The Way She Suffered: Reflecting on the Life of Elisabeth Elliot
by Colleen Chao
Elisabeth Elliot once asked, “Would you like to have the story of Daniel without the lions’ den? Would you like to have the story of Joseph without all his trials and tribulations, without his going into the pit?”
Elliot could pose such questions because her own story was filled with lions’ dens and dark pits.
Born into a scrupulous New England family in 1926, Elisabeth grew tall and gangly, shy and measured, with a keen intellect and rugged determination — qualities she would need for the kingdom work God had in store for her.
You know the story well: Elisabeth fell in love with and married a man named Jim Elliot, whose missionary martyrdom at the hands of Waodani (“Auca”) Indians catapulted her into both grief and fame. As a new widow with a toddler, Elisabeth moved in with the fierce tribe that killed her husband, longing to show them the love of Christ.
Elisabeth also suffered the death of a second husband in her middle age, acute loneliness in her many years of singleness, and eventually a slow and cruel death by dementia. But her sufferings are not meant to be the polestar: it is the way she suffered that makes her such a compelling model for us today. She suffered with trust and hope in a good God who makes no mistakes. She wrote:
“It depends on our willingness to see everything in God, receive all from His hand, accept with gratitude just the portion and the cup He offers. The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances. We can only know that Eternal Love is wiser than we, and we bow in adoration of that loving wisdom.”
Biographer Ellen Vaughn writes that Elisabeth’s “most noble accomplishment was not weathering the excoriating loss of her husband Jim. It was practicing — through both the high dramas and the low, dull days that constitute any human life — the daily self-death required for one’s soul to flourish.” She seemed to value sweeping a dirty floor over speaking to adoring audiences; for her, “the only measure of any human action came down to one thing: obedience.”
Elliot was well acquainted with her own weaknesses. But she didn’t linger long over her frailties: “I know one thing: I shall not find joy at any time in the contemplating of what I am. It will be first in the contemplation of God, and then of those He has put around me.”
Elisabeth Elliot’s story is remarkable not because of her celebrated successes or sufferings, but because she fixed her eyes on Jesus, and loved and obeyed him — day in, day out, through the lions’ dens and the dark pits — till she passed into glory in 2015. Her life invites us to ask: “How can I lovingly lay down my life, despite great weakness and tribulation and tedium, so that the gospel reaches the furthest corners of the world?”