Having attended a very academic high school, I was close to completing a bachelor’s degree by the time I finished seminary, and I soon began pursuing a master’s degree in special education.

By the time I met Yochanan, I had a full-time job working in a public school. Although he was everything I was looking for, I was scared to commit to marriage, and when he proposed, I couldn’t bring myself to say yes.

“Look,” he said, in an effort to calm my nerves, “marriage takes work. You try to find someone that you’re, say, 80 percent compatible with — no couple is 100 percent compatible — but even so, if you’re not willing to work on the remaining 20 percent, the marriage will flounder. In the opposite scenario, if you have a couple that’s only 20 percent compatible but is willing to work hard on the other 80 percent, that marriage has a good chance of success.”

Yochanan was only 21 years old at the time, but he was wise beyond his years. At the time, however, I didn’t quite appreciate his wisdom. I thought this was the most unromantic proposal ever.

I did say yes, though.

Since we weren’t being supported, Yochanan learned from the beginning in out-of-the-way kollelim that paid a respectable stipend. In one kollel, he was the youngest member by at least 20 years. Later, he became a rosh kollel in a remote college town. We lived there for a couple of years, after which he became rosh kollel in another faraway city with a tiny frum population. All these years, we lived extremely frugally, saving up a good portion of the money we earned so that we could one day buy a house.

Those years were challenging in many ways. Living far from any established Jewish communities, I had no family or friends nearby, and no support system. In the first ten years of our marriage, we lived in five different cities, most of which lacked basic frum infrastructure.

Although I often felt lonely and frustrated, I never unloaded on my mother, my sisters, or my friends. Yochanan was the one I would cry to. “Tell me what’s wrong,” he would encourage me. “Even if I can’t fix it, I can listen.”

And listen he did. His empathy and understanding made every situation seem bearable, which enabled me to persevere through all the difficulties.

From the time we got married, Yochanan insisted that we have a date night every week. In the beginning, I made fun of him for this, just as I teased him about his unromantic proposal. But he would not allow a week to go by without a date, and eventually I began to recognize the value of this special time together. While other couples grow distant from one another with time, and their relationships turn increasingly businesslike as their families expand and their responsibilities multiply, Yochanan and I managed to maintain the fun and excitement of shanah rishonah even while raising a family and working very hard.

Wherever we lived, I worked in special education, while Yochanan was busy from dawn to midnight learning, teaching, and reaching out to the non-affiliated Jews. But I always knew that if I needed Yochanan, he’d be there for me. If he saw I was really tired, he’d get up for the baby at night, even though he rarely went to sleep before one-thirty and had to be up early in the morning. On the few occasions that I had to call him out of kollel, he’d drop everything and hurry home without a word of complaint. Knowing that I came first in Yochanan’s eyes and that he always had my back gave me a sense of security that allowed me to manage on my own almost all the time.

By the time our oldest daughter was eight, we felt that it was time for us to move to an established frum community, where our children could receive a proper chinuch. But when we considered various options in the Tristate area, we found that the cost of living there was exorbitant, far higher than we could afford. When we sent our daughter to a camp in the Catskills, we had to spend a small fortune on her wardrobe just so that she’d fit in with the other girls. After living on a shoestring budget for years, without feeling pressure from the society around us to live on a higher standard, we didn’t want to move to a place where we’d have to work ourselves to the bone just to earn enough money to meet the community’s material standards.

In the end, we decided to move to Eretz Yisrael. After working in special ed for over a decade, I switched gears and decided to become a real estate agent. Yochanan found a position as shoel u’meishiv in a new yeshivah for American bochurim, where he later became a maggid shiur.

While I was studying to be licensed as a real estate agent, my parents decided to take us to a hotel for Pesach. They invited my married brother to fly in from the US as well, and we spent a beautiful, relaxing Yom Tov together.

I came home feeling achy and exhausted, but after having relaxed all Yom Tov, I didn’t want to complain. I attributed my exhaustion to the stress of studying for the licensing test, which was in Hebrew, a language I was hardly proficient in. When, after several days of feeling fluey, I broke out in a rash from head to toe, I made an appointment with the doctor.

My doctor informed me that it wasn’t the flu, but rather parvovirus, commonly known as fifth disease or slapped cheek syndrome, due to the deep flush it typically causes on the cheeks. I remembered then that there had been several kids in the hotel with those red cheeks, including my friend’s son.

“Parvovirus is usually harmless,” the doctor assured me, “unless you’re expecting, in which it can cause miscarriage or other complications, especially early on.”

Turns out, I was expecting, although I didn’t know it at the time. I recovered from the parvovirus, but shortly afterward I contracted mono. My doctor explained that since my body was working extra hard to keep the pregnancy, after it had been threatened by parvovirus, I was more susceptible to other infections, and that’s probably why I came down with mono.

Mono came along with overwhelming exhaustion. I couldn’t get the kids out in the morning, shop, prepare meals, or put the kids to bed. These responsibilities fell on Yochanan, who shouldered them without complaint. Appreciative as I was of his help, I was eager to resume my household duties.

Finally, after six weeks, I started feeling better and was able to take over the childcare and housework. Now that my strength had returned, I went to see my doctor, who expressed concern that the baby seemed small and sent me for a fetal cardiogram. When the results came back fine, I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that from here on it would be smooth sailing.

At my next checkup the nurse took my blood pressure twice and told me to show the numbers to the doctor. Seeing the numbers, my doctor casually mentioned that I should stop at the local medical clinic sometime during the next week to get another blood pressure reading.

A few days later, on my way to pick up my daughter from gan, I popped into the local clinic to have my blood pressure taken. The nurse took my blood pressure once, and then a second time, and then a third time. “Stay seated,” she instructed me. “I have to show this to the doctor.”

“But I need to go get my kids,” I protested.

The doctor at the clinic took my blood pressure manually, and then started making phone calls. “Can I go?” I pleaded. “I’m going to be late for my daughter’s gan!”

He gave me a funny look. “You need to go straight to the hospital,” he said.

As he furiously typed some information into the computer, I called Yochanan in tears. “You’re going to have to pick up the kids,” I said. “They’re sending me to the hospital for no reason, just because of some misunderstanding. I feel fine!”

In the hospital, I was admitted immediately. It turned out the parvovirus had caused my blood pressure to elevate to a level that was dangerous for both the baby and me.

The doctors actually wanted to deliver the baby right away — four months early, at 25 weeks of gestation. Having worked in special ed, I knew very well what kind of developmental problems this could cause, and, after consulting a rav, I begged the doctors to let the pregnancy continue.

The department’s senior doctors conferred and decided that they would take it day by day. As long as they could stabilize my blood pressure with medication and magnesium infusions, they would allow the pregnancy to continue, but I would have to remain in the hospital for observation until the baby was born. We spoke to a rav who is well-versed in medical issues, as well as a top medical askan, and they advised us to follow this approach.

When I consulted with a top high-risk pregnancy specialist in the US, he agreed with the approach we were taking, but added that I was lucky to be in Israel. “Here in America they would never allow you to continue the pregnancy,” he said.

Even after the senior doctors agreed to keep me under close observation, I had to fight a daily battle to keep the pregnancy. The senior doctors were around only during the day, and each time the night-shift doctors, who were mostly residents, took a look at my blood pressure readings, they sent me to the delivery room. Almost every night, I had to fend off the delivery room staff, by threatening to sue or telling them other gibberish.

I stayed in the hospital for eight grueling weeks, including Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Succos. During this time, I learned what love really is.

Not only did Yochanan care for the kids and the house during that time, while continuing to teach a full day in yeshivah, he also visited me every day bein hasedarim, both at lunchtime and again at night after the kids were asleep. He brought me treats to sweeten my day, told me jokes to lighten my mood, and let me cry to him when I was in pain from the 24-hour magnesium infusions, which felt like fire coursing through my veins. He also helped me fight the night doctors who cared about saving my life but couldn’t understand why I was so insistent that my baby remain inside me for as long as medically possible.

On the Shabbos immediately following Rosh Hashanah he walked three hours from our house to the hospital to ensure that I wouldn’t be alone for too long.

I called my children’s teachers to tell them that I was in the hospital, and that they should be prepared in case my kids acted up or weren’t at their best. “We’d never know you weren’t home,” the teachers all told me. “Your kids look neat and content, and they’re even bringing the same lunches as always, with their vegetables cut up the same way you do.” Somehow, Yochanan was managing to keep the children fed, clothed, bathed, and happy.

Although I was lonely and craved his company, I urged him not to visit me so often. “You need to take care of yourself,” I told him. “I’ll be fine.”

He ignored these protestations and continued visiting.

Our son was born at 33 weeks, weighing only 2.5 pounds but breathing on his own and with his eyes open, much to the amazement of the doctors. “He’s a little miracle,” they exclaimed. His only medical issue was that he was tiny; he remained in the hospital for five weeks, until his weight climbed to 4.5 pounds.

I had always considered myself a strong and independent person, but during the time I was in the hospital, and afterward when our baby was in the NICU, I realized how much I had leaned on Yochanan all the years. He had always been my rock — but he had done such a good job of being my rock that all along I had thought I was standing up on my own.

The longer I’m married, the more I appreciate Yochanan’s “unromantic” proposal — and the way he lived up to it. To him, the concept of v’ahavta lerei’acha kamocha being the central tenet of Torah isn’t merely an abstract teaching, but rather a guiding principle for life. And the reason we’re able to continue devoting our lives to Torah is not because we have outside financial support, but because Yochanan’s learning has never been a source of conflict in our lives and in our marriage.

I was drawn to marry a ben Torah because I saw, in seminary, the type of children that a Torah lifestyle produces. While I am proud of my husband’s learning, I am even more proud of the way he has integrated the Torah he has learned.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 710)