What feels impossible in your life right now? Getting a date or finding a husband? How about a job, a friend, a place to live?   Hannah’s impossible circumstance was infertility. Back then, there was no in vitro fertilization. There were no drugs or procedures to make the impossible possible.   Hannah believed that only God’s power could overcome the circumstance that she felt powerless to change. She believed that, against all medical and physical odds, He could make the barren womb conceive.   That’s why she asked for a son, and why she made a vow to give that child back to God as a...

If you grew up in the Church, you might feel guilty if you are disappointed because of your long-time singleness. You might feel selfish or sinful for desiring a partner, a lover, a companion.   Hannah could have had these same fears when dealing with her intense desire to have a child. Maybe her husband was right; his love was enough! Shouldn’t she be content with that? Wasn’t it enough to be part of God’s chosen people?   Yet, she dared to approach Him with the subject: “And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed to the Lord and wept in anguish” (1 Samuel 1:10). What flowed in those...

Have you ever been disappointed about something—oh, let’s say, a date that didn’t happen, or the fact that you’ve just turned 30 or 35 or 38 and you still don’t have a boyfriend—and you make the mistake of expressing your feelings to an unsympathetic person?   “I guess it wasn’t meant to be,” they say. “There’s other fish in the sea.” “Don’t worry, you’ll meet someone sooner or later.” “God has a plan.”   Well, all those things may be true—or not. The point is that when you’re hurting, most of the time the first step for healing isn’t to paste truth over the wound like a Band Aid. The first...

If you’ve been single for a long time, you can probably think of at least one occasion on which your singleness caused conflicting emotions. You might have been happy for the friend whose wedding you attended, yet deep inside you felt discouraged, forgotten, jealous, or all of those things.   I think it’s safe to say that Hannah’s “bitterness of soul” (a topic I introduced in my last blog) contained more than one emotion. Though I can’t imagine her feeling any ounce of happiness for her rapidly reproducing rival wife, I’m certain her bitterness of soul was as mixed a bag of emotion as any...

I’m so glad the Bible blatantly portrays people as they were, thousands of years ago, learning to walk with Him. It turns out they were not so different from us. When it comes to disappointment, one lady seems to have been on the same page as me after my lifestyle of non-dates. Her name was Hannah.   She wasn’t single. But she was infertile, and she desperately wanted a child. So did her husband, and that’s why he married Peninnah—Peninnah, the other wife, the epitome of Mother (with a capital M) with her abundance of children. Peninnah, the one who enjoyed rubbing it in Hannah’s face.  ...