Remember Now, Both of Us

“If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there.” — Psalm 139:8 (ASV)

Betsie ten Boom was nearly seven years older than Corrie, and she was never strong. She never married. For most of her life she kept house at the Beje, kept the shop's books, arranged flowers, and made a shabby old house beautiful on almost no money. She was gentle, orderly and funny. Corrie, lively and impatient, admired her all her life and sometimes felt rebuked by her.

In the camps Betsie became the stronger of the two. Not in body; she was far weaker. But her faith seemed to rest on something the camp could not reach. When a frail Dutch woman was beaten to death in Barracks 28, Corrie turned to Betsie in horror and found her face peaceful. That wasn't indifference. This was the woman who started the society against grumbling, who said the name of Jesus to a lonely Polish prisoner, who pitied the officer who beat her, and who once went to invite a brutal barracks supervisor to the Bible reading. Her compassion was fierce. Evil just didn't seem to get inside her.

Corrie's 1945 book has a line that turns the title of her later book around. Betsie depended on her almost like a child, she wrote, and it was as though Corrie were Betsie's hiding-place in that evil place. The sisters sheltered each other. Corrie gave practical care. Betsie gave a faith that kept her sister from despair.

In the evenings they made plans. When they got home they would open their house to women coming out of the camps. They would make a place in Haarlem for young people whose youth the war had stolen. And the two of them would go to America and tell what God had done.

In the late autumn Betsie became seriously ill. A Dutch nurse got her admitted to the hospital barracks, where she shared a narrow cot with a French girl who kicked her until she fell out. Betsie didn't complain; she said there was such darkness in that poor child's heart, and it was no accident she'd been put beside her. Walking back through the fog, Corrie felt rebellion rising. Why did God leave them there? Why must Betsie suffer? Then, she wrote, she heard three words in French: rempli de tendresse, “filled with tenderness.” Nobody was near. She believed it was God, speaking not to scold her but in love.

Betsie got weaker until she could not walk. As she was carried off to the hospital, a Polish prisoner knelt by her and prayed. That afternoon Corrie visited once more, and as she was sent away Betsie called after her: “Remember now, both of us.” The next morning, looking through the window by her sister's bed, Corrie saw nurses carrying out a body wasted almost beyond recognition. It was Betsie. The date was 16 December 1944. She was fifty-nine.

First came desolation. Then, to her own surprise, peace. Job's words came to her: “Jehovah gave, and Jehovah hath taken away; blessed be the name of Jehovah.” The words most linked with Betsie, that there is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still, come from The Hiding Place. Corrie's 1945 book has a related thought in Corrie's own mouth: for those who belong to the Saviour, death is not a pit but a tunnel into the light. Either way, that faith was tested in Ravensbrück, and it held. That night Corrie made room in Betsie's place for a Russian woman nobody would take in.

Losing someone you love can feel like falling into a pit with no bottom. If grief is swallowing you, please tell a safe person: a parent, a pastor, a teacher, a doctor, or a crisis line where you live. The psalm says that even in Sheol, the deepest grave there is, God is already there.

One thing to do this week: think of the person who has most been a “hiding place” for you. Tell them, in a message, a note or face to face, one specific way they have sheltered you.