Elizabeth Elliot, December 21, 1926 – June 15, 2015

It was 1959, I was 11 years old, a fifth grader, and my mother, oddly enough, was my teacher, which I found a odd because knowing her as both required a double vision I didn't understand.

She was a temp. Our regular teacher had some problems with immigration status--he was a citizen of the Netherlands--and when he was detained in Canada, we required a fill-in--my mom.

I don't remember how good she must have been. I'm told, even today, that she was a terrific teacher, which I understand but don't remember because I found it so strange to have to think about Mom as someone other than Mom.

I remember getting papers back, papers she likely corrected at home, with notes written to "Jimmy," almost as if if I was just any other kid and not the kid whose bedside radio she turned off every night after I'd fallen asleep listening to the Braves game. That she loved me was never in question, bless her heart, bless her soul. But in the classroom I was simply another kid to love, one of the many sitting in neat rows and desks with push-up tops. In the classroom there was this distance I was old enough to discern but not quite get my mind around. I don't remember feeling uncomfortable, just peculiar.

I was a kid who had more trouble drawing the lines than she did.
It was 1959, and the most powerful story drawn into the Christian life during the entire decade was the martyrdom of five missionaries at the bloody hands of Auca Indians, somewhere in the rain forests of Ecuador. My mother read the book to us during her stay in the classroom, a book titled Through Gates of Splendor.

In my fifth grade mind, good and evil could not have been so decisively drawn, and one of the martyrs was even named "Saint." Christian missionaries, directed by nothing less than the Great Commission, sacrifice themselves to reach a people never touched by the good news of the Christian gospel, a story that seemed to embolden believers around the world, even though their tears. Five good men, missionaries, murdered by the people they'd come to save.

Through Gates of Splendor may well be the very first book to touch me deeply, cover to cover. Images from its pages of photographs are still on display in my memory. 

This week, Christianity Today, in an obituary, called the woman who wrote that book, Elizabeth Elliot, "One of the most influential Christian women of the 20th century," and in my life, certainly she was.

I don't remember whether it was my mother the mom or my mother the teacher who assigned me the task of sitting down and writing Mrs. Elliot a letter about her husband's martyrdom and the book she wrote chronicling the story. But I did--her son, her student.

And I will never, ever forget the envelope that came in the mail for me, a square envelope with an exotic stamp from some other country, maybe--I don't remember--from Ecuador. It was a note from Elizabeth Elliot to me, a little kid, thanking me for my concern and prayers. Honestly, I don't remember what she said; what I'll never forget is that personal note in my hand, a note written by a woman who'd suffered what she had and written it all out so movingly in that book I knew I would never forget.

According to CT, Elizabeth Elliot quite regularly ended a radio program she created later on in her life with a sign-off that went something like this: "You are loved with an everlasting love. That’s what the Bible says. And underneath are the everlasting arms. This is your friend, Elisabeth Elliot."

When I was in fifth grade, 56 years ago, my mom told me to write the author of a story I couldn't forget even today, even if I wanted to. I did--I wrote that woman a letter. And when she replied, I thought of her, not simply as the woman who wrote the book or even the wife of a martyr, but as "my friend, Elizabeth Elliot."