Even in the inky darkness of the bedroom, I could sense the loss of vision. My entire left eye was clouded over in a way that I could physically feel. The panic was instantaneous. I woke my husband — completely unlike me — and tried to explain what I felt. I was at a loss for words, and we whispered back and forth about what to do while I nursed a fussy baby and tried to make sense of what was happening.

I somehow managed to convince myself that there was simply a minor problem with my eye and booked an 8 a.m. appointment with our family doctor. He kindly took a look, and then sent us directly to the hospital.

I’ve thought about this moment many times since then. I was still calm and in control. I called in sick to work and got the kids to their various schools. Packed a single change of clothing and a charger and figured I’d be back soon.

Spoiler alert: I wasn’t.

It was very quickly determined that my eye was physically fine. A CT scan proved that I didn’t, baruch Hashem, have any masses in my head. But neurological testing showed significant weakness along my entire left side, numbness that I’d ignored and rationalized away for weeks as carpal tunnel or a case of Too Much Typing.

Doctors swiftly came to a verdict. I needed to start — today, right now, this minute — a course of high-dose IV steroids that would last an initial five days.

Five days that would take us directly into Shabbos Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur, alone, in a hospital ward? Absolutely not. My whole self fought against this plan, but there was nothing to be done.

Thursday night my family visited, schlepping with them our giant bowl full of challah dough my daughter mixed so that I could do hafrashas challah and not break my 12-year-long streak. It was a very emotional experience that left me drained and uneasy. It was in that moment, elbows deep in a dough I suddenly realized I wouldn’t shape or bake myself, that it really hit me that this was serious business. I felt the dread settle in my chest and it didn’t budge all of Erev Yom Kippur.

As the sun set over Jerusalem and the holiest of days began, I shuffled to the front of the ward (in my fuzzy socks, of course; I forgot that my slippers are leather!) and approached the tray of tea lights. I was having flashbacks to a Shabbos Yom Kippur 11 years earlier when I was in labor with our oldest, without a doubt a much more joyful hospital stay. The day ahead felt daunting and endlessly long, and I fervently davened that I could find a way to make it special.

It was just then that a woman, nervous and sleep deprived and clearly sitting vigil with a family member toward the end of their life, quietly asked me if I could help her light candles. I showed her in my own machzor where the brachos were, said Amen to her carefully murmured prayer, and then we spent a couple of minutes exchanging stories.

She shared that she wished she knew how to daven for her father, a man of true traditional values now facing the last days of his life. I offered to sit and say Tehillim by his bedside with her, and she gratefully accepted. It was a deeply meaningful experience, and I’ve thanked Hashem many times over for giving me a sense of purpose on a day that I desperately needed one. I went to sleep that night feeling less anxious about the long day ahead.

Like the vast majority of mothers of young kids, I spend most Yom Kippurs wishing for a tiny slice of peace to humbly ask Hashem for a good year in between snack times. But this time, most of the day passed in almost complete silence. All that could be heard were the pages of my machzor turning, and the ticking of a clock that told the wrong time but was being made useful by tracking my shiurim of water. Every few hours, I pumped and dumped and then pumped again and carefully sealed those few drops of milk into bags to send to my very confused baby at home.

The chag finally ended, and with it went my hopes of being discharged. I’d spent the entire day asking Hashem for health and a good year; the flip side of that was uncomfortably staring me in the face. But despite my pleas, Sunday morning dawned and my eye had not improved at all. My left side was deteriorating, more numb than not.

Lumbar puncture and MRI results trickled in and the picture became clearer. I had inflamed lesions all over my brain, including on my optic nerve. There was no hesitation at all when it came time to diagnose: multiple sclerosis.

Even then, I wasn’t particularly shaken. Either I didn’t really get it or I didn’t want to. I was perfectly convinced that I’d be fine. Actually, I’d be amazing; once I managed to get back to my life. Who can feel better stuck in an uncomfortable hospital bed away from their children? I looked forward to the next step, which would surely bring relief.

But then another five days of steroids also didn’t help, not in the slightest. The blindness and double vision was difficult to manage, and being trapped in the hospital during the chagim away from my family was traumatic. My baby started to refuse to nurse during my family’s short visits to see me. My father flew in to hold us together, and I started to get antsy. I wanted action, I wanted to be fixed. Right now. So the doctors took a different approach, and ordered six rounds of plasmapheresis.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Plasmapheresis is a procedure where your plasma is filtered out of your bloodstream and replaced with a synthetic version, in the hopes of bringing down systemic inflammation. It involves sitting for several hours at a time with your arms straight out with a large-bore needle in each one. It’s exhausting and uncomfortable, and it takes hours, sometimes days, to recover from each round.

Baruch Hashem, this treatment worked, and slowly I recovered some of my damaged eyesight. Finally, 16 days after that wild morning when everything changed, my worn-out body was able to go home. I looked forward to getting back to life, with this experience left firmly in the past where it belonged.

Then, over the following months, I had two more relapses where I completely lost my vision again, each episode requiring another five-day stay in the hospital.

During this time, we were trying desperately to get me off the incredibly high doses of steroids so I could begin the disease-modifying treatment that would hopefully stop progression in its tracks. Since every time I’d be weaned off the steroids, I’d immediately relapse, we decided to undergo an additional 12 weeks of plasmapheresis to try and stabilize me without the drugs.

It is at this point in my story where I would love to share how every hurdle caused me to grow and how I faced every physical and mental challenge with grace. But between October and February, while battling relapse after relapse, we discovered that the number of lesions in my brain had doubled. So, full transparency? My resolve started to falter.

The medical treatments were just part of the plan. In an effort to support my body’s overall health, I made some extreme lifestyle changes, like cutting out sugar and gluten completely, and swimming multiple times a week. I was doing extensive physical and occupational therapy regularly. I’d finally been cleared to start my disease-modifying treatment, and underwent those infusions with optimism.

I felt that I was doing everything “right,” and I was frustrated with myself that I was still getting worse. I was told over and over that stress makes things a million times harder, but I insisted that I was fine. I simply closed my eyes and held on to my full-time plus job with both (numb) hands, even as it undermined every effort I was putting into getting better.

As Pesach creeped closer, I began to feel “off” yet again. It was then that my doctor looked me in the eye and told me that I was going to permanently disable myself if I didn’t take a break from the stress of work. At those honest and difficult words, I felt a spike of real, existential anxiety, and I finally went on long-term medical leave.

It was far from easy. For a decade I’d worked so hard for my career; letting it go now felt like giving up. Even today, though it’s obvious this was the right choice, it still feels like that. Like I failed. Like I couldn’t overcome the nisayon Hashem gave me with confidence; I simply couldn’t hold the pieces of my life together. Everything was falling apart. It took everything I had to try and keep a sense of normalcy when I felt so unmoored. I began therapy to help process these difficult feelings and, baruch Hashem, my incredible therapist helped keep me on track.

Then, the day after Isru Chag Pesach, I woke up so dizzy and lopsided that my neurologist called us straight in. My entire left side was gone. I couldn’t even lift my foot off the ground. Turning my head even slightly sent the entire room spinning around me. I couldn’t eat or drink due to the nausea, but I was panicking at the thought of yet another hospital stay and tried hard to convince her that I was fine. However, my efforts were in vain, because only ten minutes into her assessment, she had me admitted to the hospital. Again.

Throughout this entire period from Rosh Hashanah to Pesach, I can honestly say that my faith — while tested, absolutely — didn’t crack. I was actively staying positive and driven and upbeat. Even in the hardest moments I felt secure in the knowledge that I could and would get through it.

But at the loss of my mobility, I finally crumbled.

I spent another ten days in the hospital, completely trapped in my bed. I couldn’t stand on my own two feet. I couldn’t sit for extended periods of time. My head was full of cement. And the scary pit of dread and anxiety and depression tried to swallow me whole, and I didn’t have the strength to pull myself out. It is truly in my husband’s zechus that I didn’t fall apart. His encouragement and general attitude of positivity has kept us all afloat during every step of this journey that has felt miles longer than the mere year it’s been so far.

And all that kind of brings me to today. I might be rounding the corner to a year, but I don’t yet feel like I’ve fully embraced my new abilities — or lack thereof. I’m still heartbroken that I don’t have the same creative brand of endless energy and spontaneity that I’ve always had for my kids. I’m still frustrated when I can’t chop vegetables for dinner without cutting off a finger. I’m still sad when I can’t just jump on a chesed meal train like I always have. I’m still exhausted by a simple walk to the makolet. I still feel conspicuous getting around town with my (admittedly very cool) shiny purple cane. I still miss the daily excitement of my career.

I’m still deeply mourning the person I used to be.

So this afternoon, when I sat under the wide expanse of holy sky, I think I was gearing up to ask Hashem, “Why me?” Why do I need to be the one to have their life slashed in half? Why do I have to be in so much daily pain? I would be so much more useful and do so much more good in the world if I was still me. The words were poised on the tip of my tongue.

But what came out instead was, “Show me.”

Show me how I can use this new path to reach You better.

Show me how to be an amazing wife, mother, and friend even with these limitations.

Show me how to refine my middos now that so many of them are being tested.

Show me how to feel shaleim even when acceptance feels out of reach.

Show me how to infuse my life with meaning even when my mind is raging and my body is aching, and I’m exhausted by the effort of simply being alive.

Show me how to fulfill the mission that You put me here to do with this vastly different set of tools.

I didn’t get a direct response, but that’s okay. I leaned into the hum of the prayers of the hundreds of other women around me, and the knowledge that we were all here to talk to Hashem comforted me. I was certain He was listening to each and every one of us. I suddenly felt sure that I will undoubtedly figure this out because I am (thankfully) not the one in control. I’m not in this alone. I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, and I’m being guided to exactly the place I’m supposed to go.

But because I’m only human, and a flawed one at that, it’s possible that this sense of inner peace will be fleeting despite my very best efforts. So here I am, furiously writing this with my one strong hand as we drive through the sun-washed hills of Jerusalem back to our home in Ramat Beit Shemesh.

I want to record these thoughts and revel in the calm that has eluded me so many times in the last year because I know these moments are a direct gift from Hashem. I want to preserve them and lay them carefully in a gilded box in my heart for safekeeping.

I want to keep them tucked nearby; my very own precious, shining gems of bitachon and emunah that I polished myself with grit and tears and the most heartfelt tefillos born of grief.

I want the knowledge that they are always there, so that in the hard moments that are yet to come, I can reach in and feel them, warm and alive in my hands, ready to help me rise to the occasion yet again.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 962)