The Gemara tells us, if a person sees that hardships have been coming his way, he should view it as a calling to improve his ways. Sometimes a person knows exactly what he needs to improve in but other times it is very hard to determine. A person is encouraged to ask Hashem to help him make the changes that need to be made. Hashem loves to help us, especially with our spiritual needs, we just need to want it enough and sincerely ask Him for His help. A rabbi related, one morning on his way to the yeshiva in which he taught, he realized he was very late. He was hoping someone would offer him a ride and, sure enough, a nice driver who saw him looking did indeed offer him a ride. Before they got to the block of the yeshiva, the rabbi asked to be let out. As he hurried to the yeshiva, he realized he forgot the bag that he had with him in the car. That bag had his most prized possession, a very large notebook with all of his own personal chiddushei Torah that he had written over the course of thirty years. It was irreplaceable, a lifetime of work with no other copy of it. There was nothing in that bag that had any identification on it. In the days that followed, the rabbi did various segulot for finding lost objects. He also hung signs and invested a lot of effort in trying to identify the driver of that car. Because he had gotten out of the car near stores, he asked the store owners to check their security cameras, perhaps they could see the license plate of that car, but none of them had a clear enough view. He continued praying and hoping for a yeshua . Then he started to do some self-introspection, thinking, maybe Hashem wanted him to improve in something. All of his tefilot from then on were concentrated towards asking Hashem to show him what he needed to rectify. Then, suddenly, it hit him. He recalled that he used to always visit his parents once a week and recently he had completely stopped. Maybe that was the mitzvah he needed to fix. He started to think further, the pasuk says, one should honor one’s parents so that it should be good for him. From the positive we can infer the negative, the lack of honor can cause something good to be lost, in this instance, his chiddushei Torah. That day, he went to visit his parents. They were so happy to see him and, when he left, he told himself, from then on, he would try to honor them and visit them at least as often as he used to. The very next day, his father called him, asking if he lost his notebook with his chiddushei Torah. “Yes!” the rabbi yelled with great jubilation. His father told him, the owner of the car where he left that notebook is accustomed to visiting his own father every day. When he gave him a ride that day, he was on his way to visit his father. When he discovered the bag left in his car, he tried to identify its owner, but there were no identification marks. He brought the notebook to his father and asked him for an idea how to reach the person who left it there. The father didn’t have any ideas and so, in the meantime, the notebook remained there in his house. One day, someone came to his father for a bikur cholim visit. The father showed his friend the notebook and asked him if he could figure out how to identify the owner. The guest leafed through the notebook until he discovered on one of the pages, in small letters, a family name. Because he knew the rabbi’s father, he brought it to his house. That is when his father called him to tell him the good news. How amazing it was! The notebook was retrieved by the rabbi in the very place he chose to improve upon, his parents’ home. Hashem enlightened him because he asked for help. Hashem is always available to help everybody, especially when it comes to our spiritual needs