This Last Goodbye

Let this goodbye of ours, this last goodbye,
Be still and splendid like a forest tree…
Let there be one grand look within our eyes
Built of the wonderment of the past years,
Too vast a thing of beauty to be lost
In quivering lips and burning floods of tears.

Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity (Revell, 2002), p. 67.

If I had to stand before my beloved and say goodbye, not knowing if I would ever see or hear from him again, would I be able to do it without quivering lips and burning flood of tears? If that is what he desired, I would try, for his sake…. at least until he had closed the door. What courage that must have taken. What love. What selflessness. Both to ask and to receive.

℘ ℘ ℘ ℘ ℘ ℘ ℘ ℘ ℘

Elisabeth Elliot’s writing has greatly influenced my life, even as a grown married woman. I truly wish someone had introduced me to her works when I was a teenager, but I am learning that it is never too late to incorporate the principles she teaches: namely, that passion is not sinful and purity is not prudish. Nor are they mutually exclusive. You can have both.