My story is both very personal and very remarkable, truly amazing!

 

After having two sons, I gave birth to a daughter named Galia. I was very excited to finally have a daughter and I went out and bought pink clothes for her. I kept imagining how I would tie ribbons in her hair, and what it would be like to dress her up in all kinds of pretty dresses, and how I would take her on walks, and so on.

 

But suddenly all these dreams burst on me like a balloon. My Galia never grew up, almost not at all. As of now, Galia, who is fourteen and a half years old, functions like an infant of four or five months. She is classified as brain-damaged and severely retarded, a hundred percent disabled. What this means is that she cannot stand up, she cannot walk or even crawl, and cannot speak a single word. What is more, she is still in diapers, which have to be changed just like any baby, and like any baby she can eat only strained baby food. And as if all this were not enough, she has three congenital heart defects.

 

At the time she was born, I was a young woman with no idea of anything concerning Judaism, and no interest in it either. I was totally non-religious, and the way I looked at things then, I considered Galia, with all her problems, to be a horrible life-blow, a blow that totally destroyed my way of life and everything that was important to me.

 

And now, from my present perspective, I look on Galia as the most beautiful and the most wonderful present I have ever received. Thank God, Galia has saved me both in this world and in the World to Come and I thank God for sending her to me. When Galia was ten years old, she got me to do teshuva, to become religious.

 

All our troubles, big and small, we have to accept with love. Everything God does is for our good, it’s just that it’s difficult for us to accept this with our intellects. Our ability to grasp the truth is simply too limited. With her condition which is so difficult, Galia forced me to examine the purpose of life, to ask myself why we are born and why we die. Amazing! a totally disabled ten-year-old girl could get a grown woman like myself to become religious -- an educated woman with a degree in education and criminology from an Israeli university, a teacher employed by the Ministry of Education. Truly amazing!

 

When Galia was a small child she was very difficult to take care of, and we were constantly running around to doctors and treatment centres, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and so on. Sometimes, Galia went into a coma and we had to rush her to a hospital, with ambulances, intravenous tubes and all. It was simply dreadful.

 

For months on end, Galia would cry every night, and I would have to sit up in a rocking chair and hold her in my arms until the morning came.

 

On top of everything else, the strain of running around to all these doctors and treatments got to be too much for our marriage to bear, and so I found myself divorced with three small children, including Galia with all her special needs.

 

As time went on, Galia grew bigger and heavier and it became difficult to pick her up. If she were able to stand up on her own, she would reach my shoulders.

 

It was very hard for me to cope with all this. Emotionally it was hard to accept the fact that my Galia would never be like everyone else, and I went through a whole process of grieving over it. Physically, it was also hard because I could barely pick her up.

 

Lacking any real choice, I decided to look for an institution to put her in, so I visited a number of facilities for brain-damaged children like her but it was very distressing to see the kinds of places that were available for such children. It was hard enough to come to terms with the idea of her leaving home. On top of that, it made me feel absolutely wretched to think of putting her into such a depressing place like the ones I was seeing. It was even suggested to me to put her into a nunnery.

 

But fortunately right around that time a new institution opened in the central region of Israel, not too far from my home. It was an excellent place, run and staffed entirely by religious Jews. From the moment I walked into the place I felt strongly that I wanted Galia to be there. Everyone seemed so cheerful and happy, the workers all cared for the children with great dedication, and with love and respect. The place now has a very good reputation throughout the country.

 

So Galia was admitted to this very fine institution. At the time I thought it was just a coincidence, but now I see that there is no coincidence in the world, and everything that happens comes from God, everything is planned in heaven.

 

I put Galia into that fine institution and decorated her room, and visited her frequently. I also took her out to hospitals for testing. Some parents put their children into institutions and then never bother to visit them. Some even sign papers right after the birth that they want nothing further to do with their children. The truth is, we can’t judge anyone. God is the only One Who knows what goes on it people’s hearts and some people just don’t have the emotional strength to cope with it all. They wanted a good, intelligent child and instead suddenly they find themselves with such a difficult case, everything gone haywire.