S'firat Haomer and what I learned from Mountain bike racing

I am listening to another wonderful Shiur on naaleh.com on the Omer. Mrs. Smiles explains that the counting of the Omer is about counting the days that have passed since the second day of Pesach, rather than the number of days left until Shavuot. This is because we are working on the process of being elevated towards Hashem. This is about the process of self-improvement.

In racing, we say that most of the work is getting TO the start line. The actual racing part, is actually pretty easy. Get on bike, ride hard. But getting there....

There is the training. Maintaining weight. Making sure the bike is working. Packing for the racing, planning to get there...every day is something. When it comes to training, it is entirely about the process. The racing part, is the result of the process. Whether you have prepared your body and your mind for the challenge of the race will come out at the finish line.

S'firat Haomer is about a process - it starts at the Seder. We decide what we make of the Seder. Is it a chore, a painful couple of hours of listening to the story again. Or will it be family quality time, or a chance to think about some of the themes.

We take each day, one at a time to improve. Achieving high levels of spirituality and goodness seems, well, impossible at times. Take everything one thing at a time, as I had with keeping Shabbos - first turn off the phone, then the electricity then the car and now here I am. I'm still not perfect, I still don't know all the ins and outs of the Halachot. And I am in an interfaith marriage. There is much to learn.

When i saw three days of Yom Tov and Shabbos, I really didn't think I would pull it off. The cooking, the isolation, the interfaith thing. I did one thing at a time. I set the menu, I got things ready. I stayed in the moment. I stopped worrying about what I would do for 72 hours. I just knew what needed to be done now. And I managed.