I never won any battles at all, and I still see how all my weaknesses and struggles are chasdei Hashem, building me and benefiting me, my family, and others of Hashem's people.

dov you are allways looking for a brighter future

:-) I hope we all are..  Good to be back

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." - Winston Churchill

:-)

SS -how you been?

Simply hard to breathe past 2 months from big stress w/my parents.. Dad in coma, now awake. Mom trying to get him in jail..  Crazy stuff.. I went back to SA meetings regularly now for the 1st time in a few years: it helps a lot. It's 1:30 am now & I'm sitting w/friends-shluchim in from out of town this weekend & finally checked here .. Wishing all good to all

Is it my imagination, but is everyone here but me a Lubavitcher?

Jail, Comas, Mom on the warpath....sounds like a time for G-d in your life...

Hatzlocha, our tefillos are with you, brother.

I'm certified as a non-lubab .

I'm thinking of starting Non-Lubab Anonymous....You know you want it...
Serene, stay strong, buddy, whatta story....
Gut Shabbos

Oy, the imagery...

The poor guy gets up right after the whistling at a farbreng and says with eyes on the floor of 770, "Hi. My name is Zalmy and I'm actually not a chabadnik." He shuffles away amid a disorganized but well-meaning, "Hi, Zalmy, welcome, keep coming back, it works if you work it."

My gargeleh is turning (do boys have on of those or is it only female chickens?)

:D

well, after a glass or two of vodka, what do you expect?

VERY happy 2 c everyone is enjoying themselves here :-). (My parents aren't frum.. And yes:it's crazy .. BH I'm not a big drinker either , sorry to spoil the fun..but I'd happily sit at a kiddush w/any of u and a small l'cyaim any time.          But WOW, with all the dysfunction I saw as a kid, and now seeing the EXACT SAME CRAZINESS happening in the 'religious world', it's SO CLEAR to me how anyone who held that ALL YIDDEN ARE EQUAL was right..  Because someone shared the light of yiddishkeit w/me, I like to payback to life often and try to share it w/other yidden too. BH last Shabbos, a 65 year old had his 1st Shabbos meal EVER @ our house.. He was allmost teary eyed and smiling the whole time.. (I also hate the term 'religious world'.. There is a 'jewish world' including every single yid on the planet, and every single one of us is part of that world..                          Ok: finished. My sermon is done for tonight).    [Ok dov's line tickled me about being disorganized..  Here: "if one doesn't like organized religion, then come to Chabad; it's the most disorganized religion on the planet" :-)...  And I fit right in perfectly]

Not giving into lust, actually ended yosef up in prison! But little did he know that soon after, in the palace of the most powerful country in the world, G-d ordained that the ministers of the most powerful king in the world, would stumble in serving the king (with a pebble and fly), and those ministers and their mistake would become the biggest talk of the 'white house' and the 'Egyptian Times', and those same ministers would be led to Yosef's jail... All in order to bring ENORMOUS SUCCESS to yosef both spiritually and physically...(Which happens to be Rashi's pirush for a ben chumash l'mikra: a child should know that G-d will turn over the entire world, sometimes slower, sometimes longer, for a yid who stays connected)      It's often painful to avoid a lust hit; avoiding it feels like we're entering a dark 'prison'... When in truth however, after the wave of passion subsides, one day and one moment at a time, the end result is the life we also can look at, with our own big handfuls of blessings, even in a land as depraved as egypt... And we can be the ba'al ha'bos over the land.. Not G-d forbid the opposite.