Lenten Day Eighteen: Betsie ten Boom

March 2, 2024

“There is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.”  Betsie ten Boom

This quotation by Betsie ten Boom may be the most meaningful of all my collection though I don’t have it written on a notecard. Instead, it is inscribed in my memory and heart.  Betsie, sister of the renowned Corrie ten Boom, died at the Ravensbruck concentration camp at the age of 59.  She and her family, members of the Dutch Reformed Church, believed in the equality of all people before God, and they were arrested for harboring Jews seeking escape. 

The story that made this quotation personal to me began in my early thirties, when I experienced a three-year journey with clinical depression.  Clinical depression is not simply a case of the blues but is, instead, a mental illness/chemical brain disorder that leads to feelings of deep unworthiness, seemingly unending darkness, physical and emotional pain, and thoughts of suicide. Coupled with anxiety disorder/panic attacks, I can truthfully say that the first year of this illness was, beyond doubt, the worst year of my life.  It is by God’s grace, compassionate therapists, effective medication, and the presence of my little family that I am here today, and for all those gifts, I give thanks.

In one of my darkest periods, when the pain was so overwhelming, when I was certain my two small children and my husband would be better off without me, that I forced myself to go for a walk.  That in itself was a dangerous choice because the thought of throwing myself in front of the next passing car did not escape me.  So I walked, and I walked, right past a church marquee that held this quotation: “There is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.”

Trust me.  I was in the deepest, darkest, blackest pit I’d ever encountered, or ever have encountered since.  But I stopped and read those words, over and over again, and they became my lifeline, my mantra, through the rest of my recovery.  I held onto to them like a rope pulling me back to the light. I still believe God put them there for me.  

I had heard of Corrie ten Boom, the Christian Dutch concentration camp survivor, but I didn’t know her entire story or her sister’s.  Since then, I have read her book, The Hiding Place, that describes how she and her family helped hide Jews escaping the Nazis in Holland, until they were discovered, and how she and her family were taken to Germany’s  Ravensbruck concentration camp.  In their late fifties, both sisters were forced to undress in front of their male guards.  Their living conditions, if they can be called that, were deplorable, and yet Betsie, on her death bed, could profess to Corrie, “There is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.”

Whoever or whatever we conceive God to be, God is there beneath us to hold us up in the darkest of times.  There is no pit so deep that God is not below it, supporting us and with us.  I believe this to be true as much as I believe that resurrection does happen.  It happened to me.

Blessings ~ Rosemary