This week’s Torah portion is called “The Life of Sarah.” Yet it contains nothing about Sarah’s life; instead, it tells of her death and burial.

If you look back at the preceding chapters of Genesis, you will find pieces of Sarah’s story. But the moments we witness show her either silent or not at her best.

She doesn’t protest when Abraham follows God’s call to leave their home for “a place that I will show you.”

She offers no objection—at least none that we hear—when Abraham twice portrays her as his sister, allowing a king and a pharaoh to take her into their harems.

When we do hear her voice she laughs at God and then denies it. She banishes her rival Hagar, not once but twice.

And she is absent altogether when Abraham sets out to sacrifice Isaac.

Still, the Torah tells us that Abraham and Isaac loved her deeply. Clearly, there was much more to Sarah than these difficult episodes reveal—but we are not shown it.

So I find myself wondering: What was she like? Was she kind and thoughtful some of the time? Most of the time? Would her harshness toward Hagar seem forgivable if we knew it was a lapse rather than a reflection of her true nature?

Last week I had two experiences, only hours apart. Both were reactions to my own behavior. One was embarrassing and demeaning. The other was one of the high points of my life.

The first came because I had been unkind to an unhelpful co-worker. The second came because I had spent many months of kindness and dedication to helping a group of people achieve a goal.

There is a Jewish teaching that each of us should carry two slips of paper at all times. One reads, “I am but dust and ashes.” The other reads, “The world was made for me.”

Last week, I didn’t need notes in my pockets to feel the truth of both. I want to remember that the unkind moment was the exception, and that kindness is my norm. Yet it is our lowest moments that linger in our minds and keep us up at night.

Perhaps that is ultimately a blessing. It reminds us of our imperfections and of the ongoing work of becoming our highest, best selves.

I named my first child Sarah. I hoped she would be as deeply loved as the Sarah of the Torah. I was willing to forgive the biblical Sarah’s lapses because I believe that she teaches us about honesty and authenticity, about being human and imperfect, about being a woman in a world that favors men, and above all, about love.