grapple with grief
When you are grieving or in pain, what do you need from the people in your life?
1 Samuel 1:2, 6-7
Elkanah had two wives, one named Hannah and the other named Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah didn’t… Her rival [Peninnah] would provoke her severely just to upset her… Then [Hannah] would sob and wouldn’t eat anything.
“Barrenness” reversed is a trope across scripture, used to demonstrate God’s compassion for the vulnerable and active hand in a hero’s birth.
But in reality, infertility is more complex. Faith doesn’t always lead to fertility; infertility is not a sign of God’s absence or judgment; it just…happens. Nor is it some storytelling trope — it’s a source of deep pain for many women and people of other genders who want to get pregnant, a grief that society too often refuses to acknowledge as grief.
Like Bible stories where disability is “cured” by faith, these stories can be misused to belittle and even blame those who experience infertility. (“If you just prayed hard enough…”) Such messages may not be ill-intentioned like Peninnah’s bullying, but they still rub salt in an already painful wound.
As we continue through the week, we’ll keep focusing on Hannah’s grief and how others respond to it — deriding it, diminishing it, disbelieving it…and, at last, listening to her about it.
Spend some time reflecting or journaling: When you are grieving or in pain, what do you need from the people in your life?