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Becoming Elisabeth Elliot (Book Review)
When I was a child, my mother passed along to me a deep appreciation for the life story and writings of Elisabeth Elliot. As a teenager I read her book Passion and Purity, convinced that my own Jim Elliot was right around the corner. In my twenties I often read from Keep A Quiet Heart as I wrestled with both depression and singleness. In my thirties I clung to Elisabeth’s mantra, “Do the next thing” as chronic illness made a home in my body and altered my life ambitions. And I spent the summer I was 42—recovering from chemotherapy and major surgery—savoring every last word of Suffering is Never for Nothing. When Elisabeth passed in 2015, I dug up an old picture I’d taken with her at a speaking engagement 20 years before. Although there had been seasons when I’d tired of her crisp-and-conventional style (after all, she was from my grandparents’ generation, not mine)—and I’d let her books collect dust on my shelves—I looked at the picture with a heart full of love and gratitude, feeling that I’d known her well. Little did I know how little I knew her. Last month I picked up a copy of Ellen Vaughn’s new authorized biography, Becoming Elisabeth Elliot—a captivating look at the woman behind the best-selling books, the lauded story, and the global speaking engagements…. as well as the criticisms. (My friend A.K. is not the only one who spent time with Elisabeth and left with the impression that she was rude and aloof.) Thanks to Vaughn’s writing prowess, laborious legwork, and extensive use of Elisabeth’s personal journals, I felt as if I were shadowing Elisabeth from her birth to her early thirties (Vaughn is writing a second volume to tell the story of Elisabeth’s later years). I vividly saw, smelled, heard, even tasted Elisabeth’s world—from her scrupulous East Coast childhood home to the perilous jungles of her twenties. I felt her agonies and ecstasies, her terrific triumphs and heart-wrenching failures. I wept through words that painted Elisabeth so human—so like me. She too wrestled with depression, a flawed personality, broken relationships, and weariness. Elisabeth wrote, “It is not the level of our spirituality that we can depend on. It is God and nothing less than God, for the work is God’s and the call is God’s and everything is summoned by Him and to His purposes, our bravery and cowardice, our love and our selfishness, our strengths and our weaknesses.” Not only was Elisabeth well acquainted with Weakness, she was also on a first-name basis with Mystery. Vaughn shows how the cumulative loss and death and “unfruitfulness” of Elisabeth’s twenties transformed her from the once “dutiful, devout . . . high-achieving new missionary” into a seasoned woman of tenacious faith who didn’t mind asking the tough questions. Her unresolved sufferings—and the God she came to know intimately in the midst of them—laid the bedrock of her lifelong message that captivated millions around the world. She wrote, “Obviously, God has chosen to leave certain questions unanswered and certain problems without any solution in this life, in order that in our very struggle to answer and solve we may be shoved back, and back, and eternally back to the contemplation of Himself, and to complete trust in Who He is. I’m glad He’s my Father.” While Elisabeth is best known for her husband’s martyrdom and her consequent decision to live with the tribal people who murdered him—and although she did write a number of best-sellers and travel the world speaking to thousands—Vaughn beautifully demonstrates that the most celebrated parts of Elisabeth’s life were “just part of her story. For Elisabeth, as for all of us, the most dramatic chapters may well be less significant than the daily faithfulness that traces the brave trajectory of a human life radically submitted to Christ.” Elisabeth had boring jobs and monotonous days that threatened to suck the life out of her; she endured appalling living conditions in both New York City and Ecuador; she faced long, hard years isolated from dear friends and family; she waited half a decade for the man-of-her-dreams to decide whether or not he was going to marry her. And then after that man finally married her, he was killed 27 months later, leaving her with a toddler and the formidable task of running a jungle station. As I devoured page after page of Vaughn’s biography, I began to realize that while I’d known the indomitable Elisabeth through her testimony, her books, and her messages, I’d not known the flesh-and-bone “Betty” I was discovering through Vaughn’s careful unveiling of her life. Vaughn doesn’t force any preconceived ideas of Elisabeth—in her own words, she wanted “to lay bare the facts of Elisabeth Elliot’s case” by using Elisabeth’s own words, and the words of “so many who knew her well.” Vaughn does this masterfully. As a result, this biography will appeal to a broad audience—not only to those who grew up with Elisabeth Elliot as a household name, but also to a young new generation who asks, “Elisabeth who?” This article also appears on ERLC.com.
Three years ago today
Three years ago today, my phone rang with terrible news. My doctor’s office called to inform me they finally had the results of my three-and-a-half months of medical testing. When they wouldn’t disclose the results over the phone, I knew exactly what they were. This past week I revisited my journals surrounding that phone call and the diagnosis that followed several hours later. In Scripture, God often calls his people to remember where they have come from and how good he has been to them. And so, today I’m inviting you to look with me over my shoulder and marvel at God’s breathtaking kindness. Here is how he loved on me in the days just before and after my cancer diagnosis…… Friday, November 3, 2017 Good morning, Abba. This morning I’m thankful for a better night’s sleep—and so much peace from yesterday afternoon till about an hour ago. That was a beautiful gift from You, and I thank You for it. Dear child of Mine, I was so happy to give you that sleep and peace. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. When you walk through fire you will not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. I see you right now: your head tight and pounding, your neck and shoulders scrunched up, your breathing shallow. This wait has been grueling, and while I’ve protected you with My peace and joy from much of its toll, I’ve still made you walk through an enormously long and complicated waiting process. I know it’s been anguishing, especially as it all comes to a head this week. I can hear you too, beloved: wondering how you could move from this level of exhaustion (these past three months of a new demanding job have been intense) and weariness into a cancer diagnosis. I hear your anxious thoughts, “What will we do financially with such awful insurance?” and “How can I juggle all that I’m already responsible for and then add cancer treatment?” I hear those thoughts, dear Colleen, and I care about them. I care to change your thoughts from anxiety to peace and trust and surrender and hope and joy. I also know how big this is for you. You’re feeling the scope and enormity of these past ten years of chronic illness and insomnia and wondering how I could drop you in the middle of something so potentially awful. Right when you were feeling well for the first time in a decade. I know you are tasting the freedom and joy of dynamic community and you finally have bandwidth for all these incredible relationships, and you feel like this could be isolating again, overwhelming, 100 steps backward. I know this feels insurmountable to you, even when you are so willing to trust Me and surrender to My will. I am glad to be with you and treat your weakness tenderly. I am beside you at this very moment. Above you, overshadowing you with My wings. I am behind and before you, and NOTHING can touch you apart from My good and kind and loving will. I can do something about this, dear heart. I have everything you need to wait through another day as you wonder, “Cancer or not?” Monday, November 6, 2017 Thank You, Abba, for giving me a supernatural anticipation of Your goodness, no matter what my biopsy results. It was almost a wave of excitement yesterday, the culmination of long waiting and arduous weeks of medical fiascos, to know with such certainty that “this lump is a gift” (as You told me many weeks ago). I believe that more than ever, and now with pending results—any moment receiving a phone call—I know You are going to unfold goodness to me as I have yet not known. Wednesday, November 8, 2017 “This lump is a gift,” You said a few months ago. And then yesterday we finally heard the diagnosis: ductal carcinoma, invasive. Cancer. And You stretched out Your hands with that gift, and said again, “I am with you. Don’t fear. I have redeemed you and called you by name—you are Mine. As you pass through these waters, I am with you, and through these rivers, I will not let them overwhelm you. As you walk through this fire, it will not burn you; the flame won’t consume you.” And Jeremy, in all his tender-heartedness and teary eyes last night, asked Eddie to read the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace. And after Eddie finished, Jeremy said, “There are four of us in our family.” Four in the furnace. Four in this family. This morning he said, “Sorry that you’re having cancer.” And I smiled and thanked him and told him I’m not fearful because You’re with me. He said, “And He’s teaching me in this too. What you told me last night—to strengthen me.” Lord, I know You will not waste this in his life. And as I begin to read text after text from people who love me and who care—I know You’re not wasting this in anyone’s life. You use suffering so wisely. So tenderly. So powerfully. Thank You for the two skies You painted for me yesterday: the first on my way to meet Eddie to drive to the doctor’s office—those dark, angry, jagged clouds in the shape of arms and hands (almost angels wings) reaching down from heaven, out of a beautiful blue, puffy-clouded sky. And then the second sky on our way home after the news: it was picture-perfect, like pink, foamy waves on fire. One sky said, “I know what this is for you. I am angry at sin and the toll it has taken on you. And I don’t willingly afflict you with this. I am distressed in your distress.” And the other sky said, “I am making all things beautiful. I will make a thousand beautiful things out of this (even more than a thousand), and I am with you.
