Second Guessing: Kitchen Closed 

I always say kollel life isn’t a decision you make before you get married; it’s a choice you make every single day. Be the family breadwinner, make do with less, have different standards than others, and then do it all over again tomorrow and the next day and the next. If you so choose.

I’m ten years in and loving every minute of it. The focus on something so much bigger, being a part of something so much larger than you and your ecosystem. The weeks fly by in blurs of work, kids, bedtimes, park dates, diapers, and teething. Shabbos is when we slow it all down, take it in, and really make our money back.

I call it “cashing in on my nachas,” because honestly, without Shabbos, I’d never see Yaakov.

Oh, there’s snatched conversations in between morning, afternoon, and night seder, jokes about, “Don’t I know you?” and, “Hey, stranger” as he runs out to Maariv, as the things you’ve promised yourself would never happen in your home, things like sinks of dirty dishes and kids in mismatched pajamas, occur before your eyes because you are just. Too. Tired.