Rebeltzin

Since moving here, customs have become very important to me. It almost feels like being that my children are being raised without the regular infrastructure that so many families have it’s all up to us. So I try so hard to incorporate all the customs I was brought up with into our lives.

The clearest way to see this is in the food we eat. While we love kale, smoothies and our whole grains, my children love to eat potato kugel, chicken soup, challah and Brisket. As each holiday comes around, I work hard to cook all the traditional foods.

Until Yom Kippur..

For some reason I can’t get Kreplach right.

Every year i try another hack from another blogger and they just don’t work.

My vision of my family sitting down to hot soup with kreplach is usually some confused faces poking at blobs of dough and meat.

It almost seems as though Hashem wants me to get it wrong.

So last night as my Kreplach turned into an epic fail once again I formulated some thoughts.

Hashem, I guess you’re telling me it’s ok to be imperfect. it’s ok to make mistakes. What matters is we keep on trying time after time. We don’t give up. We come to you year after year not as perfect angels but as imperfect human beings who try and try again.

And year after year with your endless love, you accept us, you love us and you seal us for another year of life.

It’s ok to be imperfect, it’s ok to fail. Let’s accept our imperfections along with the imperfections of those around us.

I look forward to my bowl of soup and kreplach today. I look forward to staring my imperfections in the face and to telling my children that mommy’s make mistakes too.

Gmar Chatimah Tovah to you all

I recently had a long talk with one of my oldest and closest friends. We hadn’t talked in a while and spent a long time filling each other in on our current struggles. Some of the things we shared were things that we knew would pass. They weren’t easy but we knew they were temporary. Some of the things we talked about were really tough, situations with no easy solutions, questions with no easy answers.

Throughout our talk, we laughed and joked and reminded ourselves and each other over and over again that we need to stay positive and upbeat, accept whatever Hashem send our way with Ahavah – love.

When I put the phone down I didn’t feel depressed, I felt uplifted. We’d just had a conversation about really hard challenges that aren’t going away anytime soon. Yet our conversation confirmed something I’d been thinking about for a while, ” Everyone is fighting a Silent Battle.”

I am truly blessed and lucky to be on Shlichus. It has been my dream since I was a teenager and I find my work uplifting and a privilege.

As a Shlucha I talk to a lot of people. And I’ve realized something ….. no one has it easy. The people we may think have it all are fighting their own battles, some harder than you can imagine. Yet the human spirit is unbelievable. These women smile and just get on with life. Learning this has been so humbling, as I’ve realized we really and truly have no idea what another human being is living through.

Until Moshiach comes there are going to be tests and hard times… and we have the opportunity to smile and learn to grow from our struggles and learn to see them as growing experiences Hashem has sent our way.

I’m learning to look at others with empathy and love and reserve judgment on them.

I’m learning that happiness is a choice we make each and every day.

I’m learning that there is a lot more to life than meets the eyes.

So this is going to be what I’m going to write about. My daily journeys to trying to be the best version of myself, to trying to make the biggest impact I can have, to trying to be an awesome wife and mom, trying to smile as much as possible while living a pretty intense lifestyle.

I’m not sure If this is a journal or if I may let people see it…

I guess we’ll see..

Good Night Beautiful World

xoxoxo