Perfection is the enemy of growth.

That is a lesson I never expected to learn so deeply. For many years, I was too busy searching for myself to realize that growth often comes through imperfection.

When we are young, we often believe we can face the world with one fist raised and open arms ready to embrace every possibility. In youth, there seems to be no room for impossibilities. The future feels wide open. Motherhood feels distant, almost abstract—something that belongs to another stage of life.

We fill ourselves with the certainty that we can become everything we dream of, without truly imagining failure. And HaShem often remains only a distant concept as we move through the journey of life.

But as we grow, life presents situations that force us to confront our own fragility. Suddenly we realize that failure exists, and with that realization comes disappointment. Yet very few of us are taught to see life as a process of learning and refinement. Instead, we often see it simply as a road we must walk through.

To me, that is what a life with a dormant relationship with HaShem looks like.

For many years, that was my relationship with Him.

Mitzvot and davening were things I knew I was supposed to do. I did them, but they held little meaning for me at the time. My connection with HaShem was occasional and distant.

Then I met my husband, and slowly I began to glimpse how much HaShem truly loved me. But even then, I did not fully understand it. In truth, I did not yet have a real relationship with myself. I was a neshamah wandering lost in many ways within my inner world without even realizing it.

The only thing I knew was that I was searching for a kind of perfection that I believed the world expected from me—though I did not even fully understand what that perfection was.

Then my firstborn son, Eliel, was born.

Looking back, I believe that this was the moment when the real work of my neshamah began.

As I felt new life growing within me, I began to realize that I needed to care for myself in ways I never had before. I was carrying a neshamah entrusted to my husband and me by HaShem. The thought was both humbling and overwhelming.

Soon there would be a child completely dependent on me.

As the time of his birth approached and everything was prepared to welcome him home, I felt a new urgency to turn toward HaShem. But this time, my prayers were different. I was no longer asking for my own needs. I was asking for the........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)