How to have a healthy emotional breakdown

a lesson from Hannah

In the first chapter of 1 Samuel we read the story of Elkanah and his two wives, Hannah and Peninnah.

If you’re unfamiliar with it, here’s the TL,DR version.

Peninnah has lots of children and Hannah has none. Peninnah is mean and nasty to Hannah because she’s barren, and Hannah has an emotional breakdown. But it all turns out happy in the end.

The verses everyone knows from this chapter are when Hannah takes her firstborn son Samuel and presents him to the Lord, and she says to Eli the priest, “For this child I prayed; and the Lord hath given me my petition which I asked of him: Therefore also I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he liveth he shall be lent to the Lord.” She gets her baby, and the baby is dedicated to God. Warm fuzzies all around.

But there’s a lot of heartache before we get to that, and God gives us a beautiful picture of how to have an emotional crisis.

Wait, a beautiful picture of an emotional crisis? How can an emotional crisis be beautiful? Isn’t that an oxymoron?

Not at all. God has emotions, and since we are made in his image, we have them too. They are God-given, God-created, and God welcomes them just like he welcomes every other part of his image-bearers. We are the ones who somewhere along the way decided emotions were bad, that we should hide them like something to be ashamed of, like we are less-than for showing them. Let’s go back to the beginning.

Elkanah had two wives, Hannah (no children) and Peninnah (lots of children). Every year the family traveled from their home in Ramathaim-zophim to Shiloh to sacrifice to the Lord. Remember, this was pre-Jesus, when you had to make a sacrifice for your sins every year.

In Shiloh, Elkanah gave a portion to Peninnah and all her children, but he gave a “worthy portion” to Hannah because he loved her. Peninnah was a jerk and the Bible calls her Hannah’s adversary. It says Peninnah “provoked her sore, for to make her fret, because the Lord had shut up her womb.” Peninnah mocked Hannah because she had no children. The hatefulness of this is stunning. No wonder it doesn’t say Elkanah loved Peninnah—she was a witch.

Peninnah did this every year they went to sacrifice, and the year of this story, Hannah reached her breaking point. The Bible says, “therefore she wept, and did not eat.” This is where the emotional crisis begins.

Elkanah noticed his wife’s suffering right away and asked Hannah, “Why weepest thou? and why eatest thou not? and why is thy heart grieved? am not I better to thee than ten sons?”

Elkanah loved her, but the man was clueless.

Hannah was barren. Infertile. Could not have children in a culture where women were valued only for their ability to produce sons. Can you imagine the heartbreak? The shame? The natural, God-given longing for a baby?

I have never struggled with infertility, but I watched my daughter go through it and the anguish is more than I can fathom. Hannah was distraught.

Throughout this chapter, God tells us that Hannah is sad, can’t eat, is grieving and bitter, cries exceedingly, feels afflicted and forgotten. Her spirit is sorrowful—FULL of sorrow. Elkanah asks if he’s not better to her than ten sons and the answer is a resounding NO. A loving husband is a wonderful gift from God, but he is not a son, not your own offspring. Not the same. The two are totally different in a woman’s heart.

Verse 15 says she poured out her soul before the Lord. Poured. Emptied. Wrung out until there was nothing left.

I don’t know if you’ve ever really poured out your soul before, but you can’t do it half-heartedly. You can’t be reserved when you pour out. You can’t hold back, can’t pretend you’re holding it together. You can’t be worried about whether the priest will think you’re drunk. Can’t put on a brave face. There is no dainty dabbing of a few tears; it’s all ugly-crying. To pour out your soul you have to let it all go, gushing out without restraint. You have to be like a taco and fall apart, ending up a splattered mess on the plate.

This is what Hannah was doing when Eli the priest saw her. Apparently he didn’t have much experience with women, because he accused her of being drunk. She assured him she hadn’t been drinking, but that she had poured out her soul before the Lord. She said, “out of the abundance of my complaint and grief have I spoken hitherto.”

I was reminded of the verse in Matthew 12 that says “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” What was abundantly in Hannah’s heart is what came out. She was so full of sadness and grief for the life she wanted but did not have that it couldn’t help but come out. She was a shaken bottle of soda, a Diet Coke with 50 Mentos dropped in it.

It’s the same with you and me. We can stuff our emotions down and try to fake it, but at some point what’s in there abundantly is going to come spewing out. In Hannah’s case it was sadness, grief, bitterness, affliction, and feeling forgotten. That’s a heavy burden and God did not expect her to just sit on it and act like nothing was wrong.

I’ve been there, so full of anguish I could not form words, but somehow the anguish had to come out. God already knows our feelings and thoughts, but he still wants us to tell him about them. He wants communication, which is a two-way proposition. He talks to us and we talk to him. So don’t hold back thinking God is going to think you’re “strong” or able to handle it on your own. He knows better. Go ahead; pour out your soul.

Eli heard Hannah’s explanation and he was overwhelmed with compassion. He answered, “Go in peace: and the God of Israel grant thee thy petition that thou hast asked of him.”

Now listen, Eli had not one ounce of power to answer Hannah’s prayer. He couldn’t give her the child she longed for. But he listened to her. He acknowledged her and agreed with her in prayer. He had compassion for her.

Hannah felt heard. She was supported and not alone in her sadness and grief, and isn’t that what we all want? To be seen and heard and feel like we—and our sorrow—matter to someone?

Then look what happened: “So the woman [Hannah] went her way, and did eat, and her countenance was no more sad.”

She “went her way . . .” According to the Google, Ramathaim was around 12 miles from Shiloh, give or take a few. That’s a full day’s journey on foot. So Hannah went for a long walk. When emotions are bubbling up, moving your body helps to expend excess energy so you don’t explode. And if you’ve already exploded, walking provides a form of bilateral stimulation for the brain, which is key in processing events and emotions. That’s why you feel better after a walk, and also why you get creative ideas while walking. So go for a walk.

Then she “did eat,” and probably not Twinkies and Coke. She would have eaten something nutritious because she was on a Mediterranean diet, which everyone knows is super healthy.

“And her countenance was no more sad.”

This is the most fascinating part to me. Hannah was still not pregnant. She still had the witchy sister-wife to contend with. Her husband still thought he was better to her than ten sons. She did not have the answer to her prayer and didn’t know if she would ever get it.

But she had poured out her soul to the Lord—all the sadness, all the grief, all the bitterness, all the anger and feeling afflicted and forgotten. She poured it all out before the God who created her with the intense desire to bear a child, knowing he could handle all her emotions and trusting that he would do what was best.

When she went away with a no-more-sad countenance, she did not know if she would ever have a baby. She just told God how she felt. She did not hold back or try to sound spiritual. She was simply 100% honest with God and left it all there at his feet.

We can do that too.

God is not afraid of your feelings. He can handle the biggest of emotions.

So bring them. Dump them at the throne of grace where he is waiting to hear every word, catch every tear. Bring someone with you to hear you and agree with you in prayer and say, “Amen, so be it.”

But don’t not have an emotional breakdown because you think it’s unspiritual. The Bible is full of them, and Hannah shows us just how to do it.