"All one can hope to do is to keep oneself humbly available, to allow oneself to be a battlefield."
Etty Hillsum, An Interrupted Life
It is difficult to face the depth of the battle I was in when a friend called with this quote because now my life is steady and secure. I was living in Massachusetts, having fled from a breakdown that began a year earlier in Baltimore. I had no job. I lived alone in a one room apartment. And I lived with voices inside me that I had no defense against.
Whether those voices were mental illness or demons I do not know. What I do know was that I was up against powers greater than myself and that I needed help. I was not consciously flirting with suicide, but I was hearing voices that told me to kill myself. And I knew there was an unconscious, destructive, darkness in me that I had no control over.
I remember being huddled at my kitchen table, having given up all hope, when the phone rang. It was Julia. She was calling just to say "Hi". I don't even remember what I said. I just remember her quoting Etty Hillsum. "All one can hope... is to allow oneself to be a battlefield."
Suddenly I had hope again because I could do that. I could choose to "keep myself humbly available." My life was a war between health and illness, between good and evil. So in that moment I re-chose hope, re-chose life, re-chose God.
Tempting
The evil I chose for those few moments before Julia called was tempting. It was not the evil of self-destruction. It was the choice to will darkness. Darkness had filled my life, and finally I believed it was going to win. So why not give in? Why not cast my lot with the demons who had overrun my life?
The verse that had kept my hope alive up to then was Romans 8:28, "We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose."
God had called me in high school. And I had faithfully followed that call as best I could. Yet, here I was, lost and battling with mental illness, in a new town where I knew practically no one.
As I write this, my life feels like a spring bud. Then it felt like black pavement, crusted and crumbling, seldom flecked with light. Help came with a friend's phone call. And the lifeline I needed to hold onto hope was extended. Thanks be to God for such care.
Ann Tarbell works for The Chimes, a social service agency for people with barriers to independent living including mental retardation. She divides her worship life between a Quaker meeting and an Episcopalian church in Baltimore MD.