During her talk at the Annual Session of North Pacific Yearly Meeting in Missoula in July 2004, Montana, Eden Grace, a New England Friend active in ecumenical dialogue, described her harrowing experience with mental illness induced by an antimalarial drug that she took while attending the Friends United Meeting Triennial in Kenya. For the past two years she has struggled with the debilitating side effects of this drug, which profoundly affected her relations with her family as well as her concept of ministry. Here are excerpts from her talk, which can be found in its entirety at www.edengrace.org.

The Hebrew people spent forty years in the wilderness. Jesus was sent out into the wilderness immediately after his baptism, and spent forty days there. Biblical scholars tell us that both wilderness and the number forty symbolize trial and testing. The wilderness is a place of confusion, wandering, loss of clear purpose, and exposure to great risk. Forty signifies the period of time necessary for a complete cycle of one portion of God’s plan—for retreat, trial, victory and new beginning.

When they reach the edge of Canaan, Moses sends spies to investigate the Canaanite defenses. The spies return with a description of the fertility of the land, as well as stories of the fearsome Canaanites and their well-defended towns. In fear, the Hebrews decide to return to Egypt. They are afraid of God’s promise, and want to run away from God’s leadership. Therefore, having glimpsed the promised land, God orders them to turn around and go back into the wilderness and stay there for 38 more years. It is perhaps this moment, more than any other, that drew me to the book of Numbers as a reading of my own experience. I have glimpsed the promise of what God is doing in the next phase of my life. But in so glimpsing, I discovered the depth of my own fear. For two years now, I have been in the wilderness. I ask God for the wisdom to understand the wilderness.

For the early Quaker writer Samuel Bownas, the wilderness is the place between the sinful self and the sanctified self: "For no man can be righteous and wicked at one time; we must first be brought out of the bondage of corruption under spiritual Pharaoh and Egypt, into the wilderness, before we can offer acceptably unto God" (Bownas p. 6). Bownas says that the stories of the Hebrew people traveling from Egypt to Canaan, and the things that happened to them along the way, show us the path from spiritual death as strangers to God and children of wrath, into a state of grace and life through Jesus Christ, our spiritual Moses. Whatever happens in the wilderness, it is surely necessary as part of how God readies us for service and ministry.

I have gone deeper and deeper into an awareness of unknowing, of weakness, of brokenness. I cultivated, and indeed appreciated, the fact that I didn’t know anything. Sometimes I’ve felt at peace about it, sometimes not. For a time, I lost all confidence in my ministry, and felt a total dearth of words. My condition was very poor and my vocal ministry was stopped. Bownas describes how to stay faithful in such a condition: "Therefore, if at times thee is very poor and has nothing to say, let not this tempt thee to go beyond thy line; for this poverty and affliction thee is under may by divine purpose be brought upon thee, to prepare thy mind to speak more feelingly and with moving language to others under the like distress and barrenness of soul" (Bownas p. 68). I kept in silence and wished that I could let go of the anxiety in order to get back to my ‘true’ state of being, which is healthy, centered, spiritually grounded and abundant.

I didn’t yet understand that the path of faithfulness lay not in getting back to myself, but in going forward through the brokenness. Yet I felt surprisingly clear that I was supposed to go back to Kenya to work for FUM. It was as if I knew, even then, that the only way through the cloud of unknowing is to head directly into the place of greatest uncertainty.

It’s difficult to choose the way of uncertainty. John Woolman has a vivid description of this condition in his Journal: "I have gone forward, not as one travelling in a road cast up and well prepared, but as a man walking through a miry place in which are stones here and there safe to step on, but so situated that one step being taken, time is necessary to see where to step next." What a powerful image—balancing on a stone, partway across the miry bog, searching for another stone safe to step on.

Sometimes I can’t see where to step next. In my anxiety or panic, I feel abandoned by God in the pit. Then I pray Psalm 88: "You have put me in the depths of the Pit, in the regions dark and deep. Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves. … I am shut in so that I cannot escape; my eye grows dim through sorrow. Every day I call on you, O Lord; I spread out my hands to you. Do you work wonders for the dead?" This Psalm is subtitled "a complaint to God." I would call that an understatement—it is a wrenching cry of despair to a God who seems completely deaf to the suffering of the one who prays. It is a cry of utter hopelessness. There is no hint throughout the psalm that God makes any response to the pleading prayers. The question—do you work wonders for the dead?—is left hanging, and the answer seems to be "no." There are times when this is the psalm I choose to pray. I rail at God for throwing me into the pit and abandoning me there.

Six months after we interviewed for the Kenya job with FUM, we heard that we would be hired, but they couldn’t say when we would be going. My response to this news was to feel disoriented and unreal.

This past winter, fear ballooned in me. I felt the upswell of some old fears —that I don’t measure up to "real" ministers, to truly spiritual Friends; that my life lacks a deeper consistency of experience and memory; that God will call me into a ministry that will hurt my children. I indulged those fears more than I should have, but I don’t have deep regrets. I think God was letting me stare into the abyss and search for the bottom, so that I could really become ready to receive help. The hardest thing that happened was that my partner James and I found ourselves in a terrible conflict, not based on anything tangible, but with a devastating erosion of trust. Now rage was added to my emotional constellation of fear, dread and panic. I directed the rage at James, the kids and at myself, and desperately wished to be purged of the anger that was cutting me inside like a knife. My prayers became tortured. I had an image of myself as wounded on a battlefield, with gangrene, needing to amputate without anesthesia.

I finally saw a psychiatrist. It was a liberating experience to feel that she understood my condition, and could help me name it. Yet it also meant a serious challenge to my sense of self. She suggested to me that the Lariam had had a permanent effect on my psychology, as it does in some small number of cases. It had left me with a mental illness that wasn’t going to go away on its own. I had an anxiety and panic disorder. She recommended treatment with medication and psychotherapy. My response to all this was very intense. It gave me hope that I wouldn’t have to continue with the emotional turmoil of the past two years. Yet it evoked deep shame. Should I keep it a secret? If I admit to a mental illness, does that invalidate my ministry? Would FUM’s leadership lose confidence in me if they knew? Does it make me ineligible for service in Kenya? Does it require a denial of my self-assertion and self-understanding? Do I lose the right to believe in myself and expect others to believe in me? Do I lose all credibility? Will anyone ever take me seriously if they know I’m on a psychiatric medication? If I feel better on medication, does that invalidate the emotions of the past?

Full of both hope and fear, I chose to begin treatment. I chose to embrace my brokenness. I touched my feet down at the bottom of the pit, and found it was solid after all. I prayed about knowing and unknowing and being fully known. I admitted that I was lost in a tract-less land, and asked God to lead me.

Following God’s leadership is an essential practice in the wilderness. In the story of the Hebrew people, God’s leadership is made visible in the pillar of cloud that leads them out past the Red Sea. This same cloud stays with them through the whole forty years. It controls when they march and when they stay in camp. The text goes on at length to impress upon us that it was only on a sign from God that they would move, and that they obeyed the cloud no matter what.

So although we talk about them wandering in the wilderness, they weren’t strictly lost. Certainly, they didn’t know where they were, where they were going, or when. But they were being clearly guided every step of the way. The image of this cloud moving before them is a striking way to imagine what Friends call "way opening"—that sense that the cloud has lifted and beckons us to step forward, even as it seemed to rest heavily upon us and prevent our moving just the day before. We do not choose the time of our calling. We simply follow the cloud as it leads us. Waiting and following are essential lessons of the wilderness.

After the Hebrew people are told they will spend 38 years in the wilderness, until the entire slave generation has died and a new generation has come to maturity, the text simply omits that next 38 years and jumps to the preparations for entering Canaan. We know nothing about what happened to the community as they lingered in the wilderness, as the entire slave generation died away and their children came to adulthood, except that Miryam died and was buried there. I find this incredible period of silent dormancy very powerful. Sometimes the work of faithfulness is simple, silent waiting. It seems that nothing is happening. Like a seed in the ground in winter, like a tree barren of its leaves, we might be tempted to despair that any life is left in us at all. Like the secret latency of pregnancy, something is growing deep inside that has yet to issue forth in ministry. There is no way to rush through a phase of life like this. There is no way to call forth words when God has sealed our lips. There is no way to glimpse what lies ahead. We can only trust that the generation of the promise, as it grows to maturity within our hearts, will burst forth in blossom in the springtime of new energy, and we will find ourselves propelled forward in ministry again.

We know that God has a plan for our lives, but that knowledge can sometimes just feel like more pressure— we have to work so hard to discern what God wants—if he really wanted it so badly, wouldn’t he make it easier for us to understand and follow! A wise pastor in my Yearly Meeting opened the meaning of Psalm 119:105 for me: "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." My job is to be faithful one step at a time. The lamp of God’s word creates a small pool of light around my feet, illuminating just the next step and allowing me to take it with some degree of confidence. But if I lift my eyes and gaze down the road, I am lucky if I can make out vague shadows. The wisdom comes in realizing that I don’t need to see down the road. I trust that God has a road mapped out for me. I give over needing to know the big picture, and focus on my faithful steps today.

In this way, the wilderness experience teaches us to surrender our desire to control, and learn to trust God. Woolman speaks about the danger of "kindling our own fire." It’s frightening to abandon our attempt to maintain control over our lives, but there’s a liberating truth-telling in admitting we are not in control.

Samuel Bownas reminds us: "We can’t now help ourselves by our own contrivance, and workings in our own wills, but here we must live a life of faith, wholly depending on him that will (if we faint not in our minds) bring us through to the heavenly Canaan" (Bownas p. 7).

And so we come to an even deeper wisdom of spiritual wilderness—in such times, we discover that our faithful obedience to God is both very much our own, and at the same time not of us at all. We must be willing to give over our will. We must be willing to wander in the wilderness. We must make a willful decision to relinquish willfulness and embrace willingness.

It’s easy to imagine how faithfulness requires surrendering the will to disobey, and trying instead to live by righteous precepts. But this misses the point. Even our will to righteousness is inadequate and will lead us into sin, for it still derives its power from our own ego and not from God. This is what Penington meant when he appealed to Friends to "Give over thine own willing, give over thine own running, give over thine own desiring to know or be anything and sink down to the seed which God sows in the heart, and let that grow in thee and be in thee and breathe in thee and act in thee." We must give over our own desiring, even the desire to be faithful, in order to find the source of true faithfulness, which is both deeply within us, and yet not of us at all.

One of the most profound prayers in all of Scripture, for me, is, "I believe, help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24). For me, this means that I have enough faith to walk just one step further than I think I can, to take the next believing step, while at the same time confessing that I have already reached the furthest extent of my belief with the previous step. I can’t do what you’re asking of me, God, so having confessed that fact, I’ll do it anyway. This is the only way I have ever found courage within me.

Indeed, one of the marks of God’s will that I look for in my life is that I find uncharacteristic feelings and urges rising up in me. Where I, by myself, would feel fear, instead there is courage and joy. Where I would feel guilt and shame, instead there is freedom and desire. When I feel my weaknesses and vulnerabilities peeled away from me like the layers of an onion, and discover other motions in their place, I name this as God working in me, equipping me for faithful obedience.

I had agonized about whether, if I took medication for an anxiety disorder, I would still be me, whether I would still have the right to minister, whether I could, in good conscience, go to Kenya on behalf of FUM. Through these last few months of medication and therapy, I have discovered that I am more deeply me, and yet also I am remade into a new creation. I still carry the knowledge of my unworthiness, but it is a sweet knowledge. I still lack confidence in my own abilities, but I rest on the sure confidence that God is more able than I can ask. I will go to Kenya in a spirit of deep obedience. And I’m here today doing a risky thing, speaking from a place of weakness.

This chapter of my life is far from over, but I have felt God rescuing me from the miry place, and Psalm 40 gives voice to my gratitude: "I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the desolate pit out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure… I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. You are my help and my deliverer; do not delay, O my God."

One of the great mysteries of Christian spirituality is the paradox of the self. Jesus said, "For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted "(Luke 18:14b). Paul said, "Whenever I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Cor. 12: 9-10). We come to know ourselves in the Spirit through paradox or reversal.

The story of the Hebrew people in the wilderness prefigures the death and resurrection of Jesus, the death of the old and the birth of the new. The slave generation will not be able to enter the promised land. They would always be tempted to look back in longing for a life well-ordered by the disordered values of a slave economy. Instead, their children, who know nothing but the wilderness, will be the ones to enter Canaan. The overall message in the Book of Numbers is an encouraging one, even though so many of its stories depict rebellion, suffering, and testing. The big picture is that these faithless people are beloved of God, and God never gives up on them. These unworthy people are the ones God will use to bless the world; these people, who are so like me. Moses says to the people at the end of the forty years, "Surely the Lord your God has blessed you in all your undertakings; he knows your going through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing." The message is reassuring and liberating—to live, we only need to die.

And so I return to the scripture: "Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed" (1 Peter 4:12-14). The ordeal is indeed fiery, but it is not surprising, nor strange. We share in Christ’s sufferings, and thereby share in Christ’s glory. Shout for joy!

The motif of sharing in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus is central to Christian spirituality—it is the meaning of a "born-again" Christian, and of the ritual significance of water baptism as being buried and raised up with Christ. Quaker spirituality embraces this motif as not only a life-changing moment, but more deeply the mark of a changing life in every moment. Every time we feel God’s call and know our unworthiness, we are lowered into the tomb. Every time we answer the call with a movement of the heart toward faithfulness, we rise into new life. Quaker spirituality calls us to take up our daily cross. Daily finding ourselves judged and buried. Daily finding ourselves raised up. This, finally, is the "truth about me" that I have been searching for in the wilderness.