Chapter 19
Chapter 19
Elisabeth Elliot
After leaving Tiwaeno and the Waorani, Betty went back to work among the Quichua Indians for a time. Then in 1963, after having served for eleven years as a missionary in Ecuador, Betty left the country with Valerie and returned to the United States. Back home, Betty’s life was soon caught up in a flurry of activity. Many churches and Christian groups wanted to hear Betty speak. Betty began traveling the country, speaking and challenging people about missions and the need to live pure and godly Christian lives. The more she spoke, the more popular she became. Betty quickly began to enjoy her new ministry role as a traveling speaker.
In the summer of 1963, Betty’s parents retired and moved to Vero Beach, Florida. They had barely settled in when her father died suddenly on Christmas Day. Betty and Valerie went to comfort Mrs. Howard, but Betty’s mother was radiant. “Apart from a few tears, my heart is full of nothing but thankfulness,” she declared.
Betty felt the same way. Her father had been a strong and consistent godly influence in her life, and she realized that she owed a lot to him for that. However, the experience of losing a parent underscored to Betty the importance of writing down memories before they were lost forever. It was now too late to capture all the things her father remembered, but Betty urged her mother to buy a notebook and start writing down the experiences that she recalled from her life, along with things she wanted to say to the next generation.
At the same time, people were encouraging Betty herself to write more about her experiences. In this regard, Betty was grateful that she had been keeping a journal since the age of sixteen. Her journal provided plenty of material to draw on as she wrote—and write she did. Her first attempt was a novel she titled No Graven Images. The story was about a single missionary woman who goes to live among the Quichua Indians in Ecuador and encounters many discouragements along the way. Of course, much of the plot was based on personal experiences from Betty’s life. Betty wanted to show Christians that a person can be in God’s will and still have things go terribly “wrong.” By that, Betty meant things could be going wrong from the person’s perspective but that those things could well be part of God’s plan to bless the person and make him or her more Christlike. The novel was published in 1966, and its message was difficult for some Christians to read, but they respected Betty’s own journey through her missionary endeavors and the death of her husband.
By now Betty was going by her full name of Elisabeth Elliot when she was out speaking. It made more sense to her to be introduced at a meeting by the name that was also on the cover of her books. As Betty’s speaking and writing continued, invitations came in for her to speak in places near and far. At one such speaking engagement in 1968, Betty met Dr. Addison Leitch, who was recently widowed and taught theology at seminary level. Betty felt immediately drawn to him. She soon learned that Addison had a PhD from Cambridge University and was a regular columnist for the prestigious Christianity Today magazine. He was also a very athletic man. He coached swimming and football and loved baseball.
Addison and Betty saw each other several times, and then in October 1968, Addison proposed marriage to Betty, who joyfully accepted his proposal. She was forty-two years old and had been a widow now over twelve years. Addison was eighteen years older than Betty.
The couple were married on New Year’s Day 1969, with Valerie as Betty’s attendant. Following the wedding they moved to Hamilton, Massachusetts, where Addison was a professor at the newly formed Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
Addison encouraged Betty to continue with her writing and speaking. Betty was in constant demand as a speaker, and over half a million of her books were now in print.
Life with Addison in Hamilton was good. However, on New Year’s Day 1973, their fourth wedding anniversary, Addison and Betty received some bad news. Addison was diagnosed with not one but two separate forms of cancer. The outlook for his making a full recovery was not good. By now Valerie was away in Illinois in her freshman year at Wheaton College, and Betty had to bear the full weight of caring for her sick husband. Addison underwent surgery and both chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Sometimes he was in such excruciating pain that he screamed out in agony for help.
Betty was devastated to watch her husband’s condition. She tried to assure herself that this was God’s assignment for them and that she had to leave the outcome in His hands.
When she realized just how much work was involved in helping her sick husband, Betty advertised for a theology student to come and board at the house who could stay with Addison on those times when she had to leave the house. A young man named Walter Shepard answered the advertisement. On the same day that Walter moved into the house in September 1973, Addison died.
Even though there was now no need for Walter’s help in caring for Addison, Betty decided to invite him to stay on anyway. She realized that she would be lonely in such a big house, and having someone young around the house would help as she got used to being a widow once again.
Soon Betty heard of a second man who needed a place to stay. His name was Lars Gren, an older student who had returned to school in midlife after a career selling women’s clothing. Betty took Lars in as a boarder as well. Like Walter, Lars was pursuing a Master of Divinity degree at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
This was an unusual and international group living in the big house in Hamilton. Walter was the son of missionaries to the Belgian Congo, where he had grown up. Lars had been born in the United States but had spent most of his childhood in Norway. And Betty, of course, had been born in Belgium, grew up in the United States, and had lived in South America.
At Christmas Valerie returned home for recess and finally met the young man her mother had written to her about. She and Walter got to know each other a little over the Christmas break, and Betty began to wonder whether they might be right for each other.
Betty continued with her various ministries. Her books about Jim and her ministry to the Waorani remained popular, and many people who read them wanted to know about her missionary life before she married Jim Elliot. In response, Betty delved into her diaries once more and wrote These Strange Ashes, an account of her year working with the Colorado Indians in the jungle of western Ecuador. She did not sugarcoat her experiences or her accomplishments, and many readers appreciated her candor in the book.
Betty’s intuition about Valerie and Walter proved correct, and the couple were married on May 1, 1975. Betty was thrilled that her daughter had chosen a godly husband. Soon after Walter and Valerie were married, Walter took up a position as a Presbyterian minister at a church in southwest Louisiana.
Meanwhile, Lars obtained his Master of Divinity degree, and his goal was to become a hospital chaplain. During the time he had been boarding with Betty, however, the two had become good friends. Betty never imagined that she would marry again, but when Lars obtained his degree, he asked Betty to be his wife. It was strange for Betty to think of marrying for a third time, especially since she could not think of three more different men than Jim, Addison, and Lars, except for one thing: all three of them were dedicated to living for Christ.
Betty and Lars were married on December 21, 1977, Betty’s fifty-first birthday. Lars was ten years younger than Betty. After their wedding, Lars put aside his plan to become a hospital chaplain in order to assist Betty in her ministry. What a relief it was for Betty when Lars took over the travel and financial arrangements. Betty did not realize what a burden they had become.
Betty enjoyed having Lars as her traveling companion. It was much less lonely being on the road with another person, someone she knew she would be going home with and could discuss her experiences with. Sometimes Betty would joke, “I only ever had two boarders. My daughter married one, and I married the other!”
In 1978 Valerie gave birth to a son, Walter Shepard III, making Betty a grandmother.
Betty’s life continued to be busy. She was invited to be a consultant for the committee putting together the New International Version of the Bible, and she still traveled and spoke around the country. She also continued with her writing. She wrote a book about the joys of being a Christian woman, titled Let Me Be a Woman. She quickly followed that volume with a book of inspirational essays, titled Love Has a Price Tag.
In 1982 Betty ventured out into another ministry avenue. She began writing a regular newsletter called The Elisabeth Elliot Newsletter. Over the years people had suggested that Betty write a regular newsletter, but Betty had resisted, not wanting to be burdened with the details of getting it printed, managing a mailing list, printing labels, and mailing the newsletter. However, when Servant Publications in Ann Arbor, Michigan, offered its services in taking care of all the mechanics of putting together the newsletter and mailing it out, Betty accepted their offer. The first edition of the newsletter was published in November 1982. It included Betty’s insights from the Bible, practical advice, stories about Betty’s family, excerpts from letters she received, and prayer requests.
Many people wanted to be kept up to date on all of Betty’s activities and subscribed to the newsletter, which was published six times a year. The popularity of the newsletter expanded Betty’s influence around the world. Betty continued to travel and speak, and she especially enjoyed any opportunity to head to the southern states, which made it easy for her to visit Valerie and Walt and their growing family. When the newsletter began, Valerie had three children. Two more followed in rapid succession, making Betty a grandmother of five busy, bright grandchildren.
After starting The Elisabeth Elliot Newsletter, Betty enjoyed one of the biggest thrills of her life. She was asked to write a biography of her favorite writer, the Anglo-Irish missionary Amy Carmichael. From the time she was introduced to Amy Carmichael’s books when she was a fourteen-year-old student at the Hampden DuBose Academy, Betty had been inspired by Amy’s writing. She had read and reread the books many times and loved to quote Amy in her own books and sermons.
As part of the research for the book, Betty and Lars traveled to southern India to visit the Dohnavur Fellowship, founded by Amy Carmichael. They got to see firsthand the ongoing work of the ministry Amy had started over eighty years before. They visited the school, the dormitories, and the nurseries that housed the children at Dohnavur Fellowship. They watched the daily meals being prepared and visited the sewing room where all the children’s clothes were made, the hospital, and the retirement home. Betty was impressed by the fact that the fellowship was run almost entirely by people who had been rescued as children from dire situations and had grown up at Dohnavur.
Betty and Lars spent nine enjoyable days at Dohnavur, staying in a small guest bungalow on the compound. When Betty entered Amy’s bedroom, called the “Room of Peace,” she felt as if she were standing on hallowed ground. She sat at the desk where Amy had penned so many of the stories, poems, and books that had enthralled Betty since childhood. Betty thought about the twenty years Amy had spent bedridden in that very room and how, despite her condition, Amy had managed to praise God for all the good things He had given her.
In fact, everything about Dohnavur inspired Betty. She found it easy to imagine many of the events she had read about in Amy’s books, and she returned home to the United States invigorated and ready to get to work on the biography. When the finished biography of Amy Carmichael, titled A Chance to Die, was published in 1987, it became an instant best-seller.
At the same time that the Amy Carmichael biography was being published, Betty’s mother died on February 7, 1987. Katharine Howard had been in declining health for three years, and on the afternoon of her death she had told her nurse that she was going to die.
The entire Howard family gathered for the funeral, the family’s first gathering in many years. The funeral was a wonderful tribute to Katharine Howard. Betty joined her siblings in giving eulogies. As Betty listened to her brothers and sister speak, memories flooded back of how her mother, through her letter writing, had loved to keep in touch with her family and keep her children in touch with each other. Betty’s mother had written a weekly family letter consistently for forty years. Betty’s sister, Virginia, spoke about how their mother had taught her what it meant to be a lady, while her brother Tom recalled how Katharine Howard had spent hours reading and singing to them all when they were children. Betty’s brother Jim spoke of seeing their mother year after year sitting in her cane rocking chair after breakfast each day reading her Bible and taking copious notes.
The funeral service concluded with all six of Katharine Howard’s children singing one last hymn together in honor of their mother. Betty thought the gesture was fitting, since their mother had instilled in them all such a deep love for hymns.
After the funeral, Betty sat down and reread her mother’s journals, family letters, and reminiscences. She was inspired by what she read and used the material as the basis for a new book, The Shaping of a Christian Family.
But there was still more for Betty to do.