Over the past few years, these seven LifeLines narrators have shared their memorable stories of struggle and growth, adversity and triumph. Where are they now?

See You at the Door

Issue: 406

Story Name: At Your Door

The Challenge: With my husband totally broken by his debts how would we live?

Recap// My husband lost his job and then fell into serious debt after a failed business venture. With 13 children to marry off and huge debts to repay we desperately needed money — but my husband was too broken to work or even go around collecting tzedakah. Someone had to rescue my family so I picked myself up and started knocking at people’s doors for donations each night after I finished work.

Where are they now? 

The Update//  

I

don’t speak or read English. But I’ve knocked on the door of countless frum families in Yerushalayim and Bnei Brak, including that of C. Saphir, who asked me if I’d be willing to share my story. Since my story is already well known to so many strangers — along with the curse of poverty comes the loss of much privacy and personal dignity — I agreed.

I was pleasantly surprised — shocked, actually — when, immediately after the story’s publication, I received a $5,000 donation from an anonymous Mishpacha reader in chutz la’Aretz who was moved by the story. Mi k’amcha Yisrael.

But there were other surprises as well. It’s always uncomfortable to knock on a stranger’s door and ask for money. After the story’s publication, it happened many times that I showed my fundraising letter to English-speaking people who said, “Oh, it’s you! The lady in the LifeLines story! It’s so nice to meet you!”

Suddenly, I wasn’t just a lowly beggar woman — I was a celebrity! Especially meaningful to me was when people told me that they had learned from my story. Some women told me that their shalom bayis had actually improved as a result of my story, because they had learned not to fight with their husbands or blame them for mistakes they made, financial or otherwise.

I have, baruch Hashem, managed to repay all $800,000 of our original debt. The only debt that remains is the approximately $60,000 we still owe as a result of marrying off our youngest son several years ago. So the end of our debt is in sight.

What isn’t in sight, at least according to derech hateva, is the end of my door-to-door fundraising career. I earn approximately $600 a month from my work in the Ministry of Religious Affairs, while my husband receives an old-age pension from the National Insurance Institute for a similar amount. That $1,200 is the extent of our monthly income, and since most of that money goes to pay our rent, I am compelled to continue collecting just in order to pay our living expenses.

Many of the people who helped us in the past have become tired of giving us money; they say they feel like an ATM machine. I understand them, and I don’t feel that they, or anyone, owe me anything. But I do appreciate when people come right out and tell me, “I can’t help you now,” rather than hurrying away when they notice me, or not opening the door when they see I’m there, or giving me the runaround by repeatedly telling me to come back a different time. If someone can’t help me, that’s fine; Hashem has other messengers.

“Ribbono shel Olam,” I say, “You know I need money to live. My husband can’t help. Only You can.”

And He does. I see miracles every month, when I am somehow able to pay my bills and make my debt repayments.

Among these miracles is that despite being sidelined several times in recent years due to various injuries and illnesses, I recovered each time and was able to resume my fundraising.

I’m 66 today. How much longer will I be able to trek all over Yerushalayim and Bnei Brak knocking on people’s doors for donations? I don’t know. But I’ve always believed that Hashem will be good to me, that tomorrow things will be better, that Mashiach will come and put an end to all our tzaros.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to see you at the door.

Positive parenting — with boundaries

Issue: 435

Story Name: Positive Parenting

The Challenge: My son was headed for juvenile delinquency. Was a hard-line approach the answer?

Recap// All the parenting courses books and shiurim advocated positivity in dealing with kids but our oldest child Noach simply was not responding to that approach. Diagnosed with ADHD ODD and various learning and sensory issues Noach was out of control at home and in the classroom.

In desperation we sent him away to a hard-line yeshivah that imposed drastic consequences for misbehavior even calling the police to restrain unruly students. At the same time we began following a different parenting approach that advocated a zero-tolerance policy for disrespectful behavior. For the first time my husband and I found ourselves on the same page in our parenting and Noach finally settled down and started behaving like a mensch.

Where are they now?

The Update// 

T

he military-style approach to chinuch didn’t sit so well with me, and unfortunately, its success was short-lived. By the time we started with it, Noach was already on the road to dropping Yiddishkeit, and I was grasping desperately for a new type of chinuch, a new school, anything to help my kid from slipping off the derech.

But we can’t always stop our kids from falling. They need to go through their own journey and discover HaKadosh Baruch Hu for themselves.

In tenth grade, Noach tossed his yarmulke, stopped keeping Shabbos and kashrus, and refused to attend yeshivah. Instead, he went to public school — where, for the first time in his life, his teachers were equipped to deal with his learning disabilities and his peers did not make fun of him.

When Noach went off the derech, I was forced to reconsider my entire parenting approach yet again. And I realized that while the approach of harsh discipline had been dangerously misguided, my initial approach of pure positivity — only love, warmth, acceptance, etc. — had been incorrect as well. What Noach needed was a balance: nonnegotiable boundaries set with love and acceptance, not with harshness or intimidation.

Until then, I had never believed in myself as a parent. I’m a baalas teshuvah, and I always felt that I don’t know how to raise kids properly because I didn’t grow up frum. Shaky as I was in my parenting, I sought advice constantly, took all sorts of parenting courses, and read every chinuch book out there (I think I have every one).

But when Noach rebelled, I suddenly knew how to be a great parent. I knew how to set boundaries for him, how to spend time with him, how to love him, talk to him, be there for him.

And I realized, to my surprise, that these were all things I had learned from my own parents. The answers were all inside of me. How could I have missed that?

Yes, I could accept Noach without his yarmulke and love him even though he was staying out late and hanging out with all sorts of no-good friends. And no, he could not be mechallel Shabbos in front of the family or be disrespectful to his parents or hurt anyone.

Along with making it clear to Noach what the boundaries were, I started putting a lot more effort into making it fun to be part of our family. We went on camping trips, on hikes, to concerts, even on a family trip to the Grand Canyon. I also spent a lot of one-on-one time with Noach, taking him shopping, doing fun things with him, cooking his favorite foods, and just schmoozing with him in a relaxed, nonjudgmental way. Sometimes, he would tell me what his off-the-derech friends were up to, and then he would say, “Why am I telling you this? You’re my mother!” But then he would continue talking to me, because he felt safe sharing with me.

I realized that he actually needed to talk to me more now that he was off the derech, because the big, bad world out there is a really scary and dangerous place to be. Finding himself outside the cozy cocoon of frum society, Noach desperately needed a mother to talk to and confide in.

At the same time, I tried to help Noach find ways to be productive, instead of sleeping all day and hanging out all night. I arranged a summer job for him where, unbeknownst to him, his parents were actually the ones paying his salary.

At 18, Noach hit his personal rock bottom when he and his friends got into trouble with the police and were thrown into jail. There, Noach called out to Hashem, and in a short time, he was released from jail. After that, he started taking on mitzvos again, one by one, until he came back on the derech fully. One day he even asked me to buy him a suit, a black yarmulke, and tzitzis. He also started attending yeshivah for part of the day.

Yeshivah wasn’t a good fit for him, with his learning issues, but we found him a vocational program where he could learn for a couple of hours and spend the rest of the day learning a trade. Today, he gets up for k’vasikin every day, takes his younger brothers to school, and helps me with cooking and cleaning. Best of all, he’s a happy person.

Having seen the life out there that he thought was better, he realizes that it’s actually not so nice living out there. He’d rather be part of a caring frum community, even if it’s not perfect. Most important, he has developed a strong relationship with HaKadosh Baruch Hu.

In the process of raising Noach, I learned a lot about parenting. I learned that pure positivity doesn’t work, and that harshness certainly doesn’t work, even if it may sometimes yield good results in the short run. Mostly, I learned that the biggest parenting expert is you. Your child is an individual, and only you can raise that child. Experts and books and shiurim can give you tools and insights, but you have to be able to filter all that advice through your own G-d-given parenting instincts and figure out which situations call for imposing firm (but loving) boundaries, which situations call for extra warmth and positivity, and which situations call for looking away from the child’s behavior. Seeking guidance is essential, as is constant tefillah, but you also need to learn to listen to your own inner wisdom and trust yourself.

Mighty Water Can’t Extinguish the Love

Issue: 509

Story Name: Out of the Blue

The Challenge: A dream scuba diving excursion in the stunning Caribbean Sea turned into a life-threatening nightmare — and a wakeup call

Recap// When I was 16 off the derech and on drugs my desperate parents sent me to a desert boot camp in Eilat where I earned a scuba diving license — the first big achievement of my life. Later while diving near the Bahamas I ran out of oxygen and although my buddy helped me make it safely to the surface once there he didn’t realize I was in distress and unable to ride the powerful waves. My near-drowning experience made me think seriously for the first time about Hashem and about what I really wanted in life and spurred me to enroll in a yeshivah and turn my life around.

Where are they now? 

The Update//

I

was one of the first victims of unconditional love.

The phrase started entering the frum lexicon at around the time when I started going off the derech and using drugs. My hysterical parents sought advice from an expert who coached them on the “unconditional love” approach and instructed them to buy me a laptop (this was before iPhones) with open Internet access and a library of preloaded movies.

When my father presented me with the laptop on Erev Pesach, the message was clear: we know you’re a mechallel Shabbos, and we’re fully expecting you to use this on Yom Tov. I suppose the thinking was that this would keep me off the street and away from drugs. But all it did was confuse me.

All the years, my parents had maintained rigid rules: you have to wear a hat and jacket wherever you go, you have to sit at the Shabbos table the entire time, you must say a devar Torah at every meal. We never, ever watched movies, and the only music we were allowed to listen to was Yossele Rosenblatt. Now that I was officially “at-risk,” however, the expert advised them to drop all the rules cold turkey. In addition to the laptop, I received my own credit card with a generous spending limit, and my father personally escorted me to all sorts of amusement parks and attractions that he would never have allowed me to step foot into before. (He actually came with me on a wild roller-coaster ride, during which he lost his yarmulke. Definitely some irony there.)

But did I feel loved by all this? Absolutely not. Oh, yeah, at first it felt cool to have all this freedom and money, but deep down it was terrifying. I felt as though my parents had given up on me. Even if they didn’t utter a word of criticism about the choices I was making, I knew their values hadn’t changed. They didn’t want me to be watching movies, they didn’t want me to be mechallel Shabbos, they didn’t want me wearing jeans and T-shirts. So if they were actively encouraging me to do those things, it must mean they thought I’d never amount to anything. Why else would they change their rules so abruptly?

I have a lot of friends who do drugs, or did. Some of my friends died of overdose. The common denominator among all of them is that they were very hurt — whether by their parents, their teachers, their friends, or their society. Does the hurt go away if your parents indulge your every whim? No. It’s something you have to work through, at your own pace, and the process isn’t accelerated by parents giving you the green light to flout everything they hold dear.

On the contrary — when my parents gave me whatever I wanted, including things that ran counter to their own values and beliefs, I felt like a total failure. It was as though my parents were telling me, “You’re messed up for life. You’re never going to fit into the normal we brought you up to fit into.”

The way I see it, the “unconditional love” that some experts are promoting today is a highly emotional, knee-jerk response to the terror parents feel when their child engages in self-destructive behavior, whether physical or spiritual. They can’t handle the situation, so they go ahead and give their at-risk kids whatever they want (or claim to want), whether it’s buying them treif food, allowing them to live a depraved life right under their parents’ roof, or sitting by silently while the kid is mechallel Shabbos in front of the their faces.

Do you think the kid doesn’t know that his parents are crying inside, despite their valiant attempts to show him that they’re cool with the horrible stuff he’s doing? Do you think a kid feels loved when his parents trample on their own values in a desperate effort to prevent him from overdosing or otherwise ruining his life?

If parents are being eaten up inside by what their kid is doing, then no matter how enthusiastically they encourage him to do those very things, they are not loving him unconditionally. What they are doing is giving him a very conflicted message. Trust me, when parents go out and buy their kid a cheeseburger, the kid doesn’t feel loved. He hates himself.

You know what real unconditional love looks like? It’s when a kid does something wrong and the parents show him that they love him regardless of what he did — and then discipline him. Because when you love someone unconditionally, you create boundaries for them. You don’t let them do whatever they want if those things are going to harm them irrevocably. A kid has to know that even if he makes mistakes, even if he goofs in a big way, he’s still going to be loved and cared for and safe. And because you love him, you’re not going to let him destroy his life.

Unconditional love is a feeling — it’s not about the tangible things you give your child or about ignoring the things they do that eat you up inside.

Unconditional love can’t start when your kid drops his yarmulke and gets his ears pierced. Real unconditional love starts from the time kids are little. If they know you love them and are willing to do anything and everything for them — including setting reasonable limits — then you won’t have to buy them a cheeseburger, chas v’shalom, to prove to them that you love them unconditionally. They’ll know it inside, even if on the outside they’re still figuring themselves out.

I’ve been clean of drugs and back on the derech for almost a decade, baruch Hashem, thanks to real unconditional love. That unconditional love came not from my parents, but from my rebbi, who met me when I was in a really bad place and believed in me from the moment he met me. Even though I was a rebellious, angry teenager with a shaved head and earrings, my rebbi wasn’t afraid to tell me off, nor did he mollycoddle me when I broke the yeshivah’s rules. But he did give me the things I needed most: love, warmth, acceptance, and confidence that I could become a success. Which, today, I think I am.

Still One in a Million

Issue: 566

Story Name: One in a Million

The Challenge: I thought I’d made peace with my two-fingered chicken hand — until I realized that others never would.

Recap: I was born with a rare deformity: an oddly shaped two-fingered hand that I like to call my “chicken hand.” While this one-in-a-million “gift” hardly impacts my life and has never stopped me from doing anything I ever wanted to do it does create all sorts of awkward situations for me because some people are grossed out by my hand and have trouble seeing me as a regular person who just happens to be missing some fingers.

Where are they now? 

The Update//

I

was surprised at how many people figured out that the article was about me even though my name wasn’t in it. I guess there aren’t too many two-fingered girls around! Even now, two years after the article was published, people notice my hand and tell me they liked the article.

One amazing response I got was from a teenager who is missing fingers. We connected through Mishpacha and even met up, and it was incredible to be able to share our experiences. Being older and in a good place of acceptance, and having lived through a lot of challenging, humorous, and annoying times with my hand, I was finally able to turn around and help guide another person through a similar situation.

Another reaction that I was somewhat surprised about was the number of e-mails I received with shidduch ideas. He’s nice, funny, frum, blah-blah-blah — and yup, you guessed it, he’s missing fingers, is down a leg, has a limp, doesn’t have lungs, is in the morgue.... The first time this happened it was funny, but it quickly became frustrating. I guess if you write in a frum magazine that you’re single and 19, people just can’t help themselves!

To every person who suggested a shidduch I responded along these lines: I appreciate your thinking of me. Just as a ten-fingered person shouldn’t automatically say no to a shidduch just because someone has something physically wrong with them, I won’t either. However, if we are being set up just because I have two fingers and he, for example, has a limp, then that is purely superficial, no different from setting up two blonds. If you think it’s a fantastic shidduch idea and it just happens to be that I have two fingers and he has a limp, then that’s completely different and I will look into it.

But so far the latter has never been the case. All the shidduch ideas I received were only because of my hand and the boy’s physical issue.

My hand is such a not big deal in my life, to the point that I forget about it and most people around me never notice it. So I feel it’s ridiculous for people to make it a big deal in shidduchim. Thankfully, my parents raised me to feel completely confident with myself and this whole situation is therefore more humorous than upsetting.

Since I wrote the story, I’ve become a teacher and started a master’s program in mental health counseling. I’ve spoken about my hand to various classes in the school I work in, and I hear many times that just seeing me or hearing me speak has helped someone become more open-minded and accepting of others and themselves. I actually have a student who is missing fingers and I was able to connect with her and help her a lot.

I also work in a camp and had some interesting interactions with the campers this past summer. One seven-year-old looked at me pityingly and kept telling me that she feels bad for me and that my hand looks like a llama. (I googled it, it really does!) I couldn’t convince her that I like my hand and she shouldn’t feel bad for me! An 11-year-old asked me all about my hand and found it cool, but also thought the situation was “just so sad.” Again I had to keep insisting that it’s not sad! I like my hand and think it’s awesome!

Another hilarious incident happened during a camp trip to the amusement park, when I took a group of campers on the pirate ship. The man in charge reminded us to keep our hands and feet inside the ride for safety. I told the girls that last year I didn’t listen to that rule and lost three fingers. These girls did not know me well so they completely believed me and looked horrified, until I told them the truth. I never fooled a group of people so well!

I love having frank conversations with kids about my hand. They don’t mean to insult — they are simply explaining how they see things. They think of my hand in their terms: “I would feel sad if I had two fingers, so she must.” It’s such a teaching opportunity to correct those beliefs.

It’s the adults who aren’t comfortable asking questions and therefore don’t get the opportunity to come to a more mature perspective. So, to all of you, I say: If you happen to notice my hand, don’t stare — just ask me! It’s not like I don’t know my hand is different, and I would be happy to tell you about it.

Once, on a date, a boy asked me if I had ever experienced any challenge and how I dealt with it. I said that I couldn’t think of anything. Finally, after many attempts, he asked me straight out about my hand. I had no clue that that’s what he was trying to get at! It’s not a significant challenge to me.

I think we all have to stop making a big deal over things that aren’t important. Cancer, nuclear wars, and starving children in Africa are big deals. Two fingers are just not.