Dethroning My Missionary Hero

During my first year on the mission field — twenty years ago now — I read Elisabeth Elliot’s only novel, No Graven Image. I immediately regretted it. 

Elisabeth Elliot was my hero. Her books about her first husband’s life and martyrdom significantly influenced my decision to become a missionary. Her emphasis on steadfast obedience, no matter the cost, inspired me to do hard things for God. 

But her novel absolutely mystified me. It’s the fictional story of a young missionary — Margaret — in South America, working to translate the Bible for a remote tribe. An Indian family befriends her and the father, Pedro, becomes her closest ally in her translation work. I don’t remember much about the story except for how it ends: Pedro dies — and it’s Margaret’s fault. 

As a 24-year-old idealistic Elisabeth Elliot fan, this was incomprehensible to me. Why on earth would Elisabeth write such a thing? It felt depressing and cynical and almost anti-missionary. Sure, Elisabeth’s own husband had died on the mission field — I knew bad things could happen — but he was a martyr, a hero. And his death inspired a whole generation of new missionaries. That story had a happy ending….right? So why write a novel about missionary failure, where the ending is actually worse than the beginning? God wouldn’t let that happen in real life….right?

I ignored the story. It didn’t match my perception of Elisabeth, missions, or God. My brain didn’t have a category to fit it into, and I consciously made a decision to forget about it.

And then, 20 years of missionary life happened. Yes, I saw many victories, but an equal number of tragedies. The local pastor who abused his adult daughter. The American missionary with six kids who had an affair with a local woman. Families who left the country because of irreconcilable conflict with teammates. Students we poured into for years, only to have them lose their faith on a full-ride scholarship to Harvard. 

Many times, the world swung crazily around me, shifting perceptions of God and myself. Why did I come here? Am I doing any good? Is this really what God wants me to do? At times I paced the room, raging against injustice or abuse perpetrated by people of God, accusing myself of not doing more to stop it. God, we obeyed you when we came here; why are you not fixing this? Changing this? Why did you let this happen?

Recently I read the biography written by Ellen Vaughn, Becoming Elisabeth Elliot. Vaughn filled in my manufactured picture of Elisabeth’s life: not just a hero, a fearless missionary, a martyr’s wife, but a woman who wrestled deeply with obeying God. Yes, she followed Him into the jungle (with her toddler!) to live with the tribe who murdered her husband, but she also cried herself to sleep from grief. She struggled with resentment and selfishness when she shared her home with another missionary family. And conflict with a colleague eventually took her off the mission field entirely.

As I read this biography, my memory plucked No Graven Image out of a dusty corner of my mind. Vaughn writes, “By the end of her time in Ecuador, Betty had puzzled over what the word missionary even meant.” And I realized that I should have paid more attention to the lesson Elisabeth was trying to teach me in her story of Margaret and Pedro: God is God; I am not. We don’t often get happy endings; my job is simply to obey. Her novel was far more insightful than I gave it credit for. I had to learn the hard way.

Vaughn quotes Elisabeth: “Faith’s most severe tests come not when we see nothing, but when we see a stunning array of evidence that seems to prove our faith vain. If God were God, if He were omnipotent, if He had cared, would this have happened? Is this that I face now the ratification of my calling, the reward of obedience? One turns in disbelief again from the circumstances and looks into the abyss. But in the abyss there is only blackness, no glimmer of light, no answering echo… It was a long time before I came to the realization that it is in our acceptance of what is given that God gives Himself. Even the Son of God had to learn obedience by the things that He suffered. . . . And His reward was desolation, crucifixion.”

My hero had stared into the abyss more than I realized. And her understanding of God came from the abyss, not in spite of it. Vaughn explains that Elisabeth learned that “God’s sovereign will was a mystery that could not be mastered, an experience that could not be classified, a wonder that had no end. It wove together strands of life, death, grace, pain, joy, humility, and awe.” 

I came away from Elisabeth’s biography with a far more imperfect, cracked, patched up image of her than I had twenty years ago. But that’s true of how I see myself and missions too, for that matter. Knowing that she fought through grief and doubt and failure into a more beautiful understanding of the goodness and sovereignty of God gives me hope. If Elisabeth could get there, I can too.

Ellen Vaughn writes, “The only problem to be solved, really, is that of obedience. As Betty noted, futility—that spirit-numbing sense of despair—does not come from the thing itself, but from the demand to know ‘why.’… For Betty, the question is ‘what?’ As in, Lord, show me what You want me to do. And I’ll do it. And in that acceptance—’I’ll obey, whatever it is’—there is peace.”

Stop Waiting for It All to Make Sense

Alece Ronzino Stop Waiting For it All to Make Sense

One of the biggest myths of our generation is that we need clarity in order to commit.

Before we pull the trigger, we first want answers to all our questions. We want a complete road map. We want to read the fine print before we sign our lives away. We want confident periods not uncertain question marks. We want to fully know what we’re getting ourselves into. We want surety before we take a step. And until we get it, we wait…

And we blame our lack of commitment on a lack of clarity.

But it’s a myth that knowing more would make it easier to say yes. It’s a lie we tell ourselves so that we feel better about doing nothing.

If I knew all that awaited me when I boarded the plane for Africa at 19, I never would have gone. If I could’ve seen the roadmap of hills and deep, dark valleys, I would have stayed Stateside. If I could have imagined all the heartaches and challenges that I would have to endure in order to embrace the victories and successes, I would have cowered in the corner crying.

Details paralyze more than uncertainty does.

If we wait until we have it all spelled out, that’s no longer faith-driven commitment— that’s just executing a plan. Commitment must be laced with doubt and hesitation and mystery.

Commitment, in its truest form, demands ambiguity.

Think of Abraham. “Leave your country, your family, and your father’s home,” God said, “for a land that I will show you.”

Without even knowing where he was going or how he would get there, Abraham left.

Courageous commitment lined every footstep he left in the rugged soil, stepping away from the known into the land of the unknown.

What’s that thing scratching on the corner of your heart? What is that quiet nudge you continue to feel? What’s the passion that keeps rising to the surface? Whatever it is… Stop waiting for all the answers, for certainty, for assurances.

Commitment precedes clarity every single time.

So pull the trigger. Say yes. Jump off the cliff. Send that email. Start the conversation.

Take the step.

The courage lies in doing it afraid.

What is it for you?

What do you need to commit to?

{Photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lauter-als-der-rest/6898114788/}

 

Alece HeadshotAlece Ronzino –  After pioneering and leading a nonprofit in South Africa for 13 years, Alece now lives in Nashville, TN. She is a Nonprofit Communications & Development Strategist, a freelance copywriter/editor, and the founder of One Word 365. She blogs occasionally but candidly about searching for God in the question marks of life and faith. Follow Alece on Twitter and visit her blog, Grit and Glory.

Bring the Rain

Alece Ronzino Bring the Rain

Africa has the greatest storms. The rainy season finally comes after months of drought, and by the time the first drop falls, the earth is cracked and parched. Lakes and ponds have all but dried up. The tall savannah grass is brown and brittle.

The earth is thirsty. Ready. Waiting.

And then, out of nowhere one day, the storm clouds roll in.

The blackened sky sobs heavy tears. You can feel the thunder deep in your bones as it echoes through the plains. The lightning makes you jump and paralyzes you with awe all in the same loud, bright instant. The wind reminds you that only God could tie the trees down tightly enough.

Africa’s storms are altogether wonderful.

And altogether terrible.

Water rushes into homes, through the cracks in mud hut walls and the gaps in old thatch roofs and the seams in tin shack ceilings. Gusts of wind blow right through bedrooms and marble-sized hail destroys gardens. Those with only their feet for transportation run for any cover they can find — the bus stop, the liquor store, the first home they can reach in the village.

The storms are harsh. And unrelenting. And inconvenient.

And yet, they are welcomed.

There is a joy about the rainy season. “We need it,” is what you’ll hear.

Africans find it easy to say. Easy to see. Easy to recognize and acknowledge that as challenging as the storm may be, good will come of it. It is, after all, an answer to countless prayers for the sun-scorched ground.

They know that the thirst can’t be quenched without the storm.

Spring can’t come without the rain.

New life can’t bud deep beneath the surface of the dry, crusty ground until the heavens unleash their fury.

The drought doesn’t end until the storms start.

We need them.

I need them.

I need the storms in my life. Not as punishment or discipline or as some cruel cosmic joke that leaves God chuckling to Himself. I need them because of what’s waiting on the other side that I can’t see yet.

I need them because sometimes my heart grows cracked and dry, forgetting what it feels like to be filled to overflowing.

I need them because when everything in my life has turned the bare, barren brown of winter, I’m desperate for the life-awakening green of spring.

I need the storms. Even when I hate them.

Bring the rain.

What storm — large or small — are you facing right now?

How can you choose joy in the downpour?

 {Photo Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kigaliwire/4403135333/}

Alece HeadshotAlece Ronzino – After pioneering and leading a nonprofit in South Africa for 13 years, Alece now lives in Nashville, TN. She is a Nonprofit Communications & Development Strategist, a freelance copywriter/editor, and the founder of One Word 365. She blogs occasionally but candidly about searching for God in the question marks of life and faith. Follow Alece on Twitter and visit her blog, Grit and Glory.