Halfway Through My Life, I Finally Understand Why My Name Is מתנה

This past weekend in America we read פרשת חקת, always deeply personal for me.

I was born fifty years ago during פרשת חקת, and my parents gave me the name מתנה, “gift,” from the words וּמִמִּדְבָּר מַתָּנָה. As a child, I thought it was beautiful that my name came from the Torah. Today, halfway through my life, I realize my name didn’t just come from this parashah. My life came from this parashah.

When I read חקת, I don’t just see a sequence of stories. I see the roadmap of my own journey.

The Mystery That Doesn’t Need Solving

The parashah opens with פרה אדומה – The Red Heifer perhaps the greatest mystery in the Torah. It is a mitzvah that even שלמה המלך – King Solomon, said he could not fully understand. For most of my life, that bothered me. I have always been someone who asks questions. I want to understand why people suffer, why relationships fall apart, why mental illness exists, why prayers seem unanswered, why healing takes so long. I have spent decades looking for explanations.

Maybe that was never the point.

Maybe פרה אדומה wasn’t only given to teach us one mysterious law. Maybe it was given to strengthen something inside of us: the ability to say, “I don’t understand… but I still choose trust.”

There is a freedom that comes with radical acceptance. Not giving up. Not becoming passive. But releasing the exhausting belief that we must understand everything before we can keep walking. Some chapters of life simply cannot be understood while we are living them. Sometimes faith begins where understanding ends.

The Rock, the Words, and the Lesson I Couldn’t Accept

Then the parashah shifts. מרים dies. The well disappears. The people thirst. God tells משה to speak to the rock, but instead he strikes it.

This story always hurt me.

As a little girl, I remember feeling angry. I remember questioning God. Was this really fair? משה led the Jewish people out of Egypt. He carried them through impossible circumstances for forty years. He prayed for them. Defended them. Loved them. Sacrificed everything for them. And after all that, because he hit the rock instead of speaking to it, he is told he will never enter the Land of Israel.

It felt like such a harsh consequence for something that seemed so small.

It physically hurt my heart.

I couldn’t understand it.

And if I’m honest, I still don’t understand it completely.

But maybe I understand it a little differently today.

For years, I have been fascinated by the power of words.

That fascination didn’t begin with me.

My mother taught us from the time we were little that words have power. She was intentional with language. She reminded us that words can build a person or destroy a person. They can heal or they can wound. They can give someone hope or leave scars that last a lifetime.

As children we heard those lessons.

Only in the last twenty years have I truly lived them.

After walking through anxiety, depression, healing, coaching, podcasting, and thousands of conversations, I began to realize that words are not just sounds that leave our mouths.

Words create realities.

The conversation we have with ourselves becomes the life we experience.

Words become beliefs.

Beliefs become choices.

Choices become habits.

Habits become our future.

Perhaps that is why the Torah gives such weight to what happened at the rock.

Maybe if משה had simply received a small consequence, we would have missed the lesson entirely.

Maybe God wanted the Jewish people—and every generation after them—to understand that speech is one of the greatest forces in creation.

There is the force of gravity.

There is the force of light.

There is the force of sound.

And there is the force of words.

If speaking to a rock could bring forth water, imagine what our prayers can do.

Imagine what encouragement can do.

Imagine what a blessing can do.

Imagine what a curse can do.

How remarkable that immediately after my parashah comes the story of בלעם, where blessings and curses themselves become the center of the story. Perhaps the Torah is continuing the very same lesson. Speech has power. We ignore that power at our own expense.

The words we speak to our spouses.

The words we speak to our children.

The words we speak to strangers.

The words we whisper to ourselves when nobody else is listening.

Every one of them matters.

The Lessons My Parents Gave Me

If my mother taught us about the power of words, my father taught us about the power of gratitude.

Gratitude wasn’t something we practiced once a year.

It was the language of our home.

Abba taught us that gratitude is how we remember kindness. Never become an ingrate. Never forget the people who showed up for you. Never forget the people who carried you when you couldn’t carry yourself.

Looking back, I realize gratitude wasn’t just something we practiced.

It became part of our DNA.

Every night at 11:00 PM, my phone rings. It’s Abba calling from Israel on his way to שחרית. Before hanging up he often asks the same question he has asked for years.

“What was the highlight of your day?”

Not because every day is perfect.

But because every day has something worth remembering.

Little did I know that the value my parents planted inside of me as a little girl would become one of the greatest tools in healing my own anxiety and depression.

Gratitude didn’t erase my suffering.

It expanded my vision beyond it.

I smile every time I read this week’s parashah because after years of complaints in the wilderness, something changes.

The people stop.

And they sing.

אָז יָשִׁיר יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת… עֲלִי בְאֵר עֱנוּ לָהּ

They don’t sing because life suddenly became easy.

They sing because they finally notice the gift that has been sustaining them.

The well becomes more than water.

It becomes gratitude.

It becomes memory.

It becomes the ability to recognize God’s kindness even while still walking through the desert.

And then, almost quietly, appears my name.

וּמִמִּדְבָּר מַתָּנָה

From the wilderness…

…comes the gift.

What if that isn’t just describing the geography of the Jewish people’s journey?

What if it is describing every one of our lives?

Some of the greatest gifts in my life were born inside deserts I never would have chosen.

Anxiety taught me compassion.

Depression taught me gratitude.

Pain taught me empathy.

Questions taught me humility.

Healing taught me hope.

The wilderness was never the end of my story.

It became the birthplace of my gift.

He Prepares Our Footsteps

Over the last few years, I have become completely obsessed with one line from our morning blessings.

הַמֵּכִין מִצְעֲדֵי גָבֶר  “He prepares the footsteps of man”

For over forty years I said those words every single morning without really thinking about them.

Then something shifted.

I started looking backward instead of only forward.

I began seeing moments that felt ordinary, disappointing, frustrating, or even devastating.

Only years later did I realize they were preparation.

A closed door became protection.

A delay became direction.

A painful experience became the foundation for helping someone else.

A season of anxiety became Hope to Recharge.

A season of depression became the ability to sit beside another human being without judgment.

Now my kids laugh because they know what’s coming whenever I say, “I have an amazing הַמֵּכִין מִצְעֲדֵי גָבֶר story.”

And I tell them another story of how something that once made no sense eventually revealed itself as preparation.

I have become obsessed with collecting these stories.

Not because life is easy.

But because they remind me that God has been preparing our footsteps long before we ever recognize the path.

Sometimes it takes months.

Sometimes years.

Sometimes generations.

And every once in a while, we are blessed enough to see the preparation while we are still alive.

Halfway Through My Life

Looking back over these fifty years, I realize that every chapter of פרשת חקת has quietly become a chapter of my own life.

פרה אדומה taught me that I won’t understand everything.

The rock taught me that words create worlds.

שירת הבאר taught me that gratitude can exist even in the middle of the desert.

וּמִמִּדְבָּר מַתָּנָה taught me that the wilderness often becomes the birthplace of our greatest gifts.

And הַמֵּכִין מִצְעֲדֵי גָבֶר reminds me that none of those chapters were random. Every one of them was preparing me for the next.

If you’ve been walking alongside me through Hope to Recharge, through my podcasts, through my writing, or through one of our conversations, thank you.

Thank you for trusting me with your stories.

Thank you for allowing me to walk beside you through anxiety, depression, grief, healing, gratitude, and hope.

Every message, every conversation, every episode you’ve listened to, every prayer you’ve shared with me has also shaped my own journey.

Healing was never meant to happen alone.

We borrow hope from one another until we can carry it ourselves.

And most of all, thank You, Hashem.

Thank You for trusting me with this life.

Thank You for trusting me with this name.

Thank You for allowing me to be part of other people’s journeys.

I don’t know why I was chosen for this path, and I still don’t understand every chapter of my own story.

But perhaps I no longer need to.

Halfway through my life, I have fewer answers than I thought I would have.

But I have far more trust.

Question for Reflection

Can you think of one moment in your life that once felt painful, confusing, or even unfair, but looking back you can now see it was הַמֵּכִין מִצְעֲדֵי גָבֶר  — God quietly preparing your footsteps for something you never could have imagined?

My Blessing for You

May you have the courage to keep walking when you don’t understand the path. May your words bring healing, your gratitude bring perspective, and your wilderness reveal its hidden gifts. And may you one day look back and discover that every step, even the painful ones, was preparing you for exactly where you were meant to be.