Gateway to Joy

“The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” — Jeremiah 31:3 (KJV)

After Addison's death Elisabeth stayed in Hamilton, writing, speaking and teaching for a time at the seminary. One of the lodgers in her house was Lars Gren, ten years younger than her, a former salesman training to be a hospital chaplain. A friendship grew, then more. They married in December 1977. It was her third marriage. They later made their home in Magnolia, a village on the rocky Massachusetts coast. Lars ran the business side of her work: her diary, her travel, her book sales. He travelled with her almost everywhere, and her public work grew enormously.

Valerie grew up and married Walter Shepard, who became a Presbyterian minister. They had eight children. Around Valerie's wedding Elisabeth wrote her letters about being a woman, a wife and a Christian, published in 1976 as Let Me Be a Woman. She taught that the difference between men and women is God's gift, and that in marriage a wife is called to submit to her husband's headship. Many readers found dignity in it. Many Christians who love the Bible just as much disagreed sharply. They pointed out that she herself had gone alone into the forest and written down an unwritten language, and they warned that teaching submission without enough care could keep women in marriages that were harming them. Christians still debate it.

Her own marriage was harder than most readers knew. Our fullest account comes from her authorised biographer, Ellen Vaughn, writing after her death. Vaughn reports that Lars destroyed most of Elisabeth's journals from those years, something he came to regret. Drawing on family and close friends, she describes a husband given to outbursts of temper who came to control much of Elisabeth's daily life, including her diary and how often she saw her friends. Elisabeth never spoke of this in public. Lars's own side is largely missing from the record. And, as the next chapter shows, he was also the one who cared for her at home for years when her mind failed. Both are true.

Meanwhile her work reached more people than ever. From 1982 she sent out a plain newsletter. In 1984 came Passion and Purity, and in 1987 her life of Amy Carmichael, the missionary she'd first heard read aloud at fourteen. In 1988 a radio ministry in Lincoln, Nebraska, asked her to present a short daily programme for women. It was called Gateway to Joy, and it ran for thirteen years. Every programme opened the same way: reminding listeners that they were loved with an everlasting love, the words of Jeremiah 31:3, and that underneath were the everlasting arms, from Deuteronomy.

Then she talked about prayer, suffering, loneliness and widowhood, and also about washing dishes, being on time, answering letters and getting out of bed. She believed the Christian life is lived mostly in small things, and that doing small duties faithfully is not a lesser kind of devotion than dramatic sacrifice. She was crisp, direct and sometimes severe. Some found her cold. Many more, especially the lonely, the grieving and the worn out, found her bracing. She didn't tell them their troubles were small. She told them God was great and was with them.

There's a hard truth here. The woman who opened every programme with the everlasting arms was carrying burdens at home almost nobody suspected. People's public faces can hide a lot. That's true of people you admire, and maybe of you. If someone at home loses their temper in ways that frighten you, or controls who you can see and what you can do, that matters. Tell a safe person: a parent, a pastor, a teacher, a doctor, or a helpline where you live.

One thing to do this week: do one small, unnoticed duty without being asked, like the dishes, a tidy room, or a reply you've been putting off, and quietly offer it to God as worship.