Having a thin daughter felt like a relief. I knew she’d never be told she was beautiful from “the neck up,” or  that if she didn’t start dieting she’d have a hard time getting married. I knew she’d never fall asleep crying because a complete stranger screamed, “Fattie!” from across the street. I knew that if she’d ever join a gym, she wouldn’t have to worry about the girls behind her making fun of the chubby girl exercising.

“Where does she come from?” more than one of my friends have asked when they see her looking shining and radiant and beautifully skinny.

She comes from my tefillos, but I am ashamed to tell them that.

Why didn’t I daven for more? Why didn’t I daven for friends, and happiness, and the emotional and intellectual capacity to keep up in class and in social settings? Why didn’t I daven to never be lonely? Why had I obsessed over weight and failed to realize the abundance of gifts that made my life so full?

My beautiful and thin daughter does not care that she is beautiful and thin. She spends many hours crying to Hashem to give her friends, to help her keep up in school. She davens for invitations for playdates and to not always be lonely and wondering why she just can’t seem to get it. My beautiful and thin daughter has endured too many hours of testing and therapies and even medications, but a real diagnosis and fix eludes us, and all she knows is that she’s just not quite like them.

My beautiful and thin daughter does not have special needs, but she doesn’t not have special needs. Sometimes I wish she would. Because if she fell into a neat little box, she could have defined services and support. And people would understand and nod their heads and maybe send over volunteers to keep her company on Shabbos. Instead, she plays Rummikub with her parents while staring anxiously at the front door, willing to hear a knock. Maybe if she fell into a box people wouldn’t look at us weirdly, wondering why she attends a school or a camp that subscribes to a different hashkafah than we do, offering unsolicited advice framed in a question: “Did you consider Camp XYZ instead?”

And maybe she wouldn’t be hurting every single night, each new rejection slicing through her slender body, leaving her racked with sobs when she thinks we’re sleeping. Maybe I wouldn’t find myself lying next to her at midnight, cradling my almost teenager in my arms like a baby, davening together that tomorrow be a better day. Maybe the two of us wouldn’t have to negotiate with Hashem for just three friends, or even just one good one, and then we’ll never ask for anything again, we promise.

Maybe I wasted my own teenage years davening to be thin instead of to be happy?

My next daughters are chubby. Yummy and delicious and beautiful, but decidedly chubby. And when they come to me crying because a friend said something mean, or they can’t wear the same T-shirts the rest of their friends are wearing, I feel that familiar ache from many years ago. My eyes sting with tears, because the pain is still so fresh — only worse that it is now my children who are hurting.

But also, my eyes sting with tears because did they say friends? They have friends, they have friends, they have friends. There’s a spring in my steps and a lightness in my life — my children have friends!

Then I think maybe it’s not my fault that my thin daughter has no friends. Maybe there’s nothing I could or could not have done to prevent any of my children’s pain. Maybe this is what each of their neshamos needs to fulfill their own tafkid. Maybe this one needs to be lonely and struggling but thin and beautiful, while these two need to be chubby, but well-adjusted and popular.

And maybe, I need to separate my own pain from theirs, because I am merely the shaliach blessed to raise them.

As I scoop up each one of my delicious girls and plant kisses on their foreheads, I can’t help but wonder how many generations of tefillos Hashem is answering in this very moment, all of us together, exactly how He intended it.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 920)