Amy Carmichael: The Mother of the Rescued

Amy Carmichael was born in Ireland, with brown eyes she did not like. As a small girl she prayed that God would turn them blue, and in the morning she ran to the mirror — and they were still brown. She was disappointed then. Years later she understood: God had a reason for those brown eyes, and He would use them.

Amy grew up and went far away, to the south of India, to tell people about Jesus. There she discovered a secret that filled her with horror. Little children, some of them only babies, were being taken from their families and given to live in temples, where terrible things were done to them, and from which they were never allowed to leave.

Amy could not walk past that. She began, very quietly and very bravely, to rescue the children. Sometimes a frightened child would be smuggled to her in the night. Sometimes Amy went herself into places she was not meant to go. To pass through the crowds without being caught, she dressed in a plain Indian sari and stained her fair skin dark with coffee — and now her brown eyes, the ones she had wished away as a girl, helped her blend in and go unseen. God had known.

One by one, then dozens by dozens, the rescued children came to live with Amy at a place called Dohnavur. She made it a real home, full of gardens and songs and safety, where a child who had known only fear could learn to laugh. The children did not call her “miss” or “madam.” They called her Amma — which means “mother.”

Amy never married and never went home to Ireland. She gave her whole life to the rescued children of Dohnavur. Near the end, after a fall, she spent twenty years unable to leave her room — and even then she kept writing, sending out words to comfort and strengthen people all over the world.

Amy Carmichael had once wanted different eyes and an easier life. Instead she became a mother to children no one else would save — and would not have traded them for anything.