Hannah, in her bitterness

I Samuel 1:10

In bitterness of soul Hannah wept much and prayed to the LORD.

Why, O Lord, do you stand far off?

Why, O maker of all things, would you create a closed womb?

Why, O Creator, would you make barren that which was meant to bring forth life?

Why, O Lord, do you ignore my prayers, year after year?

O Lord, O God, O More Powerful than Me, O Hearer of all things, you are everywhere present, and I know that as I pray, at this moment, when I say these words, you hear me. To think otherwise is incoherent. So I am confronted with this fact, that you hear and have chosen to ignore me.

Why?

O Lord, why? Why? Tell me, Lord, why? Why this pain? Why this sorrow? Why? You are the wise one, yes? What wisdom is this? Do you take that which is good and beautiful and twist and distort it? What are you doing? Why me? Why can I never have a child? Why this stunting, this half-woman perverseness, this making dead that which was meant and made to be alive?

God, what are you doing to me? How can I believe in the God that Moses laid out for us, the God who is compassionate and gracious? Here I am, asking for grace, which is said to be abundant, meaning exceeding what can be imagined and asked for. Lord, I ask for grace! I ask for a child! I want to see and hold and love and show to my husband the flower of his strength! I want this, Lord! You say that this is what is meant for me, that out of the fullness of union, when two become one, that we are to be fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth with the joy of your love, the picture of love made full, springing up into life! O Lord, I love and long for this!

But Lord, you will not give this to me! Why? Why? Why? Lord, it is all I want, all I want, all I want, all I am meant for and made for, the desire of my soul and my heart! Lord, please! Look upon me! Hear me! Be merciful to me! How long must I bring this to you?

O Lord, forgive me.

My rival, Lord, my rival is bitter to me. O Lord, we are two women, married to the same man (Lord, this is not what you made for us in marriage, I am sure of it, but these times are dark, my very trials reveal the mistake, the divisions that such a situation causes), and if there is a woman who could know my pain, experience it with me and comfort me in it, it is her. But she is hateful to me. I fear we both have what the other wants, I the affection of our husband, his tenderness and sweet love, she the children and heir that he desires. Though he loves her too, in his own way, yet it is not a heart-love, that inutterable flame that cannot be described but which connects two together. Lord, have mercy on her, her pain too, her hurts and trials.

Lord, discipline my heart before you. O Lord, take my heart. Peninnah hurts me so deeply, but my heart wounds me deeper, for I see her with her children, speaking softly and gently to them, her eyes delighting in them, in their beauties and changes and moments, and my heart hates her too, my heart longs for them, for the joy of the fullness of my womanhood, which you have seen fit to deny me. Who has power over these things except you? My heart hates her Lord, though I bring these things to you, pour them out to you. She knows nothings of these pathways, and though I love the tenderness of my husband and his sweet words, I will never hold them over her.

Not my heart, though, has caused this determination, for in my heart my hate longs to show her my double-portion, to triumph over her, to break her and make her weep as I have, to strike her in the jaundice of the wound of his preference, to make her shrink back from me, to make her bitter as she as embittered me, to return us to the circle of our hate, a pair of broken women longing each for what we cannot have, hating and being hated.

O Lord, even now I must acknowledge that to come and pour these things out before you, to cry them to you, to plead with you is a precious mercy, a joy in pain that Peninniah does not possess, to sit before you in your presence, to seek you here, to pray and weep, it is a mercy. But such mercy from a God only makes my heart hurt in this day, for Lord, hasn't it been enough now, enough time, enough pain, whatever sharpening and refining you are doing, is it yet done, is the pain over? Will it ever be over? Will I cry to you for the rest of my years, only to die in the disappoint of my times, a squandered woman, stilted, never seeing what my soul was made for?

Lord, I was made for such things! O Lord, you who made me gave me this desire, taught me to delight in and long for this desire! O God, what cruelty is this, what wisdom is this, what goodness is this, you who have said you are good, who have said you are gracious and abounding in love, where is your love in this, in this breaking and burning?

O Lord, forgive me.

O Lord, remember me, remember my anguish, which I have poured out before you. O Lord, if I have a son, O Lord, that is enough. Lord, you who give and take away according to your own invisible ways, your own mysterious purposes, give your servant a son. If I have him, he will be yours, for you have given him. I ask now, in the humility of a woman at your mercy, a woman under your power.

Lord, your word, Sovereign Lord, your word will be my hope. You who are gracious are gracious now, giving as a grace and withholding as a grace. If I trust you in this prayer, in this pouring out of my soul, then I trust you as a revealer too, and I trust the things that you reveal. Still my soul before you. God, forgive the bitterness of it, that clinging to a sense of your withholding, for though you withhold, even your withholding is a giving, for the things that come to us from your hands are all gifts, though we must wait to understand them until the day when our eyes will be remade. Lord, if you give me a son, he will be yours. You know my longing, you who hear all things. If you never give, I will accept that from your hands as well. O Lord, Lord, Lord...

[She is interrupted by Eli]

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I Samuel 1
Psalm 10
Various Psalms