvation another major difficulty arises. The person may then think to himself, it is bad enough I have one difficulty, now I have to deal with another? But if the person would look at this from a different perspective, perhaps it would be able to change their situation for the better. The person should think, maybe by overcoming this new difficulty, it’ll give me the zechut I need to get the salvation for the first one. Maybe this is Hashem’s way of helping me get my salvation that I want so badly. So instead of fighting the circumstance, the person should view it as a calling to elevate himself, an opportunity to overcome with emunah and get the zechuyot that he needs. A rabbi told me, when he started out as the rabbi of a shul some 40 years ago, he got a strange request from a new congregant. The man said he was in need of $2000 and had no way of obtaining it and it was critical that he get it right away. The rabbi asked him what he needed the money for. The man said he just discovered his wife was expecting and they did not want to continue on with the pregnancy. They were not ready for children and they surely couldn’t afford the expenses that came along with them. The rabbi said, “At least let us find another family to raise the child.” The man said the cost to go through with it was at least $10,000, which he definitely didn’t have. Forty years ago, $10,000 was an extremely high number. The rabbi himself had no idea where he would get that kind of money from, but he told the man, heroically, “If you want the $2000, I’m not the man to help you, but if you want the $10,000, I’ll get it for you.” The man discussed it with his wife and they agreed. The rabbi went searching for a donor for this money. He found a man learning in kollel for eighteen years who was still not blessed with children. He told him, if he paid for the expenses, this child would be his. Although this kollel man and his wife did not really have $10,000, they agreed to pay $1000 a month for the next 10 months. Finally, the day of the delivery came and a beautiful, healthy baby was born. The mother who delivered the baby said she wanted to keep her child. She and her husband told the rabbi, the deal was off. They also said they could not afford to pay back that $10,000. The rabbi did not know what to answer them. He tried convincing them that they couldn’t really back out at this point, but they wouldn’t hear of it. What would the rabbi tell the kollel man and his wife, who sacrificed, paying $10,000 and gave so much anticipating finally having their own baby? He prayed to Hashem for the right words and he went there and broke the news to them. He then said, “In Shamayim , this baby is considered yours. You will get all the credit for bringing the baby into the world.” He also told them, the zechut of accepting the ratzon Hashem is enormous. He then encouraged them to take in a foster child from the organization called Ohel as an additional zechut . Although this news was devastating to that couple. They listened to the rabbi and, amazingly, four months after that, after nineteen long years of marriage, this couple received the wonderful news that they were expecting. Baruch Hashem, later that year they welcomed twins into the world. What seemed like a devastating blow was actually their opportunity to lift themselves up and earn endless zechuyot and, eventually, get that salvation they were always hoping for. Everything that happens is for our best, even what appears to be something way too hard to handle.