The Loneliest Heartbreak
In recent years, there has been an awful lot of public discourse about women’s bodies, with particular attention to birth control, pregnancy, abortion and childbirth. Through all of this heightened attention, one topic has been notably absent from public discourse - a topic that remains in the shadows. Infertility, or the inability to become pregnant and successfully carry a pregnancy to term, is a topic laden with emotion and shrouded in secrecy. In fact, it is so mysterious that you may not believe that the Cleveland Clinic reports that one in five women experience primary infertility – the ability to become pregnant. Additionally, one in twenty women experience secondary infertility, where they are mysteriously unable to become pregnant after achieving one successful pregnancy.
Infertility is a painful topic for the women who experience it. So few talk about it openly. I will note that is getting better through the ways that social media and the internet have opened up ways for women to share their stories, experience solidarity and offer support to one another. But even with these advances, the vast majority of women keep their stories of infertility private and close to their hearts. A friend of mine is a social media influencer on matters of style and fashion, and has openly been sharing her journey with infertility and pursuing adoption for several years now. She regularly receives a number of messages from women who feel that they have no one to talk to and no one who understands. When women speak up on this topic, they often share stories of being continually hurt through other’s well-meaning inquiries into why they don’t have children. And let’s not forget that this year, even the election discourse got into the business of hurt when it was noted that a certain political candidate questioned how much credence we should give to the perspectives of “childless cat ladies.”
Infertility is a major cause of heartbreak, but it is a heartbreak made particularly acute because it is secretive, isolating and lonely.
When we look at scripture there are a number of stories of fertility, interfertility, and how God uses a woman having a child as a means of establishing new relationships, new leadership dynamics and moving the story of God forward. When looking specifically at infertility, there are several notable Biblical narratives that center on infertility: Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Elizabeth, Ruth and of course, the woman at the center of of our text today, Hannah. In this reading from 1 Samuel, we encounter Hannah at her lowest point. She is brokenhearted over her inability to conceive a child, which she so desperately wants. Recall that so much of a woman’s worth at this ancient time was wrapped up in her ability to conceive and have children.
What makes Hannah’s heartbreak so much worse is the inability for anyone around her to connect with her about her heartbreak. Her husband, who clearly favors her over any others, questions her grief, essentially asking, “Why are you crying? Am I not enough for you? Isn’t the fact that you are my favorite and I shower you will more regardless of whether you have children, isn’t that enough for you?” And it isn’t. She doesn’t want to be the favorite. She wants a child.
And then there’s Peninnah, described in the text as her rival. And Peninnah taunts her about her infertility. She makes her cry and feel even more isolated and alone. Now, I will leave the fact that sometimes women are the first to bring other women down for another message on another day, but Hannah’s heartbreak is made worse by Peninnah.
And then there’s the priest. Hannah turns to God to continue to ask for the thing she wants most of all in the world, and as she’s praying, the priest asks her if she’s drunk. Can you imagine? Being so deep in prayers and petitions that your eyes are closed, your lips and moving and maybe you are rocking a little from side to side, and your religious leader says, “Excuse me, have you been drinking?”
Infertility is the root of Hannah’s heartbreak, but the isolation she felt from being misunderstood by all these people around her made it so much worse. Has that ever happened to you? When you are hurting about something and all you really need is for someone to come alongside you and just see your pain, sit with you in your pain, and instead they do something not helpful? They ignore your pain? They ask questions about why you are in pain? The try to make you get over or move past your pain? They offer you unsolicited advice about your pain?
If there is one thing that I have learned in my years of chaplaincy and pastoral ministry, it is that we all experience heartbreaks. What breaks your heart may be something very different than what breaks the heart of the person beside you, but we all have heartbreaks. We all have things in our lives that don’t work out the way we want or expect. We all can have our dreams crushed. And… These common experiences are why we need to community to get through life. We need people to come alongside us and bear witness to our grief and pain – not because they can fix it or fix us, but because they are simply with us in the midst of it. Hannah didn’t have that. Some may try to describe her as inconsolable, but the text doesn’t describe her as that. And the Bible does have stories where women are described as inconsolable – like Rachel in the Book of Jeremiah, weeping for her children and, “refusing to be comforted because they are no more.” My read of Hannah’s heartbreak is that it is the loneliest heartbreak. No one tries to climb down into the muddy trenches of grief to be with her there. God is the only one who really sees her.
Now, you know how this piece of the story ends. God does “open Hannah’s womb” and she has her son, Samuel, who becomes an important player in the story of God. Sometimes God does miraculously mend our hurts, giving us exactly what we ask for. But not always. We have plenty of accounts of unanswered prayers from heartbroken folks in scripture. Not everyone gets the happy ending that they ask God for, and it’s important for us to remember that. Part of the lesson of this text is encouraging us to never doubt what God CAN do. But the part of this text that I want us to lean into here is learning how we can make someone’s heartbreak worse by not showing up or by showing up in the wrong ways.
When one of us is hurting. We can help lessen the pain if we show up and come alongside them in their hurt. Never by mocking. And not by trying to yank them out of their hurt by showing them all the good things and suggesting they focus on those. And certainly never by suggesting that something is wrong with them for feeling the way they do. These are the unhelpful ways that others showed up for Hannah, and they didn’t help. They made her feel worse.
When you show up for someone who is hurting, do it with an open heart. Do it without an agenda. And do it with an authentic willingness to feel their pain with them, even if you don’t fully understand their pain. This kind of vulnerable companionship is one of the greatest ways that God uses us in sacred community to help mend one another’s broken hearts, or at least make it a little easier to live with their cracks.
Let’s be the kind of community that shows up gently for the brokenhearted. Amen.
