Two years of choking on the loneliness of keeping our struggle private so that we can feel like regular members of the community. Of drowning in the feeling of isolation that comes with battling a disease so rare that only a handful of similar cases have been documented worldwide.

And now, after these two painful years, I get an update with no good news. My most recent bloodwork and scans show that I need a bone marrow biopsy. Because why not add cancer to the mix?

My husband goes to see a gadol he’s close with. The Rav gives his brachah, takes my Tehillim name, and offers a suggestion of what I can take on as a zechus.

As my husband is leaving, he adds, “Remind your wife that the tefillos of the cholah are the most powerful and pure of all.”

Me, pure?

You know how people going through challenges say that their suffering helped them become the best version of themselves?

Right now, I feel like the worst version of myself.

A bitter, jaded, ugly version. The version that’s been avoiding calls and get-togethers with friends, because hearing them complain about their regular, normal problems makes the toxic knife of jealousy twist deep inside me. The one who is once again stuck in the sinkhole of why me and it’s not fair after working for two long, hard years to triumph over this particular enemy. The one who’s angry and hurt that close friends and family keep saying the wrong things, the one who spews bitterly to her husband that nobody really cares about anyone else.

To the outside world, I keep that smile firmly in place. But Hashem is the One I’m davening to, and He knows how twisted and black my insides have become. I can’t daven to Him like this.

I know it will pass. I’ve been through this cycle before. The shock of the bad news brings out the worst in me, and it’ll take some hard work to get back to acceptance.

But the biopsy is this week, so I need to daven now, not later. And although I’m davening Shacharis every day, and Maariv, and Tehillim whenever I can, I feel like those tefillos are missing what the Rav is talking about.

And then I notice the earrings.

And I remember how, back when my teenage son was just four years old, he went through an unruly stage. It was summertime, and the wonderful head counselor at his day camp was willing to work with my challenging child. The camp had a reward system where the children would earn tokens for good behavior, and at the end of each week, they would redeem their tokens at the camp’s prize store.

My son had a hard time toeing the line, but the head counselor went out of her way to encourage good behavior with a surplus of tokens. The plan worked, and my troublemaker became an angel. Each day, he’d return home, excitedly reporting on his tokens.

So when I went to pick him up that first Friday afternoon and saw him empty-handed, I was surprised. What had happened to all his tokens?

My little boy informed me that he was saving up. Instead of choosing a small prize each week, he wanted to keep them all until the last day of camp so he could use a month’s worth of tokens to buy the biggest prize possible.

The final day of camp arrived. When I came to pick him up, I was the last in a long line of cars. I remember watching my son from a distance. His tiny, freckled nose, his sparkling eyes, his skinny arms hugging the camp bag to his T-shirt.

He ran up to me, peyos flying and face glowing. “Mommy, look what I got with all my tokens!”

He unzipped his bag and held out a little dollar-store jewelry box. Inside was the most awful pair of beaded orange earrings I had ever seen. I couldn’t imagine what he was doing with it — it must have been one of the prizes for the little girls’ bunks.

But then he shyly held it out to me. “It’s a present for you, Mommy. Do you like it?”

My rambunctious boy had worked to behave himself all summer, saved and counted and sweated over a hundred little tokens for all his hard work, and with it, he bought a gift for me.

He was struggling, he was having a tough time, he was pushing himself way past his little four-year-old limits, and through it all, he wanted to connect with me, his mother.

I still cry every time I look at those earrings.

I slowly open my siddur.

My tefillos may not feel so pure right now. But I know with sudden clarity that Someone might yet find them precious.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 982)