In all my efforts to cure my lower back pain – chiropractors, osteopaths, orthopedic orthotics, even an ergonomic office chair I asked my boss to buy me – I didn’t change my mattress. But it had already celebrated its silver anniversary and was showing its age. This was brought home to me when I spent a few nights with a friend of mine in Montreal who had an Orthopedic Simmons Sleep Platinum Supreme mattress. It was like night and day (forgive the pun).
Not able to take another night on my midsummer night’s dream mattress, I decided to go looking for my friend’s mattress or as close as I could get within my budget. There was a Simmons store a five-minute walk from my home. Google saw me looking at it and sent me a 25% off coupon, and the woman I spoke to over the phone said I could pay in up to 36 installments. Being financially challenged, I figured even I could handle that.
As I was on my way to the store, my son sent me a picture from one of the neighborhood WhatsApp groups indicating that someone had thrown away a perfectly new looking mattress; he suggested that I go have a look. “I’m not taking a mattress from the street,” I said. But when I went to the store, the payment terms were slightly different from what I had been quoted, and after finding a mattress that I thought would be suitable I wasn’t able to negotiate a payment solution, which was kind of weird because you can usually almost always do that in Israel. I left the store and messaged my son, “Maybe go have a look at the mattress.”
Who knew if it was the right size? Who knew if it was even still there? He went with a measuring tape and a good friend, who always agrees to lug furniture home for me, and brought it home.
It not only was a perfect fit but looked and smelled brand new. It was a King David mattress (fit for a queen) and even had a symbol showing that it was sha’atnez-free, something the guy at the Simmons store couldn’t tell me about the mattresses there. I lay down on it. I didn’t want to get up. It was perfect and free! I was overwhelmed by the hashgacha pratit.
I subsequently woke up not so much with less back pain but with gratitude and the feeling that Hashem loves me. My son checked how much the mattress cost online, and I gave ma’aser to the Alyn Pediatric Orthopedic Rehabilitation Hospital.
This isn’t the first time that this kind of thing has happened. But the timing was perfect – and so was the illustration that when something’s meant for you, it finds you. There’s no need to lose any sleep over it.