How to Have a Soft Heart
Some things smooth out as they’re exposed to the elements. Sea glass tumbled by the tide. Stones tossed along a riverbed. Your favorite pair of jeans or the years-old sweatshirt that’s been washed and worn to perfection.
But not everything weathers so well. We like distressed leather on our boots and bags, but if someone were to say your skin is leathery—creased, cracked, or toughened with age—you might not take it as a compliment.
As women, we work hard to hide the visible marks of wear. We’re encouraged to roll ice over tired eyes and add concealer to circles revealing sleepless nights. But it isn’t just our body that carries evidence of hard days. Our hearts can weather too.
At first, you don’t notice the way circumstances are impacting you. You manage the initial challenge—the chronic illness, caring for your aging parent, or the difficulties at work—with grace and a determination to keep going. It feels hard but bearable.
Until it doesn’t. When the season you expected to be brief stretches from months to years, layered with added pressures in other areas of your life, the weight of it all doesn’t just exhaust your body; it changes how you see the world. You grow more guarded. You lower your hopes, expecting disappointment, and attempting to protect yourself from anyone or anything that could cause more pain, whether it’s people, circumstances, or God Himself.
You can probably think of women who have been cut by life and now wear their pain as sharp edges. But you probably also know women who have walked through as much difficulty and somehow emerged softer. Gentler. More gracious. More trusting.
Have you ever wondered how to end up like them?
The way we handle pressure today is forming us into the women we’ll be decades from now. So when we are facing suffering, whether we’re in its midst or recovering on the other side, how do we allow God to soften what life tries to make brittle?
When Life Cuts Deep
In 1 Samuel 1, we meet Hannah, a woman who faced more than her share of heartache. But her story begins with her husband:
There was a man from Ramathaim-zophim in the hill country of Ephraim. His name was Elkanah son of Jeroham, son of Elihu, son of Tohu, son of Zuph, an Ephraimite. He had two wives, the first named Hannah and the second Peninnah. (1 Samuel 1:1–2)
It’s likely that Elkanah, like other men in Old Testament times, had taken a second wife when his first was infertile.
It’s hard for us to view this story through a modern lens, but imagine Hannah in your small group at church, first bubbling over with the latest news about her life as a young wife—the joys, the struggles, the stories she’d only dare tell a group of women. Months or years go by, and now she’s breaking down as she shares how things are going. Her update isn’t really necessary; everyone knows she’s still not pregnant.
Picture her later, introducing Peninnah to the others—the woman who shares her home, her table, and her husband’s affection. Watch Peninnah walk into the room, another child on her hip, another pregnancy announcement on her lips, and see Hannah’s reaction:
Peninnah had children, but Hannah was childless. (1:2)
Maybe she had managed the initial grief of infertility. Maybe she was able to deal with the other frustrations she faced with her husband. But the seemingly unfair circumstances finally pushed her to a breaking point.
Her rival would taunt her severely just to provoke her, because the LORD had kept Hannah from conceiving. Year after year, when she went up to the LORD’s house, her rival taunted her in this way. Hannah would weep and would not eat. (1 Samuel 1:6–7)
Year after year. It wasn’t a brief season of disappointment—it was a long, relentless ache. The kind that might have left her resentful, bitter, and broken. Hannah could have let her pain turn her sharp: cutting her husband and Peninnah with her words, cutting herself off from others, and cutting God out of her life for allowing her to experience this much heartache.
But instead of pulling away from Him, she positioned herself to be shaped by His presence.
Steps toward a Soft Heart
Hannah allowed her grief to drive her to the Lord, and that decision became the turning point of her story:
On one occasion, Hannah got up after they ate and drank at Shiloh. The priest Eli was sitting on a chair by the doorpost of the LORD’s temple. (1 Samuel 1:9)
The way she responded to her situation offers us guidance on how to have a soft heart toward the Lord, even in great suffering:
1. She got up and went toward the Lord. (v. 9)
“Here she is shown going up to the Lord’s house,” writes one commentator. “No other woman in the Old Testament is mentioned doing this.”1 She took action, going toward Him rather than trying to manage her situation and her pain alone.
When you’re hurting, do you tend to close off or open up to God? Do you move toward Him, actively taking steps to spend time in His Word, in prayer, and with His people, or do you tend to withdraw, wanting to deal with it all on your own?
2. She poured it all out before the Lord (v. 10).
The ESV translation says that “she was deeply distressed,” and that she “wept bitterly.”
Hannah wept and prayed to the Lord “in bitterness of soul,” a phrase used elsewhere in Scripture “to characterize the psychological pain experienced by one who has been deprived of a child through death (cf. Ruth 1:13, 20; 2 Kgs 4:27; Zech 12:10) or who is experiencing great personal physical suffering (cf. Job 3:20; 7:11; 10:1; Isa 38:15).” Relief from this sort of pain is never pictured in the Hebrew Bible as coming from a human being; in each case divine intervention was the only remedy.2
She didn’t hide her pain or minimize the way she was feeling before Him. She didn’t hold back her grief, frustration, or longing; she let all of it out honestly and vulnerably before Him.
Are there emotions you’re afraid to bring before God? Consider the difference it would make if you brought all that you’re feeling before Him today.
3. She subjected herself to the Lord’s authority and trusted Him with what she treasured most (v. 11).
As Hannah pleaded with her omnipotent God, the “LORD of armies,” she acknowledged that she was in subjection to Him. Note how many times she calls herself His servant in her prayer:
“O LORD of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.” (v. 11 ESV)
Even as she asked for what she longed for, she surrendered it back to the Lord, releasing her desire to His purposes rather than cling to it as her own. She also submitted herself under His ultimate leadership, willing to give to Him rather than just take.
How does viewing yourself as God’s servant versus trying to control the situation change the way that you pray and approach Him?
4. She allowed God’s presence to shift her perspective even before her circumstances changed (v. 18).
When Hannah went on her way, she was no longer despondent, even though it was not clear what the outcome of her prayer would be. Her heart was lighter after entrusting her burden to the Lord, and doing so had brought her renewed hope and peace.
Do you allow God to give you peace in the waiting? What could you hand to Him even now, so you can walk away lighter?
5. She worshiped again (v. 19).
“The entire Hannah story is formed on a grounding in worship—seven references to acts of worship establish this grounding (1:3, 7, 9, 15, 19, 21, 24).”3 Her worship wasn’t contingent on getting what she wanted or even escaping the circumstances that grieved her. Worship kept her tender toward the One who gave her hope.
How might regular worship—even in seasons of difficulty or sorrow—keep your heart soft instead of bitter?
Let Grace Transform Hurt into Tenderness
“Woman of Grace”— that’s the Hebrew meaning of Hannah’s name. It’s also a reminder that a soft heart doesn’t happen by accident. It’s formed when we bring our deepest hurt to Him, when we pour out our overwhelming circumstances and suffering before Him and choose to entrust Him with the outcome.
God alone is able to smooth out the sharp edges where life has cut deep. In His hands, even what’s been made tough can become tender again.
1 Robert D. Bergen, 1, 2 Samuel, vol. 7, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996), 67.
2 Robert D. Bergen, 1, 2 Samuel, vol. 7, 68.
3 Eugene H. Peterson, First and Second Samuel, ed. Patrick D. Miller and David L. Bartlett, Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999), 21.
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