The Eric Metaxas Show - Ellen Vaughn

Episode Date: September 14, 2020

Author Ellen Vaughn highlights the powerful examples of love, hope and forgiveness that were displayed in the the life of missionary Elisabeth Elliot.

I shouldn't tell you this, but Eric hired someone who sounds just like him to host today's show. But since I'm the announcer, they told me. So I am telling you, don't be fooled. The real Eric's in jail. And welcome. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. As you know, this is a show where I interview people.

I'm Eric Mataxis. This is the show. And guess what? Today, I get to speak to somebody I've known for a long time who has done something that I do, which is written a biography about a hero of the faith, Elizabeth Elliott, someone I had the privilege to meet some years ago, and people keep saying to me, why don't you write about Elizabeth Elliott?

And I thought, well, I have a feeling someone else might. And it turns out that my friend Ellen Vaughn has done just that. Ellen, welcome to the program. Thanks, Eric. So good to be with you. You've written so many books. Before we get into Elizabeth Elliott, tell my audience about some of the other books that you've written because you've been doing this for a little while.

Well, I think there are about 23 books now that I've either written or co-written with different interesting individuals, one of whom is Chuck Colson, who I know you worked with back in the day. And I'm a very curious person, so I've enjoyed just connecting with people who have lived lives very different from my own and getting inside their heads and ghostwriting in a sense for people who have a story to tell but aren't writers themselves. And then I've written books on my own about topics that I'm curious about. Well, what led you then to write a biography of Elizabeth Elliott? Is this the first major biography of her because she only died a few years ago? Right.

I think there's a kid's biography of her, but I'm not aware of any others. They might be out there. If you're not aware, Ellen, I don't think there are. But I was minding my own business. And then Valerie Elliott Shepard and Elizabeth Elliott's best friend approached me or approach my agent. And we got into conversations and they were kind enough to think that I could steward Elizabeth Elliott's story. So that's how it got started a few years ago. And then Valerie Elliott drove a truck to my house that was full of all of Elizabeth

Elliot's journals. I mean, decades of these incredible, intimate journals that have never been published. And they showed a very different woman than the woman that we think of when we think of Elizabeth Elliott. It's funny, because I wrote my biography on Bonhoeffer, people often come to me and say, hey, would you write a biography about this person or that person? And I'm aware that it is a much bigger deal to write the biography of someone like Elizabeth Elliott than it would be to write about a Bonhoeffer or a Luther because no one's done it before and because there's such a huge volume of material. So my hat goes off to you. It's an extraordinary thing to write the first major biography of someone like this and to have to go through just endless material. And of course,

tons of people who are alive today who knew her well and so on and so forth, it's to my mind, a much bigger deal. So congratulations on that. That's just absolutely huge. So, I mean, what was your process? Actually, no, I'm sorry, for people listening who don't know who Elizabeth Elliott is, and there are many people, and forgive me folks, for not saying that up front. Ellen, tell my audience the thumbnail version of who she was. Well, Elizabeth Elliott is pretty well known to people of a certain age. She was missionary to Ecuador back in the 1950s. And her husband Jim Elliott and Elizabeth Elliott worked among indigenous people groups in Ecuador. And famously, as Jim Elliott and four of his colleagues

were trying to reach a very violent unreached tribe with the gospel, they were speared to death. And after this loss, Elizabeth Elliott took her tiny toddler daughter and eventually went and lived among the tribal people who had killed her husband. And this is, I mean, just to stop right there. I mean, you talk about living out your faith. Yeah. Stunning. Unimaginable, I think, to most people.

Many people are familiar with the story of Jim Elliott and his murder, his martyrdom, by these genuinely primitive, almost stone age, tribesmen. It's an amazing thing that in the 1950s you could go to Ecuador and encounter people who were, you know, living in another eon almost and want to bring them the gospel of Jesus and then to be so courageous that you are in fact killed. But tell us in the 1950s when this happened, how did Elizabeth Elliott deal with it immediately? Because I'm not aware. I mean, I heard that there had been reconciliation and that she had reached out to these people who had been the murderers of her husband and her friends.

How did it happen immediately? In other words, what year was this murder? Well, it was some time ago, 1956, and Elizabeth Elliott, young widow, 10-month-old child, and she prayed, and the main prayer she prayed is, Lord, if there is any way, please Send me to the Wau-Dani. Send me to the people who need to hear the gospel so badly. They were such a violent tribe. They were in danger of self-extermination

because they were killing each other and any outsider at the time. And so about a year and a half, two years after her husband's death, Elizabeth Elliott, along with Rachel St. Sister of one of the other martyred missionaries, through an incredible series of circumstances that I describe in the book. Only God could make this up. They trek deep into the Amazon jungle and are in fact welcomed by the tribe, two women and a child that had in fact killed the men who had come to them.

And gradually, the Wadani began to realize from the example of forgiveness that they didn't have to live in this endless cycle of vengeance and death. There was another way. They realized that, in fact, Jesus has been speared for them, so they in turn could stop spearing and forgive others. I mean, it's a storybook story. It's not the kind of thing you think is real, but we do know it's real. I know that was it Elizabeth Elliott who wrote through Gates of Splendor

where she talks about this? Yes, and that book is a beautiful, it's a classic of the second half of the 20th century. But it is very somewhat cerebral. And so again, going back to these journals, what I tried to weave into the biography was the real human being, poignantly suffering in the loss of her husband. They had not been married that long in all the questions and doubts and fears that would stalk any of us. And yet she persevered.

She's a very relatable hero, not some person who you can't even imagine. how they coat. Well, you know, I've been friends for many years with her brother, Thomas Howard, whom I adore, and I recommend his book, Chance or the Dance as one of, to be sure, one of the classics of the latter part of the 20th century. But you're right. Her book, Gates of Splendor, falls into that category, obviously extremely different book.

But it's also interesting to me that when people write about their own experiences, they can be, and I'm sure that's the case with Elizabeth Elliott, diffident in expressing their own doubt or their own emotions or of making themselves the hero because she wouldn't do that. And you're free to do that in your book to tell the real story that most of us look at her and go, that woman is a hero. Right. I admired her quite a bit, but I wasn't sure I liked her much. And then as I got to know her, I found someone who I ended up liking a lot.

And I didn't want to write a hagiography or simply an account of date sometimes. I wanted to weave a story. And this is just the story of her early years or first 32 years of life. So it's a young woman, a very idealistic woman in some ways who grew up in that incredibly erudite Howard family, right? and whose faith maybe was a little bit legalistic. You check off the boxes. And in the jungle, she had to wrestle with suffering, with loss,

and it became a journey to really knowing who is Jesus, not what is Christianity with all of its cold. Okay, when we come back, I want to talk about that. Folks, my guest is Ellen Vaughn. Brand new book, very exciting. It's called Becoming Elizabeth Elliott. Don't go away. Folks, welcome back.

I am talking to a biographer, a best-selling writer, author, Ellen Vaughn, who has written a new book about Elizabeth Elliott. We've been talking about it. The title is Becoming Elizabeth Elliott. Tell us, Ellen, why didn't you title the book Becoming Elizabeth Elliott? I titled it that because it's about our early years. about a young woman in the process of sorting out her life, her faith, and it's something, it's a journey we can all relate to, because we all go through sufferings of all different

kinds. I love the way Elizabeth Elliott defines suffering, having something you don't want or wanting something you don't have. All of us can relate to that. And over the course of her journey with Christ, really becoming the woman who then, after she left Ecuador after her husband's death, went on to write two dozen incredibly important books for evangelical Christendom, the second half of the 20th century. And she spoke all over the world, inspired many to think about mission service. I mean, a little bit like Corrie Ten Boom. I mean, these are women who have gone through hell by most reasonable standards and then come out on the other side as models of forgiveness and faith and do get to effect a lot of people with their stories.

She, when I met her briefly, she was speaking here in New York City. And, you know, I guess my thinking is that when somebody goes through what somebody like Elizabeth Elliott went through, in a weird way it makes them hard to relate to because you think this person has been through hell and I don't know how you go through that and then hobnob with you know suburban, happy American evangelicals and you realize they kind of don't get it. I got that feeling from her a little bit that there was a private person there. Yes, very much. And part of my reason, Eric, in wanting to write this book, again, people my age might know Elizabeth

Elliott, but I've got 25-year-old twins, they're millennials. And many of their friends have never heard of Elizabeth Elliott. And I think she's an authentic hero. I think that she lived a kind of gutsy Christianity that was not dictated either by the cultural Christianity around her or her feelings. And so it appeals to me. She saw Christianity as your friend Bonhofer called it a chance to die. When Christ calls a man, he bids him to come and die, a woman too.

I want to pause real quick. Are you looking at the camera, Ellen, or are you looking at the screen? I think sometimes maybe you're looking at the screen. Sorry, maybe I'm looking at your eyes. Yeah, don't look at me. Don't look at your camera. You see your camera? You're so mesmerizing.

Oh, you cut that out. Yeah. But you see, look at the camera. Okay, we'll just keep going. Sorry, sorry. No, no, no, don't be silly. Well, you just said something so important. I mean, Bonhofer is one of those figures, right?

He says, you know, when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. That is not a way, you know, to make the Christian faith sound attractive. On the other hand, if you really understand it, it is attractive because it frees you from this life of death that you think is life into real life. But it sounds so daunting. And so that's a really important concept. And I'm glad that you brought it up. And I know that in the book,

becoming Elizabeth Elliott, you go into this kind of thing because most of us simply cannot imagine what it would be like to face death, to walk into the jungle, to meet the people that have murdered your husband. I'm stunned by it, actually. Well, I think for Elizabeth Elliott, really, it was a much greater challenge for her to live out faith in Jesus, dying daily, picking up that daily cross, not a cheery thought.

That was harder for her in the midst of the mundane than those moments of high drama of will I be killed by the tribal people while I'm asleep or the awful loss of her husband. I think there is almost a spiritual adrenaline that comes in those times, but for all of us, especially in times like this in which we live, we need that daily dying to self that's radical Christianity. It goes back to the roots of the faith that Jesus founded. Well, yes. I mean, I guess that's the issue is that when you're in the midst of war, when you're in midst of that kind of visceral danger, in some ways it is easy.

but when you're just living your life, taking care of kids or paying bills or whatever it is that we do, we can get lost in that. So now you said your book is just about her early life. It doesn't talk about the second part of her life. That's correct. I will be working in volume two soon and diving back into all of that for the second volume. You are doing a volume two. Holy cow.

A two-volume biography. This seems like scholarly work. People don't normally write two-volume biographies unless they're really serious academics. I'm glad you're doing it because you're extremely readable. I want to tell my audience that that's part of the joy of your writing is that you do get a, you care about story and you care about being writing on a popular level.

And I think that that is, it seems to be what you were getting at when talking about, you know, through gates of splendor or whatever. or sometimes something is a little cerebral and it can be off-putting to the general reader. Everyone, especially in times of quarantine, whatever, loves a good story. And I think the power of books to make us feel like we're not alone, like, oh, the story of another human being,

I get what she was feeling. I love that. I see that. And so I wanted it to be a story that would be pretty rollicking, that would make people laugh and cry, but also a story that I think has some transferable truths that certainly strengthened me in my own journey

as I was writing the book. Well, you know, when you say transferable truths, what do you mean by that? Because most people can't imagine ministering to violent, you know, tribesmen in the jungles of Ecuador. So what are the transferable truths? Well, let me. I'm so glad you're.

ask that. Let me give you two. One is my t-shirt. Okay. Are you seeing my t-shirt? It says Waponi. Waponi, Ecuador, yes. Yes, I'm going to send you one. I know you'll wear it with a little pocket square probably. I will. Yeah. My favorite part of this book, aside from the journals, for the research, I went down to Ecuador, and I traveled over the Amazon jungle in a tiny plane, and then was canoed and trekked deep into the jungle to a Waudani settlement. In fact, I was with two of the men who in fact killed the missionaries all those years ago. And I have to tell you, Eric, it was like time travel to be in the jungle with these people and to see the love of Christ on the face of Minkai,

to whom I dedicated this book, in fact, who used to live. in complete darkness and violence. And now is a brother in Christ. We did not speak the same language, but we connected. And so the Wadani, the tribal people, they have a word, Waponi. It means, I see it well. And if they really like something, it also means I love it. I see it well.

Wauponi, I love it. And to me, that became a takeaway. It was like, I see it well. Lord, give me eyes to see. open the eyes of my heart that they would be enlightened. Let me see the situations around me, discern them well. Let me see the people who maybe otherwise

I would not have noticed. I have found choosing to see, learning to see as a real takeaway. And that was something Elizabeth Elliott did really well. She was a great seer, if you will. Waponi. Waponi. So how many people speak the language

of this indigenous tribe? I would say about 1,412. Is that not amazing? I mean, so let me ask, is it related to the languages of other indigenous tribes of that area, or is it, you know, unrelated? I mean, it's bizarre when you think of language and how language arises. Well, it's a linguistic isolate. It is related. It is related to no other language on the planet. Elizabeth Elliott was an extraordinarily gifted linguist. It killed her to learn the language of the Wauldani. Very, very difficult.

And as I said earlier, they were a people group in danger of self-extermination back in the 50s. And so today they are certainly an ethnic minority in Ecuador, and their language still exists, although many of the younger generation now speak, or Spanish as well. It is mind-blowing to think about just the idea of a language that is all by itself, that is isolated. We don't, you know, you don't normally think about that.

And I'm just guessing that when Jim Elliott and Elizabeth Elliott were first there, that the language did not exist in any written form. That is correct. And what they wanted to do was learn it so they could translate the New Testament. into Wild Todato is what it's called. And then, of course, they would have to teach these people how to read their own language. We're going to go to a break. Folks, I'm talking to the author of Becoming Elizabeth Elliott.

People have been hungry for a biography of Elizabeth Elliott. Here it is by Ellen Vaughn. We'll be right back. Hey there, folks. We're talking about a book. The title is Becoming Elizabeth Elliott. The author is my friend Ellen Vaughn. Ellen, once again, congratulations on writing the first serious biography of this great hero of the faith, Elizabeth Elliott.

I mean, it really is amazing to me what you went through. And I say it again that I, having never done anything like that, you know, to have to do all of this and to get on a plane and to go into the jungle and meet these people and to go through reams and reams and of Elizabeth Elliott's own writings. It's a different order of project, of task, than writing a book about somebody who's had many other books written about him and who's had his own works published. I'm fascinated by what you just said with regard to this language, that it is only spoken by a little bit over 1,000 people today,

and that it has no relationship with other languages from that area. I mean, it makes us think about the origin of language. How in the world did it come about? How many years ago did it begin? I mean, that's another subject. It is. I mean, the origins of the Wau-Dani people, even as I looked at that, Eric, you know,

studying where do people groups come from? It's mind-boggling to think of the incredible diversity of people groups and languages and heart languages that God has put on the planet. Did they, what sort of religion did they have before Christianity came to them? In terms of a tribal people, they were very egalitarian, they had no chief, they had beliefs in a mystical world they could not see. They're a very practical people, so they were not as devoted to thinking and making up a mythology,

necessarily of their origins as some other tribal groups may have been. But the key thing about them, which has been studied by many anthropologists, is this pattern of violence where there was no way of resolving conflict except to spear the person who had offended you to death. And then that person's relatives would come and spear your family to death or you to death, and it went on and on and on. That was the cycle of violence that so, concern the missionaries in the 1950s. How can we bring hope to these people who are killing themselves?

Well, it's extraordinary. We forget sometimes what biblical faith brought to the world, you know, an end to that kind of cycle of violence. But to hear about it, you know, in the 1950s and 60s, it is fascinating to me. Now, I'm assuming that they had some kind of spiritual life and that they were praying to some kind? Were they animists or do we not know? I believe they had some animus tendencies. I think that when they heard the gospel, let me back up, what was more important as they saw the gospel. It was incarnational. Elizabeth Elliott and Rachel St. came and lived among them, just like Jesus did on our planet. And so they saw a different way to live. And bit by bit, they realized that they could follow the path of Jesus. And that was a long, slow story.

I mean, it wasn't, sometimes that story is told as if all the while doney and all came to Christ and it had a happy ending. And in fact, part of what I wanted to show in this book is the path of faith is fraught with all kinds of stones along the way. Elizabeth Elliott's journals, during that time of living among the Waadani, kind of read like an alternative form of literature. She wrote of her love for them. She's immensely private woman who is living with people who wore no clothes. Nothing was off limits.

They put their fingers in her food. They asked about her sex life with her husband. It was an extremely out of her normal character experience for this woman. and to be exposed to that also it honed her face and it makes also for very humorous reading which I hope I got into the book well I'm sure you did based on your other writing but what a wild thing to live among people period I mean just to go and to live among them how in the world did she handle that I mean I can't imagine how someone like Elizabeth Elliott goes into that kind of a situation. I mean, how long did she do that for? She was with the Kichwa tribe

for a few years after Jim's death and then among the Wau-Dani. And there's a chapter I titled what she called herself, which was a missionary hag. She was a person who loved proper China service and silver settings and a sophisticated atmosphere. And she's living in the jungle gnawing on a roasted monkey fist for her dinner. And so that dichotomy is not naturally possible, but she was determined once again, if this was where Jesus had called her to be, she was going to do it.

Gnawing on a roasted monkey fist. I don't think anyone's ever said that on this program before. I have to say, that woman is a hearty woman. I mean, I can't think of many people I know who'd be willing to gnaw on a roasted monkey fist. Was monkey on the menu, typically speaking, in that tribe? It certainly was one of their staples. I was offered monkey while I was there and chose to become a vegetarian for the week.

When you say you were offered monkey, I mean, I don't know anyone who's ever eaten monkey. What, you know, what is it? like haunch of monkey, braised breast of monkey. I mean, I can't even imagine. I guess it sounds like they eat every part of the monkey if they're eating the fist. We're going to go to a break. I wanted to be talking about eating monkey flesh at the end of the segment. I've succeeded.

We'll be right back. So are you tired of being tired? Well, then it's time to get the tea. Hey, it's Lisa here to tell you about this all natural, all organic tea I've been drinking that has had great results for over 20 years. It's called Life Change Tea, and it's specially formulated to help detoxify and cleanse your kidneys, liver, colon, and blood all at once. The colon is one of the most ignored organs in the human body. The faster that waste is eliminated from the body, the less time that waste sits in our intestines spreading toxins to our bloodstream.

This tea helps cleanse chemicals caused by outside intruders from our entire digestive system. And get this? Weight loss can be a side effect. And with continued use of the tea, you can experience clear, healthier, younger looking skin, increased energy, and a happier outlook on life. So if you're tired of being tired, get the life change tea at gettetotcom. That's get the tea.com. And like me, you'll be glad you did. Folks, I got some embarrassing news to share with you. But you know what?

This is just the kind of a show where I don't care. I'm willing to lay my heart, you know, on the line. Here's the issue. Mike Lindell with my pillow. You may notice that I have a bobble hell of him near me. He's here to remind all of us that when you go to mypillow.com, you get whopping discounts if you use the code Eric. Now, there are a lot of people who haven't done that,

and we have your names here. And Chris Heim's Ann Albin pointed out to me that there's like three pages of you whose first name is Eric. I mean, that's humiliating for me that even though your name is Eric, you're still not willing to use the code Eric. I mean, if you don't want to use it because it's my name,

use it because it's your name. But the point is that I see who you are, and I just feel humiliated by this. Please go to mypillar.com. It's okay, Mike. It's going to be okay. Go to mypillar.com. Use the code Eric. You're going to get whopping savings

and really high quality. products. Did I mention that? Thank you. Okay, folks, I'm talking to the author of becoming Elizabeth Elliott. An incredible story. The author's Ellen Vaughn. Ellen, we were just talking about something so bizarre, but you went, you yourself went to visit this tribe, among whom Elizabeth Elliott lived, and you said that you yourself were offered monkey flesh. I forgive me for my obsession with it, but it's so exotic. I can't even imagine that there are people who eat monkey flesh in this day and age.

But you declined. Well, Eric, I have to tell you, deep into the Amazon jungle, I felt like a big white baby. Like I would have died in about five minutes had not the wild dummy taken care of me. And the hunters would go out each day. would come back with their prize, which would then be carved up in the same river where we bathed and boiled on a pot over a fire. And so one day it was monkey, and every conceivable part of the monkey was served. Another day, they brought back this spotted thing that looked like a giant rodent.

It was a rodent of unusual size. And it would be like eating a spotted rat. and again, every part of it. And so it helps you appreciate. When I came home, I was so thrilled to have a toilet and food that was not monkey or rodent. Oh, I hear you. I got to say, you know, we forget that much of mankind through history has lived more like that than the way we live. But that is extraordinary.

So you don't even get to taste monkey. Did you smell it? I mean, I'm always wondering, you know, do these things, do they smell enticing or repulsive? You know, I don't know. I'm going to try to see if there's a way they could deliver monkey to you in Manhattan or something. It smells like your worst nightmare of odiferous despair. Oh, my goodness. How horrible to have a good writer describe something so terrible.

So, in fact, you found it repulsive. Well, at the same token, Elizabeth Elliott wrote in her journal that one of her tribal friends tasted some fudge that Elizabeth Elliott had somehow scraped together and made one day over the fire and nearly vomited. She thought fudge was the worst thing you could possibly imagine. So it's a matter of culture. I mean, obviously, it's just amazing to me that these folks are still living something like that and eating, you know, whatever they find that day.

It's amazing. Of course, the most amazing thing is that Elizabeth Elliott and her martyred husband, Jim, and others, went to reach these people. I mean, you talk about Christian love. It's hard for us to imagine giving your whole life to that kind of effort, risking death, and dying to self daily, as you put it. I mean, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, you know, she, she, she understood that. What do you suppose she made later in life of her earlier life? I mean, she lived quite a long time. Did, did she, um, ever get any perspective on it?

It seems that, you know, uh, when you're much older, you would, you would have a different perspective. Sometimes it seems like earlier seasons of our lives are almost like a dream or like they happened to someone else. And I think she experienced that. In some of her journals, mostly when she was at Wheaton College, I would have her handwriting of the young Wheatonite Knight writing about college. And then in the older Elizabeth's handwriting, there would be a little scribble in there that says, gosh, hadn't realized I had dated this much. And things like that. So I think the different seasons in our lives can become very strange to us at a later time. But what I will say is she took the lessons from those early years and parlayed them into her life when she came back to American culture.

Well, so you said that you're working on volume two of this book. I mean, this one is called Becoming Elizabeth Elliott. Do you have a title for the second volume? Well, I haven't even started writing it yet, and one doesn't name the baby until it's born. So we'll see what this turns out to be. It's probably the rest of the story, that type of thing. Yeah. The whole thing you said, Eric, you know, I'm thinking about,

we're all affected by the writers who we read or the saints who have gone before. And Elizabeth Elliott was very, very much affected by the writings of Amy Carmichael, Irish missionary who spent 55 years on the mission field in India, saving little girls and later also little boys who were, and she saved them from a life of abuse. And Amy Carmichael wrote that the life of a missionary, and I would add the life of any Christian is a chance to die. And that's not very cheerful.

It's not the type of thing that people put on up on Instagram. But I think that what I saw in the paradox of that in Elizabeth Elliott's life lived out in spades was that really this daily death and not my will but yours that is part of the life of the believer is the key to an exhilarating, very liberated experience of following Jesus. Where we get all snaggled up, I think, is when we're living according to what we think we should do or what will make other people affirm us or our feelings. Well, that's the whole thing. I mean, it's the paradox, obviously, is that Jesus calls us to

genuine freedom and genuine life, and we're afraid of it. We don't trust it. We're safer living our death life. I mean, because that's really what it is, right? And he calls us, he calls us to this extraordinary adventure. And most of us are saying, oh, I don't know. I don't know if I want to live that radically. And he's trying to say to us, you don't understand. You were created by me to live that radically. And it won't feel that radical because it is exactly what you were created to do.

And by the way, I will be with you and I will equip you. And I think that really believing that, is that's what it is to be a follower of Jesus. And that, as you were saying earlier, it can, for some people, it's just a cerebral construct. I do this, I don't do this, whatever. And they don't understand that it's a living relationship. And he calls us to actual life.

That's what it is to die to self. You know, it is the central idea of human existence. And so I'm glad we did get to that. We're going to be right back final segment. I'm talking to the author of becoming Elizabeth Elliott, Ellen Vaughn is my guest. Don't go away. Folks, final segment with Ellen Vaughn, the author of the new book becoming Elizabeth Elliott. You were saying, Ellen, that in the epilogue, you write about how her life affected you personally.

Talk about that. Well, as you know, as a biographer, when you're writing a biography, you're carrying around not only your own life, but the life of the person who you are so immersed in. And I found that with Elizabeth Elliott. And what happened to me by God's Providence in the midst of writing this book, my husband's very rare, malignant, wicked brain cancer recurred. And he had emergency surgery. He had a long, slow rehabilitation and recovery. He nearly died multiple times.

And so I'm reading Elizabeth Elliott's journals as I'm sitting in an ICU waiting. or an operating room waiting room. And what I found throughout both the immediate crisis of lease health and the long, slow recovery and the ongoing cancer that continues to this moment is that the principles that held up Elizabeth Elliott have held me up. That the story here is certainly one of a colorful and strong and amazing woman, but they're also life nuggets to be drawn out that can hold any of us in the midst of our own trauma. I read about Elizabeth's loss of her husband when the loss of my own husband wasn't as theoretical, but perhaps imminent. And I found that the anchor holds. You know, I often think about embracing the idea that you were talking about

of Jesus calling us to come and die. It's like when you're in the ocean and a huge wave is coming and your instinct is to want to run away. Run away. And in fact, if you run toward the wave and dive into it, you come out on the other side. It's only as we run away. We get caught in the undertow. We get smashed into the gravel and the sand. And so I've been practicing more and more in my own life, a kind of diving into the wave.

And I feel like that really came not just from the scriptures, but from being immersed in Elizabeth with allie at living that out. What a, what a beautiful, beautiful idea and image. And I do think that, you know, I make the point over and over and over again that I write my biographies and my book Seven Men and Stone and so forth, because I think we need to read the stories of these heroes, these men and women who can teach us something. And we actually need, we need that. It's vital.

And so, no kidding. So many people have mentioned to me, you know, you should write about this one. You should write about that one. And I know that I usually can't. But I'm so thrilled when someone of your caliber turns her attention to a subject like Elizabeth Elliott so that others who are going through tough stuff can share what you got from her story. I mean, it really is, this is not, we're not just reading history. We're reading biography, my goodness. It's just so important.

Did you ever, we just have a few seconds, did you ever meet Elizabeth Elliott in your life? I did back in the day when I was working at Prison Fellowship. She came and spoke at our devotions. And she worshipped up my church occasionally when she was in the Washington, D.C. area. So I was around where I heard her. speak, but I didn't have a personal relationship with her until I became steward of her story. It's crazy, isn't it? I know you feel closer to these people than to your own friends sometimes

because you spend so much time with them. Well, look, Ellen, I'm just thrilled that you wrote the book. I'm thrilled it is out now becoming Elizabeth Elliott. I know many people will get a copy and we'll drink from this well of wisdom. Thank you so much for being my guest, and thank you for taking the huge trouble involved in writing this book. Thank you, Eric. I appreciate being with you.

The Lord bless you. And you.