"So he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress became despised in her eyes. And when Sarai dealt harshly with her, she fled from her presence." (Genesis 16:4, 6b, NIV)
"Nevertheless she will be saved in childbearing."
(II Timothy 2:10, NIV)
While eavesdropping as a child, I overheard something that both fascinated and horrified me. My mom and her sisters were talking about my grandmother. They never really spoke in whispers, but they were, nevertheless, always reverent when they spoke of Mother.
"Mother had to take care of Ma'Cissie who had been hit by lightening. She changed her bandages and did the chores. Mother was pregnant at the time with him (an uncle that I will not name here). And he got that mark on his shoulder and arm from it. Y'all know Ma'Cissie wasn't no easy woman to get along with. She did all that work. It must have bothered Mother."
The story was as mysterious to me as the South itself. It was the substance of family folklore and colored with the beauty and sorrows of rural life in Tennessee for African American women. Many of the stories haunted me. They were countless, and our family is voluminous. The power of what was being excluded from the event was unnerving. The conversation was open-ended. I closed it. I concluded that the disfavor my Grandmother encountered from interactions with her mother-in-law left an impression in her soul that became visible on the body of her child. In spite of the ill-treatment, Mother birthed a total of five sons and eight daughters. Thirteen children! She, like Hagar, became matriarch to a large family.
The story concerning my grandmother and her unborn son was similar to some of the other stories I later gathered in my journey in pastoral care for women. The narratives I've been entrusted with are particular and, simultaneously, universal. What is unifying, sadly, is the theme of difficulties, neglect, and abuse. Women are evicted while pregnant. Women are beaten while pregnant. Women are tormented emotionally while pregnant. Women are thrown on the ground and arrested while pregnant. Women are trafficked while pregnant. It's not uncommon for a woman who is expecting to be without any support from family or friends. In Hagar's life, it was the much older female figure, Sarai, that was villainous. In my family, it was my mom's paternal grandmother who may have, in her own way, afflicted my grandmother. The impact upon my uncle was visible and physical. Even if we dismissed my story as purely anecdotal and the birthmark was coincidental, having no correlative to the burn sustained on the arm of Ma'cissie, the feelings of sorrow were real, unquestionably real, for my grandmother. Pregnancy brings many of us face-to-face with anxiety brought on by hardship.
I've birthed two children and that reality still makes me pause. The responsibility of co-creating a child inside my body was nothing short of miraculous and harrowing. For me carrying a child for nine months was rife with concerns. I had my own encounters with overwhelming meanness during my pregnancy. Though the marital tensions were also difficult, they paled in comparison to my interactions with my doctor. On my delivery day, he, a Euro-American male surgeon, stormed out of the pre-op room in a rage. I'd already been shaved and given something by injection by the nurse to prepare me for the birth. To the doctor, that was of little consequence. My husband pursued him to reason with him to return to perform my C-section. What makes this scene even more egregious is the fact that he was formerly the Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology! It was an ordeal for me. One might assume that he had the self-control to put his patient's and baby's safety first. He did not. Looking back, I'm stunned by his outburst. Only recently have I been able to come to terms with his insensitive, hateful, unprofessional, and unethical behavior. Regrettably, these situations, where expectant mothers are the recipients of ire, hostility, and berating, may be more common than we would like to believe. Families and societies should be built upon civility and an awareness of the sensitivity and delicacy of pregnancy, consideration for the other person, and respect for human dignity should always prevail. Our existence is commingled with the lives of others. In my grandmother's situation, it was summarily concluded that her trauma while carrying her baby had been the cause of his malady. It made complete sense to me. "No one lives or dies unto himself." We don't exist on islands where we are insulated from hardships afflicted by others. Pregnancy is no exception, regrettably.
"She had an Egyptian slave-girl whose name was Hagar..."
Hagar is an enigma for most of The Church. She's also a mystery to the scribes who wrote of her. Wil Gafney, professor of Hebrew Bible and Episcopal priest, doubts that Hagar is a name. She asserts that is more of a label meaning "the resident alien" or the foreigner who resides among them. This affirms an inherent neglect of her person-hood. But for me, she is a patron saint of unwed African motherhood. Hagar's life becomes relevant as we consider that her record of endured hardships as an expectant mother predates and foreshadows our own. Hagar, the subject of abuse in the epigraph, is a neglected African mother. In this way she is an apropos example for us. Her narrative is complex. It chronicles her exploitation, rejection, abandonment, and manumission. In as much as God sends her a messenger to console her, she becomes for us a comfort, a balm for our healing, and in many ways, a mirror image from which to see our own afflictions. Interestingly, the pronouncement of blessings were a reversed image of the Annunciation. I'll revisit this parallel and the similarities later. We find in her a relevant discussion on human emotions and ethics. We also consider what has been affirmed by biblical theology, psychology, and modern medical science in the U.S.
"So Abram said to Sarai, "Indeed your maid is in your hand; do to her as you please." And when Sarai dealt harshly with her..."
If you've dined out in the last ten years, you've seen public service announcements on the walls of lavatories. To discourage alcohol consumption, a profile image of a woman well along in her pregnancy raises alarm. She's notably large. The drawing of her and the script serve to warn women that drinking alcohol during pregnancy can be harmful to the child. This effort by the Department of Health and Human Services and local health departments, in conjunction with restaurateurs, helps to raise awareness in society. It's useful. It gives some clear advice about the physiological impact that drinking has on the unborn child. Unquestionably the data on alcohol and controlled substances are weighty and factual. We have yet to see signage that points to the emotional and mental impact of micro-aggressions, emotional abuse, and neglect.
Not until recently did medical researchers, sociologists, and public health officials begin to alert Americans of the impact that social stressors can have on pregnant African-American women. Thankfully, they've moved away from the worn-out notion that women from low-income households experience higher maternal mortality solely as a result of a lack of prenatal care and education. Of late, there has been a ground-swell of evidence showing that even among well-educated, highly-resourced African-American women, mortality rates are disproportionately higher than that of their Euro-American counterparts. What is now inarguable is that our voices are not heeded by medical practitioners. We are dying in the hospitals due to neglect fueled by indifference and racism. Even tennis champion, Serena Williams, might have fallen victim had she been another, lesser-known, patient after giving birth.
Looking back to the biblical text, Sarai, whose name means contentious, has orchestrated hardship for her household. She has engaged Abram to impregnate Hagar who in turn despised Sarai. But rather than self-examination, she digs her heels in and doubles-down. Admittedly, as some have pointed out, the cultural norm was for women to use their slaves as concubines, with the intention of "obtain[ing] children by her." I don't refute that point. Yes, women of means did, and still do, opt for surrogacy. Overwhelmingly more important than cultural norms is the mandate for love. Love for humanity is integral for a civil society, yet the text, doesn't suggest that consent was sought from Hagar. She is, on all accounts unwilling, subjugated, and poorly situated within society as a young, female, foreign-born slave.The differences not only in ethnicity, but in class, fuel Sarai's treatment of Hagar. I conclude that though times were different, Hagar could do little to prevent copulation and subsequently conceiving Abram's child. She, then, was denied human dignity. She was demoralized and then blamed for possibly exhibiting her feelings. Her welfare was ignored.
Hagar's treatment foreshadows the nearly four-hundred years of enslavement of African-Americans in the U. S. The blood of countless women still cries loudly from the soil of former plantations. Enslaved pregnant women were also treated harshly or more accurately, brutally. In order to exact punishment, holes were dug in the ground before the lash of whips were to tear open their maternal flesh. Facing-down in the dirt, the missing soil was imagined to somehow protect the unborn baby from the lashes. Only evil, birthed from the deprived minds of slavers, could devise such a tortuous affliction. Clearly, a mother receiving such unthinkable abuse is traumatized, and obviously, so is her child, in utero. Whereas enslavement was seemingly normalized, treating others with dignity and demonstrating concern for their welfare has lasting outcomes. Conversely, deal[ing] harshly with others also has lasting impact on society. It creates, not a more loving society, but one wherein loving words are far too infrequent.
"And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress became despised in her eyes."
Like many women and the older women in their lives, she may have suffered scolding, verbal abuse, and impertinent remarks that belittled her. "Her mistress became despised in her eyes" is often concluded by interpreters to mean that Hagar became haughty when she conceived and despised Sarai. However, given the wide difference in age of the two, it seems plausible that Hagar was displeased and disappointed. She was likely young enough to be Sarai's daughter or granddaughter. She may have previously viewed Sarai as a maternal figure. If that were the case, then Sarai's orchestration of Hagar's pregnancy would be a betrayal. Her feelings of dismay, disdain, or contempt, could be the reasonable outgrowth of Sarai objectifying Hagar; subjecting her an unwanted sexual interaction and pregnancy.The decision to treat her harshly seems even more wicked and reprehensible as Hagar was not a willing participant.
This legacy of affliction, by women upon women, continued in the confines of the American institution of slavery. In comparison, Sarai intended to take Hagar's child for herself to raise and Euro-American female slavers (or the wives of slavers) often were the cause of babies being taken from their African mothers and sold for financial gain. Additionally, Euro-American women often passed enslaved mothers and their children on to their children as a means of maintain social status. In all these iterations, the loving ties between mother and child were fractured. Ultimately, birth mothers lose the discretion and joy of caring for their child. They lose the natural and unfettered affection that children offer as they reciprocate love.
The trauma of being reduced to little more than a human production facility, can and has, effected women of color in the U.S. leaving in its wake a legacy of disrupted family ties. Dr. Joy DeGruyer a leading social work researcher details the dynamics in her acclaimed book, Post-traumatic slave syndrome. She affirms the immeasurable injury caused psychologically, physically, and spiritually to the descendants of the enslaved. Hagar is injured by Sarai; that legacy requires reflection. We can gain healing individually and collectively through taking an unflinching look at this text. There is an arc that begins with sorry, but peaks at healing brought on my God's intervention and promise. Likewise, the current state of African American motherhood is clouded by violent conception, birth into subsistence living, struggles with unrelenting infertility, a healthcare system that fails us, and our own apprehensions about giving birth amid State-sanctioned violence and the imposing school to prison pipeline.
"I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude...Now you have conceived and shall bear a son; you shall call him Ishmael, for the LORD has given heed to your affliction..."
Admittedly, like Hagar, we are harshly treated. Nevertheless, Hagar was the beneficiary of the promise declared in Genesis 16:10. Her narrative, which would have otherwise been bleak, was interrupted by the will of God. Leading up to that interruption, we have a witness of female tenacity. We have a witness of God's justice, faithfulness, and sovereignty. Hagar, while a foreign born stranger, an under-resourced and rejected "single-mother," still issues the first recorded account of God's name in The Bible. She addresses Him as El-roi, the God who sees her. Her epiphany is born amid adversity. He sees her affliction. He sees her low position, socially and economically, in the eyes of Abram and Sarai and upon their estate. He sees the loneliness. But like the well named for this occasion that continued to spring up water amid the wilderness, God a witness. He sees all that is and shall be. God's provision and eternal existence provided for sojourners of the wilderness, water to sustain life in the harshest of contexts. Our take away is that "He who sees us" will respond to us, our tenacity, our willingness to be free, expansive, and thriving even in the midst of hostile terrain.
Father, in your unfailing love heal us. Bind up our injuries. So loud are the voices of despair and oppression, tat at times, we are shaken by sorrow and apathy. Quiet our hearts with your peace. Restore our souls where we have remained fractured from generations of being regarded as chattel. Let the legacy of abuse that permeates the atmosphere be replaced by your nurture.Visit those painful memories with us in your fatherly tenderness.You have given us the keys to the kingdom. The power to bind and to loose. Affirm to us that we are created in your image and likeness. We bear in us your Spirit. Comfort us. The blood of our fore-mothers cry out from the soil. Give us beauty for ashes as you allow the dread of our past to become our strength for today. As you have promised, prepare a table before us in the presence of our enemies. Our cup overflows. We ask this in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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