The first time I visited the home of my new mechutanim, a Sephardic couple from the old country who looked the way I would envision Avraham Avinu and Sarah Imeinu looking, they took me to their backyard in their moshav and showed me the sheep grazing there. Pointing to one of the sheep, they proudly informed me, their Ashkenazi mechuteiniste from Boro Park, “This one is for the Shabbat Chattan.”

At the Shabbat Chattan — known, where I come from, as the Shabbos sheva brachos — my mechutan came over to me carrying a piece of mutton from that slaughtered sheep and placed it into my soup.

I swallowed hard. And then I ate the meat, thinking about my own lost sheep.

I grew up in very sheltered home, one of 11 children in a choshuve, Torahdig family. I married Reuven, the son of a rosh yeshivah, whose grandfather was one of the gedolei hador, and we settled in one of the most chareidi communities in Eretz Yisrael.

We were a typical frum couple raising a family of beautiful frum children — until 15 years ago, when everything changed.

One day, my oldest daughter, Gitty, who was 14 at the time, came home from visiting a friend in a different city and confided to me that a frum-looking man had accosted her briefly in the hallway of her friend’s building. I was horrified, and I listened to her and empathized with her. Thankfully, nothing serious had happened.

After that, Gitty was afraid to be alone in hallways or stairwells, and developed a deep antipathy toward certain sectors of chareidi society. But other than that, I didn’t notice anything odd about her behavior.

Shortly afterward, she decided to go on a diet. She had always been chubby, but now she lost a lot of weight and became thin, looking good but not emaciated. Now that she could wear styles suitable for thin girls, she began dressing more fashionably. Soon, she started leaving a couple of buttons open at the top of her shirt. At first, I would walk over to her and gently close the offending button, but she consistently responded with anger and disgust, storming off to her room and refusing to talk to me, so I quickly stopped doing that.

Next, I noticed that she was listening to non-frum radio stations on her MP3 player and that she was doodling pictures that were, shall we say, not in the spirit of her chareidi upbringing and education. Her wardrobe, while still technically within the parameters of tzniyus, expanded to include items like T-shirts with writing across the front, dangling earrings, and jean skirts — none of which are considered acceptable in our community.

I was confounded. What was going on with my sweet, good, frum daughter? At the time, I didn’t connect Gitty’s rebellious behavior with the disturbing incident in the hallway, and I didn’t realize how devastating to her the seemingly minor encounter had been.

Her friends, all good Bais Yaakov girls, felt uncomfortable with her newfound attire and interests, and started distancing themselves from her. Within a short time, rumors began to circulate throughout the class that she was up to no good, and at the end of tenth grade her school expelled her. At the time, she was not actually doing anything seriously problematic, but, as she told me much later, hearing these malicious rumors prompted her to cross a red line. The girls in her class were whispering that she had a boyfriend, so she decided to go find herself one.

Even more alarmingly, she started to catch the attention of the Arab delivery boys who came around the neighborhood. When I saw these boys winking at her, I knew it was time to take drastic action. Many a Jewish girl has ended up a virtual prisoner in an Arab village after striking up a friendship with one of these young Arab workers, and I did not want that to happen to Gitty.

Chinuch experts in Eretz Yisrael advised us to send her out of the country immediately. We sent her to an overnight camp in America, after which we found an American Beis Yaakov that was willing to take her and a family that agreed to have her board with them.

Seeing that Gitty was suffering, we sent her for therapy in America, but by then she was too resistant to work with. I realized then that had I sent her for professional help immediately after the incident in the hallway, before she began showing signs of rebellion, she could likely have processed the trauma in a healthy manner. But since she had been left to process it on her own, it had eaten away at her self-esteem and caused her tremendous pain — pain that she had no way of resolving.

By the time we sent her for help, it was too late to reverse her decline. Her dress and behavior became increasingly inappropriate, and in the middle of the year, the school felt they had no choice but to expel her. The principal expressed to me his regret, and left me with a message from which I would derive much chizuk in the challenging years to come.

“When you walk around with your daughter looking the way she does,” he said, “you should think of yourself as the mother of a child who doesn’t have hair because she’s undergoing chemo. That bald child has cancer of the body, and your daughter has cancer of the neshamah.”

We managed to keep Gitty in America for another few months, but at that point she had nothing to do and we had to bring her back to Eretz Yisrael.

Now the question was what to do with her. She was 17, and had her own ideas of how to live her life: how to dress, how to have fun, who to hang out with. She was no longer shomer Shabbos, and did not want to come home and be squelched by our frum lifestyle.

Seeking guidance, we were directed to a Yerushalmi rav named Rav Fleischberg who was known for his expertise in working with at-risk youth. He advised us to send Gitty to live in a residence for troubled frum girls, where the girls had plenty of freedom but also a safe place to call home. They were required to hold down a job during the day, be home at night in time for 11 p.m. curfew, and see a therapist once a week. Inside the residence, they were expected to keep Shabbos, perform certain chores, and abide by other basic rules, but on the whole, the atmosphere was warm and non-restrictive.

Gitty was actually very happy there. While there, she worked at a few minimum-wage positions — in a pizza shop, a stationery store, a supermarket — until we found her a job washing sheitels for a sheitelmacher we knew. Unbeknownst to her, we were the ones paying her salary at that job.

Gitty harbored tremendous anger toward Reuven and me, and wanted nothing to do with us. But Rav Fleischberg encouraged us to keep up a connection with her.

In keeping with his advice, I would go visit Gitty in her apartment, bringing packages of goodies and little gifts to show my love for her. While there, I would make a big show of being interested in what was going on in her life, even as I gagged internally. I forced myself to laugh at the off-color jokes of her friends in the residence, many of whom were drug addicts, and participated enthusiastically in conversations about the latest postings on Facebook and other social media I knew nothing about. Seeing how well I was able to shoot the breeze with her friends, Gitty developed a new admiration for me: I was the cool, with-it mom, even if I looked like a regular chareidi woman.

These visits drained me terribly, though. On those mornings it was hard to drag myself out of bed, and often, when I came home, I couldn’t put supper on the table. In general, it was hard to get up each morning and face the world. Vis-א-vis my neighbors and community, I was ashamed; vis-א-vis myself, I was racked with feelings of guilt and failure and broken to pieces inside, like Humpty Dumpty after his fall.

It was Rav Fleischberg who kept putting the shattered pieces of me back together again. When I cried to him, “Why is Hashem punishing me like this?” he assured me that Gitty’s behavior was not my fault and that I should not feel responsible for her deterioration. Furthermore, he added, her issues with tzniyus had nothing to do with Yiddishkeit, and everything to do with her being in pain.

He continually urged me to be purely positive with Gitty, and not to utter a word of criticism to her. Although I, too, was angry and hurting, the knowledge that Gitty’s behavior was a result of pain, not spite or malice, helped me to muster compassion and love for her even as I raged inside.

Each time I looked at Gitty, I wanted to shake her and yell, “Gitty! Are you crazy? Do you realize what you’re doing? Shape up!” But I held myself back, knowing that criticism would accomplish nothing but to alienate her further.

Reuven, son of a rosh yeshivah, grandson of a gadol hador, had an even harder time than I did with Gitty’s rebellion. From the time she left to America, he wanted nothing to do with her. Although he remained involved behind the scenes, looking into schools and trying to find suitable arrangements for her, he wanted to show her that he was angry. He didn’t join me on my visits to her at the residence, nor did he come with me to speak to Rav Fleischberg. I felt that I was in this all alone, which was horribly painful. But at least he didn’t object to my consulting with the rav or following his advice.

After several months, upon the encouragement of the people running her residence, Gitty started coming home for visits. Those visits were tense times in our house, with hardly a word being exchanged between Reuven and Gitty. He did smile at her, though, and I went out of my way to indulge her with special foods and give her money generously. On her birthday, Reuven and I took her out to a restaurant and had the waiters present her with a cake and sing “Happy Birthday.”

Sensing our love, Gitty decided she wanted to come back home for good. Rav Fleischberg advised me to lay down two rules. One, she had to cover her collarbone, elbows, and knees in the house. Two, she could not be mechallel Shabbos outside her room. Inside her room was her own space.

“Don’t check what she’s doing in there,” he told me.

Following that advice, we didn’t say a word when Gitty smoked out the window of her room on Shabbos, or when she used foul language in the house, or when she changed to a sleeveless top and shorts upon leaving the house. Thankfully, my neighbors were, for the most part, kind and sensitive enough not to complain about the way she was dressed.

One day, when Gitty went out dressed in her “outdoor” clothing, I decided to accompany her to the bus. By this point, she had dyed her hair white-blonde and was sporting black nail polish, a nose ring, and three earrings in one ear. A package of cigarettes peeked out of the pocket of her too-tight jeans.

Think of her as a cancer patient, I told myself as we walked together.

Suddenly, Gitty turned to me and asked, “Mommy, are you embarrassed to walk with me?”

I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t just embarrassed; I was mortified. Should I lie to her and deny that?

Hashem put the right words in my mouth. “Gitty,” I said, “you were born without any clothing, and I loved you to pieces then. That hasn’t changed.”

Furious as Reuven was with Gitty, from the moment she returned to the house, he completely shifted his stance and adopted the same attitude of positivity and acceptance that Rav Fleischberg had drilled into me. Uniting in our efforts to do the right thing for our daughter, regardless of what others in our family and community thought, brought us closer together, allowing us to grow from our shared pain instead of being broken by it.

But having Gitty living at home posed challenges for the entire family. My next daughter was not accepted to high school because of her, and Reuven and I had to pull every bit of protektziya we could muster to find a suitable school for her, even though she was a great girl with no issues.

One day, my five-year-old daughter Suri came home crying that her friends’ parents had forbidden them to play in our house because of Gitty. My heart went out to her.

I consulted with a parenting expert whose classes I had taken, and she told me, “Empower your own family and forget about everyone else.” In other words, my job as a mother was to keep our family unit intact, even if other people had a problem with that.

I went back to Suri and said, “We can either kick Gitty out of the house, and then all your friends can play here, or we can keep Gitty home and you can play with your friends outside the house.”

Given the choice, little Suri immediately responded, “Of course we should keep Gitty.”

When I found myself worrying that Gitty would negatively influence my other children, I told myself that if we were following daas Torah and doing what was right, our children would not be harmed.

With Gitty living at home, I had to learn to stop caring what anyone else in the world thought. One day, a respected talmid chacham from the neighborhood knocked at my door and reported, in a frantic voice, that he had seen my 14-year-old son Eliezer walking with a girl who was dressed terribly inappropriately.

“Yes,” I replied calmly, “that’s our dear daughter.”

I myself was surprised, and quite impressed, by my ability to respond without discomfort. If I was no longer worried about what people would say, that meant I had succeeded in accepting the nisayon Hashem had given me and recognizing that I had to do what was right in His eyes. For a long time I had faked my acceptance of Gitty; now, I realized, my acceptance had become real.

In the meantime, shortly before her 18th birthday, Gitty decided she wanted to go back to school so that she could pursue a degree. I asked Rav Fleischberg if we should pay for her schooling, and his answer was an emphatic yes — “even if it means selling your house,” he said. By a stroke of Hashgachah, I discovered that at exactly that time the local municipality was starting a tuition-free program to prepare at-risk chareidi youths for the bagrut matriculation exams. The teachers in this new program were very warm, and Gitty did well there and began pulling her life together. Her language improved, she became less self-absorbed, and she seemed more at peace with herself and the world.

While still studying in this school, Gitty met a Sephardic boy named Yoav who was studying in a yeshivah for struggling bochurim, and for the next two years they hung out together regularly. The good news was that he was actually stronger in Yiddishkeit than she was, and thanks to his influence, she began dressing more modestly, exchanging her pants and shorts for skirts.

Rav Fleischberg was of the opinion that Gitty and Yoav had to get married. “Marriages like these don’t usually last,” he informed me solemnly, “and often, the breakup happens after there’s already a baby or two in the picture. But you can’t stop this relationship, and it’s better they should get married than continue this way.”

He advised me not to allow Yoav into the house until the two were engaged. But Gitty was convinced that no engagement was in the offing. “Yoav is planning to start college soon,” she told me. “He’s not ready to get married.”

I took the opportunity to caution Gitty that the differences between her upbringing and Yoav’s would likely be a significant obstacle in a relationship. “His background and mentality are completely different from yours,” I pointed out. “It’s hard to be married to someone with whom you have so little in common.”

Gitty waved off my concerns. “We’re not getting engaged anytime soon,” she said.

The very next day, Gitty came home at 5 a.m. with a diamond ring on her finger. “Yoav proposed,” she said shyly, “and I said yes.”

I decided, at that moment, to treat Gitty as a regular kallah and this as a regular engagement. Despite my serious misgivings about the match, I pledged to myself that not a single negative word about Yoav would pass my lips. I awakened Reuven to tell him the news, and then hurried to call all of our relatives in America, where it was 10 p.m., and joyously inform them of our simchah.

When Yoav walked through the door that day for a l’chayim, Reuven and I welcomed him to the family warmly and immediately accepted him as our new son-in-law. By now, we’d had lots of practice at acceptance, which helped us cope with the awkwardness of introducing Yoav to the many relatives, friends, and neighbors who didn’t quite know what to make of this chattan. We acted as though we were thrilled with the shidduch, and our guests mostly followed suit.

Never having met Yoav before, I was actually quite impressed by him. He came to our house dressed appropriately and behaved very respectfully, even pouring me a drink. He was kind to Gitty, and treated his parents, old-time Teimanim, with obvious respect.

Throughout the engagement and wedding period, I tried to focus on what I had to be grateful for: Gitty was getting married and settling down. Her husband was Jewish. He was from a frum, sweet family. He was becoming frummer himself, and so was she. Still, with each wedding invitation I sealed, I cringed.

We held a beautiful wedding for Yoav and Gitty, with my husband’s grandfather, the famed Litvish gadol, acting as mesader kiddushin, and the brachos recited by Sephardic Jews in their traditional pronunciation. I tried valiantly to keep up with the unfamiliar dances of the Sephardic women, while my son Eliezer and his friends bewildered the men on the other side of the mechitzah with their yeshivish horas.

The Shabbos after the wedding, Yoav’s parents hosted us for the Shabbat Chattan, at which I partook of the slaughtered sheep from their backyard.

Yoav and Gitty moved to his parents’ moshav, and a year after the wedding they had a baby. In the meantime, Gitty became increasingly frum, not only on the outside, but on the inside as well: She started to daven fervently and develop a genuine relationship with Hashem. The open, nonjudgmental atmosphere of the moshav — a stark contrast to the strictly in-the-box community in which she had grown up — gave Gitty the space to think, grow, and decide of her own accord to fully re-embrace Yiddishkeit.

The greatest difficulty she encountered in the process was actually the fact that Yoav’s Sephardic-Israeli mentality was so, so different from the Ashkenazi-American mentality she had absorbed in our home. Back when she was just hanging out with Yoav, these differences had seemed trivial, even charming. But when trying to build a home together, they became almost insurmountable.

No one would have been surprised if the two had thrown up their hands and divorced within a couple of years. They persevered, however, and today, seven years later, not only do they have a stable, if complex, marriage, but Yoav has recently become a full-time kollel student.

Yoav and Gitty know that we love and respect them, and they often come to us for Shabbos and Yom Tov, even though our minhagim are so different from theirs, and it has to be odd for Yoav to be surrounded by English-speaking Litvaks. One of the greatest testimonies to the strength of my relationship with Gitty today is that I am the person she is most comfortable turning to when she is going through a difficult time and needs support.

A couple of years ago, when my son Eliezer was in shidduchim, a set of prospective mechutanim sent someone to inquire whether he had any relationship with Gitty. “He actually has a very close relationship with her,” I replied. If these people don’t want us because of our daughter, I thought, they’re not the right mechutanim for us.

Turns out, my answer was exactly what these mechutanim wanted to hear. They were seeking the assurance that we had maintained a close relationship with our daughter despite her not fitting the mold of our family; they took that as an indication that we were loving, accepting people. Eliezer subsequently got engaged to their daughter, his shidduch not harmed in the least by the walks he had taken with his wayward sister years earlier.

Eliezer’s shidduch reinforced to me the beliefs I had clung to throughout our ordeal with Gitty: Hashem runs the world, He knows what’s best for us, and in raising the children He gives us our job is to do His will alone.

Thanks to my ordeal with Gitty, my connection to HaKadosh Baruch Hu has deepened and become far more authentic. I recognize that I have zero control over my life and am able to let go and accept what Hashem has in store for me. I have become far more understanding and far less judgmental. And I’m able to live my life without giving a hoot what other people think.

Recently, Gitty mentioned to me that she had heard in a shiur that we have to know that HaKadosh Baruch Hu loves us unconditionally. “Ma,” she said, “thanks to you, I know exactly what that feels like.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 732)