Sarah, Hannah, Torah and infertility

I've been thinking a lot about fertility and infertility stories in the Torah. For the past three or more years I have volunteered to read the story of Hannah - mother of the prophet Samuel - on Rosh Hashana. Every year - the last two in particular - I have tried to pray Hannah's prayer/promise to God as my own prayer. My own bargin if you will - I promise to give you my child if you will give me a child. Of course we don't live in biblical times and there isn't a Temple cult to serve. I'm not sure I would be willing to drop off my child at the nearest thing we have to that now even if I could figure out what that would be. But I did have the intention that I would raise my child to love God and to love humanity and to serve for the highest and best good for all.

Except I know that my promise was a bargin. It was give me this - which you owe me - and I'll be grateful in a meaningful way. And if I am honest I was pretty angry with God, fate, the universe, myself for that matter, because somehow I had missed the boat that everyone else seemed to be on. You know the one where you meet the right person fall in love and then decide to build a family together. I have an entry from some time ago in my journal where I wrote that pregnancy and motherhood was my due as compensation for all the years of trauma and pain I have endured because I was born a woman. And I have experienced pain and trauma simply for being female.

So how was I going to be able to teach a child to love the divine and humanity and herself, if I went into it thinking it was owed me. That much anger might be hard to let go.

Recently, I was having dinner with a friend. I'm not sure now how we came to be talking about the story of Hannah - it may be because he asked how my pursuit of pregnancy was going or it may have had nothing to do with that initially. But he shared with me his drash on Hannah. His perspective - which was much more elegant than what you are about to read - was that Hannah loved God so much and felt that without a child she couldn't truly give to God and show her love fully. Her child was her way of demonstrating her love for God and without the ability to give birth and return that child to the service of God, she couldn't fully demonstrate her love. LOVE, wow. I had always read her plea, her bargin as sorrow, as pain, as a bargin. Not as a profession of love for the divine and a desire to demonstrate that love. I began to realize how much this process of trying to get pregnant has been a battle for me. A battle and a struggle with a sense of being owed by the Divine. And of course if this is something I am owed and I continue to not get it then clearly I am being punished. Clearly if I am having trouble conceiving it is punishment for something. Not just stupid fate or hormones or timing or whatever. It is a sign from God. If fertility is a sign then surely infertility is a sign too. Or is it? This is the question my friend raised. Is it a sign in the same way that fertility is a sign. - Sarah was barren - God closed her womb - until God opened it.

I'm not sure where I am these days with hannah and Sarah and all the other women in our mythical history whose stories include temporary barrenness. But I do know that I have come to realize that I can no longer see the fertility challenges and the failure of each cycle as punishment from some Divine source. It might be a sign or a challenge but it isn't punishment. And I am learning to move towards love of myself and God and possiblity without attachment, so that I can come one step closer to Hannah's prayer being my own.