When introduced in the Bible, she is 65 years old and has faced over 75 years of infertility. I can empathize with her pain, but I struggle with how she treated Hagar. She forced Hagar to have sex with her husband, get pregnant, and then abused her until she ran away. It was Sarah’s idea all along. After being blessed by God, she sent Hagar and her son into the desert again. Sarah seems jealous and mean, and I don’t understand her significance in the Bible.

When my NCLEX anxiety spiraled and that river tube popped, my survival instinct was to get loud, get harsh, and force a solution because the silence around me felt dangerous. It made me think of Sarah in the Bible. She wasn't inherently a malicious villain; she was a woman living in deep panic, facing what felt like ultimate failure. Just like I grabbed the reins on that river because no one else was speaking, Sarah grabbed the reins of her own destiny by forcing Hagar into the picture.