“A little bit of fun = years of regret and tremendous effort to get back on track…”
Don’t you think that she was “meant” to come back – it was in Hashem’s plan. Many of our youngsters who go off the derech completely do it for many reasons. However, many of them do it because they have been raised in such an insular environment that they feel like the odd man out. They learn about the “outside” world from a variety of places and begin to wonder about such mundane things as TV’s, movies, computers, etc. Then when they experience some of these things, they just grab on with both hands. I think that parents should (with a great deal of supervision) introduce some of these to their children so that they don’t feel like they are being left behind or left out. A couple of years ago I had a conversation with a young person who left the very frum life behind for just these reasons. He told me that he felt badly for his parents and siblings but he had to live his life in his own way. He told me that he couldn’t leave Judaism and his love for Hashem and for studying behind, so he became a Conservative Jew. After a few years, his parents began to understand that he was a different person that his siblings and began to sort of accept his choice. They began speaking and there was far more shalom in his family. They even began eating at his home as he still kept the same level of kashruth as in the home was raised.