Daisies in Diaries 2: The Day I Heard “Go Back”

Hello dear sisters, and welcome to Daisies in Diaries.

 

What we do here is very simple. We retell diaries that were never really written down, but could have been. These women from the Bible, from history, from the faith, lived real lives, went through real struggles, cried real tears, and made real choices.

 

So we take one moment from their story, and we imagine it in diary form to make it close, alive, and relatable. We picture what they might have thought, what they might have whispered, how they might have prayed on that day.

 

Each time we meet, we pluck one daisy, we open one diary, and we let their story speak into ours.

 

Tonight, the diary we are opening is from Elisabeth Elliot. This entry is titled: The Day I Heard “Go Back”

 

DAISIES IN DIARIES 2- THE DAY I HEARD ‘GO BACK’

 

Today, I have chosen to look back over the years. How strange the ways of the Lord are! 

 

His paths are not my paths, His thoughts are not my thoughts. They are higher, deeper, and infinitely wiser than anything I could have written for myself.

 

I remember that season so clearly, though decades have since passed. Jim and his friends: Pete, Ed, Nate, and Roger had been surveying the land for months. 

 

From the air, Nate would fly his small yellow plane over the green canopy of Ecuador’s jungle, circling low and dropping gifts in a bucket to the people below. 

 

The Aucas, the Huaorani as they would one day be called, were a people untouched by the outside world. 

 

They were naked in body, yes, stark naked and very suspicious of every interference. So protective of their territory were they that their spears had kept all intruders away.

 

And yet, these young men, our husbands, were determined. They wanted to reach the unreached, to bring Christ to those who had never heard His name. 

 

They prayed. They planned. They learnt to speak foreign languages as best as they could. They sang hymns together, their voices rising in the night like offerings to God. 

 

And on that January morning in 1956, they loaded their supplies, boarded the little plane, and prepared to land on a sandbar along the Curaray River.

 

We wives stood together in another village, watching them take off. Our lips were smiling, but our hearts were trembling. We knew the risks. But we also knew their call.

 

For a while, all seemed to be going well. They sent us messages via radio call, so we could know the details of what was going on over there. Each time we communicated, we’d make sure they knew we were praying for them. We could never over-pray. They needed it, we needed it. 

 

The men made contact with the Aucas, exchanged gifts, even shared friendly gestures from above. They radioed us that about the progress and that about seven or was it ten were coming towards them…

 

Hope stirred in our hearts. 

 

Perhaps this would be the breakthrough!

 

Perhaps a door was opening!

 

But then… the silence.

 

It seemed like the longest time drag ever.

 

No radio call. No message.

 

Hours turned to days. 

 

What could be happening? 

 

I’d remember Barbara, Roger’s wife, telling the others not to over think the silence. They must be having a wonderful time doing the Father’s business. But then, the twinkle always in her eyes were dim, so dim, we all knew she needed to say that to herself than to the rest of us.  

 

Thought they said the people were waving at them in the plane from the ground?

 

Thought they said the people had even returned gifts into the buckets they had let down to give them supplies? 

 

Lord, what could the problem be? 

 

We could only do what we understood would work, pray. We prayed together for their safety yet for the Father’s will. We prayed by ourselves, raising whatever petitions were laid upon our hearts. 

 

Oh the day the news came back to us, it seemed my life had come to a complete, total stillness! 

 

That Jim and the others were gone!!!

 

My Jim was gone!

 

 

That the spears of the Aucas had pierced their bodies, Jim’s body.

 

I was twenty-nine years old, holding little Valerie in my arms, and suddenly I was a widow. Elisabeth Elliot, turned widow!

That Valerie, our daughter, will no longer have her father hold her.

 

The nights after that were long. I wept until my body ached. I pressed my face into the pillow to muffle the sobs, not wanting my daughter to wake. The jungle sounds outside seemed louder in those days, as though the earth itself was groaning.

 

 

Then, one day, just a few months after their death, in the midst of the shadows, the Lord whispered.

 

“Elisabeth, forgive. 

 

Elisabeth, love. 

 

Elisabeth, go.”

 

At first, I thought I had misheard. 

 

Go? Back to the Aucas? To the very ones who had speared my Jim to death? 

 

My heart recoiled. 

 

My mind screamed, “Protect yourself! Protect your child!” 

 

But the Word of God would not release me. “Love your enemies. Bless those who curse you. Do good to those who hate you.”

 

How strange, how costly, how impossible the command of Christ! 

 

To walk toward the very people who caused your deepest wound. 

 

Father?

 

And yet, I knew this was the way of the Cross.

 

My Jim, and his friends laid down their lives for the Auca’s  before they even got to hear the Gospel of Jesus. The work is still undone, the Father’s love still unknown to the very persons who killed them.

 

I remember kneeling by my bed one night, trembling from head to toe. “Lord,” I whispered, “I am only a woman. I am only a widow. I am only a mother. How can I go?”

 

But He assured my heart.

 

That I wasn’t hearing things. 

 

That it was really Him! 

 

And so I went.

 

I took my little Valerie by the hand, alongside Rachel Saint, Nate’s sister and we journeyed into the jungle. 

 

The air was thick with humidity, filled with the cries of unseen birds and insects. 

 

My heart pounded within and each step felt like walking deeper into both fear and faith.

 

My hands tight around Valerie as I eventually carried her in my arms the closer we drew to the land of the Aucas. 

 

But alas, the miracle happened.

 

The very people who had raised their spears against Jim opened their arms to us. They welcomed us into their thatched homes, offered us food, and listened as we spoke of Christ. 

 

They had come to know that Jim and the others had firearms with them and could have defended themselves but they didn’t. They were ready to let their lives go, like Jesus, to show the love of Christ with their death.

 

And slowly, the Gospel, written first in blood, began to take root. I saw men who had been killers kneel in prayer. 

 

I heard the name of Jesus flow from lips that once only spoke in suspicion, fear, and rage.

 

They were even more surprised by our ready forgiveness and willingness to love them regardless. 

 

 

That broke them, God’s love found room for penetration and by our actions, God’s love found a resting place in their midst. 

 

And Valerie, my little girl, grew up among them. She played with the children of the very men who had killed her father, running barefoot through the same sand where blood once soaked. She learned their language, laughed their laughter, sang songs of Jesus with them. They became her family as much as I was. 

 

Now, as I write in my older years, I look back with awe. 

 

Like Jim would always say, ‘He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.’

 

What felt like death became the doorway to life. What felt like irreparable loss was seed sown for a harvest eternal. 

 

God never wasted a tear, never wasted a spear, never wasted a step of obedience, never wasted a life.

 

So today, I write these words for my own heart as much as for others: The Cross is the only road. The will of God is never easy, but it is always good. And love, the love of Christ, is still the strongest weapon on earth.

 

See the timeline of Elisabeth Elliot’s life here

 

Lessons from Elisabeth Elliot’s Diary

 

Photo credit: Cornell Capa.

God’s ways are often strange to us, but they always lead to His greater glory.

Jim and his friends were supposed to serve God with their lives but God found better use for their death than their living and both brought Him glory. Their death taught their believing wives and children the power of forgiveness and love in crossing borders for Christ. It taught the Aucas the same lesson even though they had not met Christ.

 

Forgiveness is the truest sign that the Cross is alive in us.

Forgiveness is one of the very key aspects of our lives where God demands perfection. Jesus says be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect by loving everyone (Matthew 5:48) and a few verses later (Matthew 6:14-15), He says forgive others so you can be forgiven. That is because forgiveness is one of the very ways we can tell others about Jesus and how He changes a man’s life, how we can be perfect as imperfect people like our heavenly Father. To not forgive others is to live in bondage.

 

Obedience often takes us into the places we fear most, but there His power is revealed.

Obedience to God is our highest calling in Christ. When we yield to God with immediate and complete obedience, we find ourselves right in the center of His will. Obedience brings us to depths of possibilities available in God through Jesus Christ. 

 

What feels like tragedy today may, in God’s time, become the seed of revival.

This is because God makes all things work together for the good of them that love the Lord and have been called according to His purpose. Not even tragedy is strong enough to separate us from the love of Christ nor being kept right in the center of God’s will (Romans 8:28-39).

 

Rounding Off:

And here, sisters, we close today’s diary. What a fragrance it has left with us!

Do you want to read more diaries? Read other Episodes of Daisies in Diaries Here

Until next time, when another story unfolds, may your own life and mine also become a diary that whispers God’s faithfulness to generations after us. Amen.