A Truce Declared

 A story in the Bible that I have struggled with lately is the one about Hannah and Samuel.  This is a story about a woman who is given a child by God after years of infertility.  It is also a beautiful story about faith, a woman's faith that held fast despite the shame, mockery, and ridicule that were hurled upon her from almost every direction.  Most of us know that Hannah's prayers are eventually answered. God hears Hannah and gives her a son.

But that is not the end of the story.  Because Hannah gives her son away.

We don't really talk about it that way, but that is what she does.  After he is weaned, when he is still very young, she takes him to the temple and leaves him with the priest Eli and his sons.  That's not so bad, right? She is giving him to God and leaving him with godly men who will raise him as well as any mother could.  Well, not exactly.  Eli was old, apparently not a good priest, and willing to turn a blind eye to the evil of his own sons.  The Bible says that "Eli's sons were scoundrels; they had no regard for the Lord or for the duties of the priests to the people," (1 Sam 2:12).

Think about that for a second.  Hannah may have given Samuel back to the Lord in a literal and figurative sense, but she also left him alone without a mother, to be raised by a man who clearly did not know how to parent and to live in a home with men who were notoriously corrupt.

"She left him there for the Lord."  (1 Sam 1:28)

This was the child she had longed for and wept countless tears hoping for...and she left him there for the Lord.  Here is the part that I just can't get past: God did NOT ask Hannah to do this.  This wasn't part of some bargain. This was Hannah's calling.

I sit here listening to one son sing silly songs at the top of his lungs while the other son is taking a nap beside me on the couch and I realize that what I really want to do is pass judgement on Hannah. How could she think that sending Samuel away from her was in any way the right thing to do?

Here is the truth: I want to judge Hannah for leaving Samuel the way I have judged myself for not being home with my own children all of the time.  Wrestling with Hannah's story and how it makes me feel has shone a light into my own ideas about motherhood and what it means to be a "good mother." Those who like to promote the idea of "Biblical womanhood" will tell us things like: Good mothers stay home with their children.  Good mothers plan science projects.  Good mothers bake organic homemade bread.  Good mothers sit beside their children on the floor while they play with developmentally appropriate toys.  Good mothers are mothers first, and doctors second.

Like it or not, the mommy wars of the last few decades have made victims of us all.  Even though I have spent the last decade refuting all these ideas in my head, in my heart there has always been doubt about the choices I have made. Every time I have walked out the door to go to the hospital or the office, I have faced the same wave of guilt, wondering what damage my choice to have a career has done to my little ones.  There have always been voices, real and imagined, that have said, "You should be at home with them."

But this narrative, the one we have accepted as the definition of "biblical motherhood" leaves no room for women like Hannah who followed her heart and left her son with the Lord.  There is no room for Carter's birth mother who must have felt that her only choice was to leave her tiny, sick baby in someone else's care because try as she might, she could not provide the medicine and food that he needed to survive.  There is no room for the mothers in Africa who leave their children at home so they can walk for hours every day just to find clean water.  There is no room for the single mother who works two or three jobs at a time so her children will have food, clothes, and shelter.

I am going back to work next week and Carter will start a two day per week daycare program.  The amount of sadness, guilt, and dread that I have put into this is matched only by the same emotions I felt when Camdyn started daycare ten years ago and then Charlie a few years later.  The more I come back to Hannah and Samuel, the more I begin to hear it, deep in my heart, and believe for the first time that maybe God sees motherhood differently than we do.  Maybe, being present with our children isn't God's mandate for women, but a privilege.  Maybe, I should not feel guilty for the 30 hours each week that I leave my children to go to work...because the other 138 hours that I am present with them are evidence of the fact that I am more privileged than I realize.

I know that being a pediatrician allowed me to look at Carter's file and see instantly that his three listed medical problems were either mislabeled or untrue.  Privilege.

I know that having a home with more room than we need, enough money in our bank account to pay each bill, and a loving family made our decision to adopt that much easier.  Privilege.

I know that being married to a man who walks through life as my partner and my friend gave me the strength I needed to face each agonizing day of waiting to bring Carter home.  Privilege.

Privilege has allowed me to become Carter's mother.

The thing about privilege is this:  God sees our privilege, too.  Privilege makes me nervous, honestly, because in the Bible God doesn't seem to favor those who have as much as those who have not.  The same God who sees my privilege also said, "Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the Kingdom of God."  The same God who sees me cry over filling out a daycare form, looked at a woman named Hannah and called her blessed, not because she held tightly to her child, but because she followed the calling in her heart and gave him to the Lord.  This is what I know for sure- the same God who called Hannah has also called me.  I love being a pediatrician.  I love taking care of sick little ones and being the one to help them get better.  I love being able to reassure a worried mother or calm a scared child.  I love having silly conversations with three year olds about mermaids and dinosaurs.  I love almost everything about my job.  What I also know is that being a physician is just as much my calling as being a wife, or a mother, or any other role I've been given.

Next week will be hard for all of us, I'm sure.  But I think that it will be easier this time because I have decided that my mommy war is over.  It feels good to finally declare a truce on oneself, an end to feeling like you will never quite measure up.  Like Hannah, I will give my children to the Lord and let God's grace cover all of my failings as a mother, both real and imagined. Grace covers everything.  Everything.  Grace has even taken my old mommy-war battle wounds, all the insecurities and self doubt, and turned them around into something beautiful- an overwhelming sense of wonder at just how blessed I am to be a mother to these three amazing little children of God.

Hannah's prayer:

I’m bursting with God-news!
    I’m walking on air.
I’m laughing at my rivals.
    I’m dancing my salvation.
 Nothing and no one is holy like God,
    no rock mountain like our God.
Don’t dare talk pretentiously—
    not a word of boasting, ever!
For God knows what’s going on.
    He takes the measure of everything that happens.
The weapons of the strong are smashed to pieces,
    while the weak are infused with fresh strength.
1 Sam 2:1-5 (MSG)