If you just pray like Hannah
Before I had a living child, but when I was dealing with barrenness aplenty in my own life, the scripture 1 Samuel 1 was often recommended to me. Many people of faith point out to those of us struggling with infertility that there are women with our exact same conditions in the Bible--- and all of them get pregnant! These stories, then, are blueprints to figure out how to have a baby. See, if you just pray like Hannah, God will remember you and give you a child. Or if you are just patient like Sarah, God will fulfill God’s promise of a child.
Of course, reading scripture this way is itself painful and contributes to the shame of those struggling with infertility who already wonder what we did wrong. But it also conveniently overlooks the struggle not only in those two particular stories but of stories of infertility in scripture more generally. It is funny--- no one says if you are so desperate you want to die like Rachel, God will open your womb. Too often we want scripture to be a Disney fairy tale when the story is wrapped up so neat and tidy and always has a happy ending--- so different from our real lives and also from the actual stories in scripture.
Recently, in a webinar on pregnancy shame for which I was a panelist, people asked how we can reclaim scripture when so many of the stories of infertility talk about God closing and opening wombs. God is named as the one causing the pain of infertility and loss for a greater purpose. Considering myself to be another Hannah could give me false hope, or write off my very real pain as all for the glory of God in the end. Some who struggle do find comfort in such readings. I do not. A god who opens and closes wombs to teach lessons is not a good teacher. A god who opens and closes wombs might have a greater purpose but is still awfully like a sadist to me. Reclaiming these stories requires us not to make excuses for God, but to really look at these women and hear their pain and see their resilience.
I do not see myself as a Hannah or Sarah when their stories reach a victory, even after I finally did have a living child as they did, but I do see myself in their stories before the child is born. Really, even those who aren’t trying to have children can see themselves in these stories if they can let go of looking for that happy ending. If we all can keep ourselves open to the way they persist in the meantime.
Hannah, for instance: her story is not really about having a child. It is about how when she feels pain, she pours herself out in prayer--- embarrassingly so to the priest who watched her. After she explained her plight, he spoke words of peace to her and sent her home, and she really did feel peace. She was not yet pregnant, and still “her countenance was sad no longer” (1 Samuel 1:18). We could pray like that ourselves, couldn’t we?
Sarah, for instance: her story is also not about having a child. She is a cruel slave owner, an abused wife. She has little beauty in her life and seems not to be able to add much beauty either, though her body is described as beautiful. Patient is not how I would describe her. Instead, she is a survivor. Not someone to emulate, as perhaps Hannah could be, but someone we can understand as one who laughs at God because God’s promises come almost too late. How can we break from cycles of cruelty and bitterness as Sarah might have been unable to do?
Scripture does not have to be another purveyor of toxic positivity in our lives, telling us to suck it up and be happy because if things aren’t good now, they will be, or if things aren’t good now you just have to try harder. Instead, scripture can help us build resilience in difficult times. I got to the point in my life that I was just focused on survival. Reading ahead to the birth of the promised child, dreaming of an idyllic future of my own was something I did for the first three years of infertility and then I could not anymore. My heart was too bruised and broken from all our losses and failures. But I sometimes found peace in pouring myself out in prayer. And when I found myself laughing bitterly, I reached out to those I love to try to find true laughter. I took strength from reading these stories and knowing that the journey of faith is less about motivational mantras we can embroider on a pillow and more about putting one step in front of the other and recognizing God with us when we can.
