Lesson 1:
It is fortunate to have a teaching relationship with at least one other person. This always afford us the opportunity to do at least one small active mitzvot of teaching. Even when everything else is disconnected. This is important because teaching is a mitzvot that involves connection to and communication with another human being. These active mitzvot have several steps and have a different, valuable aspect that you cannot obtain by making for example an anonymous or silent (through credit card or puska box) donation to charity
Lesson 2:
Bitachon is often framed in terms of trust that suffering is "for the best" and that this is part of a plan instituted by Hashem and this may be true but it is terribly, inhumanely hard to think in this way after life changing disasters.
This is not to say that the approach is wrong but that in the face a truly difficult, disastrous life, this approach to Bitachon only makes sense once the aperture of life is widened. Here is one way that seems to help:
First: Understand that you are at your core a Divine Spark clothed in the garments of the soul and that these things reside beyond our immediate sense of the self. [See for example Tanya, Part I; Likkutei Amarim 4]
Second: Understand that this spark and some quality of these garments will be sent into thcreation again and again over the arc of time, from this transmigration to the next transmigration and so on according to Jewish mystical belief [See Sha'ar HaGilgulim for example]
Our job in this life is to chase Torah, Mitzvot and works of Chesed in the face of difficulty, thereby clarifying these garments so that we become better and better vessels for serving Hashem.
This does not happen over once life [though we need to work hard in this life] but over the arc of all of our transmigrations until the final moment of time.
It is an article of faith that the arc of creation bends toward goodness and so the whole arc of this journey is in the end good and fully connected to God.
We don't need to think about this on a daily basis. It is enough that we try day by day to improve our service to Hashem. In times of grief however, when our lives are not working out or when we have lost a loved one, it may help to understand that the "plan" so often asserted in the context of Bitachon may not be solely a plan for this life and that you and those you love, however brief and difficult their lives now, will be given a chance to fulfill the meaning of their own lives and will over time perfect their connection to Hashem through an endless arc of transmigrations. This is one possible reading of the last line of the the Yigdal prayer: "The Almighty will revive the dead because of His abundant kindness: Blessed forever is His praised Name."
Last, a prayer in this regard:
Blessed are You Oh Lord
Creator of Heaven and Earth
Who has allowed us to participate in this world
I pray that my actions today may be in harmony
with Your Divine Intent
Creator of Heaven and Earth
Who has allowed us to participate in this world
I pray that my actions today may be in harmony
with Your Divine Intent
Master of the Universe,
please grant me the strength to serve You faithfully in this life
and in all future lives to which my soul may return.
Help me to complete all the mitzvot
and rectify all spiritual imperfections,
so that I may lose the self in service to you
until the last note of time
please grant me the strength to serve You faithfully in this life
and in all future lives to which my soul may return.
Help me to complete all the mitzvot
and rectify all spiritual imperfections,
so that I may lose the self in service to you
until the last note of time