Hannah

I have had a lousy weekend, some of that caused by bad weather, some of it caused by allowing my life to be affected by another person’s choices.  I know better.  I have control over how I react and I failed miserably this weekend.  I’m just saying I could have looked for a little guidance from God and probably had a much better weekend.

I almost didn’t go to church today, I didn’t feel like going.  I wanted to stay in bed.  My Baby Girl though needed to practice for an upcoming solo so I did what moms do.  I put on my big girl panties and went to church.

I almost laughed out loud when the first song was I Shall Not Be Moved.  I knew I had already been moved.  I wasn’t clinging to God, I haven’t been searching for God.  I’ve somehow just been doing things my way.  I mean I throw up a prayer every day, sometimes a few times a day.  I remind The Baby Girl to say her prayers, I take her to church, I do kind things for less fortunate people, but seeking God nope haven’t been doing it. 

When I was a little girl I wanted more then anything to be a Daddy’s girl, the problem with that was my parents were divorced and my mother’s bitterness didn’t allow room for me to be a Daddy’s girl.  She told me on a regular basis that he loved my stepsisters more then me, he took care of them etc.  The beginning of me feeling less then.  I then started thinking of my stepdad as my dad, I came second to my half-sister yeap less then.  Those feelings of less then hang around in my adult life.  I hate it.  I know that if I don’t work on those feelings the devil finds a way to bring them to the surface and I get ugly.  The only thing worse then someone making me feel less then is them making me feel like they are treating one of my kids like they are less then.  Say hello to one ugly mama bear. 

The devil has had me for days, I’ve cried myself to sleep.  I’ve hid in my room.  I’ve thought things about my marriage that I hadn’t thought for a very long time.  I didn’t like Mr. Wonderful.  Then the sermon started.

Do you know anything about Hannah?  I didn’t before today.  I know a lot now.  I sit in church today on the opposite end of the pew from Mr. Wonderful and Pastor started talking about Hannah “the second wife that had to play second fiddle”.  Wait rewind that, what did you say.  “THE SECOND WIFE WHO HAD TO PLAY SECOND FIDDLE.”  Are you serious?

I almost laughed outloud, at one point when Pastor was talking about there are people in our lives that do not want us to be happy, I even let out an amen.  I decided to learn more about Hannah.  Here is what I will carry with me about Hannah, I found these words here.

• Perhaps one of the most famous women of the Bible, Hannah demonstrates strengths which are often overlooked. Her story reveals the pain many women experience of not being “enough”, yet she shows courage and faith to overcome that pain.
• Hannah faced several serious problems. First her husband had another wife, a wife who gave Elkanah something Hannah couldn’t-children. More Hannah had a deep desire for children. We can take a feminist attitude, and say this desire came from societal pressures, or we can take a human attitude that says Hannah simply wanted to be a mother to her own children. Either way, this woman experienced a pain many women today share–she was barren. Sadly, women today still face the same societal pressures Hannah faced. A heartrending longing for a child by an infertile woman (or man) wounds, yet a Christian culture that defines women solely by the biological “purpose” of childbirth can provide the death blow to a broken spirit. We must be aware of the Hannahs in our midst when we preach that a woman’s place is child rearing. We must remember only God Himself creates us, and only God Himself can give us purpose.
• Hannah’s story also reminds us to use discernment when dealing with a problem. In the church it is popular right now to give Satan and sin credit for everything “bad” in our lives. We hear that satan steals this from us, or took away that. We’re told we should demand those things back or “storm the gates of hell to take back what he took”. Well, not everything we don’t like in our life can be laid at the enemy’s door. Satan hadn’t prevented Hannah from having children. Several times the Bible says, “the LORD closed her womb.” Just because we don’t like something, doesn’t mean its not part of God’s “good plan” for our lives. Hannah’s infertility lead to the founding of Samuel’s ministry. Samuel anointed David. Without Hannah’s infertility, her vow and her obedience Samuel wouldn’t have been raised in the house of the Lord and wouldn’t have anointed David.
• Hannah has an intense time with the Lord. We can see she has literally poured out her heart to Him. We all have our own church cultures, and I do not mock any of them. But I get the image of someone from one of the old time black gospel churches laying it all out in the middle of St Peter’s Basilica. Hannah hurt, and she wasn’t going to pretend before her God that everything was OK. She bled and wanted God to tend her wound.
• This story reminds us to look at our own faults before we look at the faults of others. Elkanah couldn’t see that his disobedience in having two wives caused the women pain and conflict. Eli, priest and prophet of God, had spent so little time with God he couldn’t even distinguish prayer from drunkenness. We would have expected understanding from these two–one the understanding of compassion and the other spiritual understanding; yet both lacked that understanding. Eli’s lack of familiarity with his Lord would cause him problems later in his life.

I like Hannah.  I wish I was more like her.  The facts are the facts in my life, what I choose to do with those facts are all I can control.  I am going to remember Hannah each time the devil tries to get in my heart.  I will remember I am enough. 

I will post the blogs I found this week tomorrow, I needed to get this post written while I was still “feeling it”.  I hope someone got a blessing from it.