Our lives don't have to be this exciting to journal our children's steps.  Anything written down that your children say or do will come back to you one day a hundred fold!  This morning was a lovely devotional by Elisabeth Elliot where she recalls her daughter's life in the jungle with Indians.   She kept a small notebook and dictated the happenings.  When written her daughter was just about to married with only 9 weeks to spare.   What a wonderful time to pull out our precious remembrances.  Read on....

 When she was born she was a marvel and an object of deep concern to the Indians of the jungle where we lived, for she was put not only in a bed separate from that of her parents, but even in a separate room. Demons, the Indians warned us anxiously, would certainly "lick" her if she was not protected between her father and mother. When we assured them that no demon would bother her at all, they shook their heads in bewilderment: another of the inexplicable differences between themselves and these foreigners. Demons don't like foreign children. But what about vampires? That, we knew, would have been a real danger if we had not lived in a screened house.

She was carried around in an aparinga, an Indian carrying cloth, not only by her mother but by Indian women and girls who asked if they might "borrow" her for a little while. She learned two languages at once and managed to keep them separate in her mind. She played, swam, walked the trails and ate fish heads with the Indian kids. The "slumber parties" she went to were in Indian houses where she took her blanket and curled up on the bamboo slats beside her friends, coming home in the morning to announce that breakfast had been soup. "What kind of soup?" I once asked. "Oh, rat soup, I guess," she said, and she was right.

Because she always went barefoot she had to wash her feet every night before going to bed, a chore she sometimes wished she could get out of. One evening while washing the supper dishes in the river she looked up to see a beautiful sunset. "It looks as though Jesus might come through there," she said to me, "and then I wouldn't even have to wash my feet. Jesus would wash my feet for me--he's kind."

In a small notebook I kept the accounts Val sometimes dictated to me of her doings with the Indians. One fragment from the notebook reads:

"We got to a little pool, a little lake. Uba just got one fish with her hands. With a knife she whacked it. And then we went to get pitumu [palm fruit]. We got chicha [manioc drink] where the little lake was. It was Ipa's chicha. She squeezed it for me into a little leaf, because we didn't have any cups. At home we have cups. I was thirsty. Kumi, Kinta and I drank some. The rest didn't have any because there wasn't any left. Then we got the pitumu and made a basket with some leaves, and then we came home. I saw wild pig and tapir footprints and that's all."

Later: "I took some poison down to the river and watched how Ana fixed it. Then I got some and put it in a little hole in the ground and punched it and punched it and punched it, and when the leaves got soft I put it in the basket and then in the water. Soon I got a little fish, a little fish, and a little fish [this is the Indian way of saying 'three fish']. Their names were kuniwee, niwimu and arakawae. I brought them to Gimari's fire and put them on a little stick that was burning and they got toasted and then I ate them. And that's all."

One evening I overheard Valerie singing to her kitten:

"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like you."

Among the questions asked on a single day were, "Why can't we breathe under water?" "Will we go through a rainbow when we go to God's house?" "Owls got kinda paper faces, don't they?" "Can God make the tea stop coming out of the pot?" and "Why do dogs have knees in the back of their legs?"

Hers was a happy life with the Indians, but she dreamed of having a brother or sister. Standing in front of a mirror once she said, "I sometimes think this is my sister, my twin, and I talk to her and she answers me and smiles."

Perhaps this solitude helped her to understand the solitude of others. She loved taking care of things. In the jungle, making people comfortable meant, among other things, building a fire, and she spent a good deal of time at this. I found her tending two tiny fires underneath our house (which was on stilts), "one for me," she explained, "and one for my little birdie so he won't be cold." She had put the baby woodpecker's basket close by. Another time she was tucking up her small friend Taemaenta (both were about five years old) in her hammock, covering him with a doll blanket and fanning up the fire. When she climbed in beside him I inquired what she was up to. "Just being kind to Taemaenta because his mother is gone," she said. She carried her own dolls around in an aparinga, covering their heads with a rag when the trail led out into the sunshine, protecting them with her hand when she stooped to go under a fallen tree or through a patch of underbrush.

Her education for the first three years was the Calvert School correspondence course, begun under taxing conditions since we had no place to put books and things, living, as we were then, in a wall-less house. It was difficult to concentrate with Indians hanging over her shoulder, peering at the pictures, fingering the books, trying out the crayons, snipping things with the scissors.

The third-grade work included a lesson on mythology. As I was telling the story of Pandora's box I tried to explain the meaning of hope. After giving several other illustrations I asked, "What was my hope when your daddy died?" "Me!" was the immediate reply.

She was indeed. In the bleakest times she was there, a gift of joy, lifting her little face in love, smiling, not knowing anything of the need she met.

She thought much about God and heaven (which was to her not only the Father's house but her daddy's as well). I sometimes wrote down her prayers after I had kissed her goodnight. I did this not because I feared they would otherwise be lost (the great angel with the golden censer will see that they are not lost) but because I knew that they would be lost to me. I would forget. And also because I had no one, at that time, to tell them to.

"Dear Lord, thank you for this sentence: 'There is a green hill far away where the dear, dear Lord Jesus was crucified.' Jesus, you know that we don't understand your words. Just like those people long ago, when you told them you were going to come alive. They didn't understand. We're just like those people. So help us to understand. Help us not to lie and disobey and steal. Let's be sweet. And help me with my arithmetic tomorrow. In Jesus' name. Amen." She was eight years old.

She had seen birth and suffering and death in our life with the Indians, had acquired a "nerve of knowledge" that rendered her sensitive. When I asked if she ever thought about death she said, "Yes, sometimes when I'm washing my feet. You know how the sink is dry, and the water creeps up the sides when I'm filling it? There are little points around the edges of the water, and I think these points are the number of days before I'm going to die, and go to see my daddy. But I don't count them. I splash the water up quickly." With these intimations of mortality she was at the same time full of joy. She told me several times of dreams in which she found herself floating and singing. If she wakened in the night, she often sang. A friend described her walk as "not on but slightly above the ground."

When she was twelve I went into her room one evening to thank her for washing all the dishes when I had guests. "Mommy!" she said as I started to leave. "I want to thank you for my whole life! For all you've given me and for all the things you've done for me and for all the food you've cooked for me!"

To look at the woman who was that child of nine years ago and to realize that I am thanked for what I cooked and did and gave--thanked for doing what I could not possibly have helped wanting with all my heart to do--is to understand in a new light the words of Jesus, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." More "blessed"? He must have meant that it is a happier thing to aim at the giving rather than at the receiving, but, strangely, if we put the giving first the receiving necessarily follows. For me, from this child, the receiving seems to have been without interruption. It is not immediately so for all. I know. If we give out of love, however, there is ultimately no way in heaven or earth to avoid receiving, and receiving far more than we could possibly give.

Nine more weeks. Shall we have a multi-media presentation flashed on the walls of the church as she moves down the aisle? Swimming to the bottom of the rain barrel, eating rat soup, drinking chicha from a leaf cup, snuggling with Taemaenta in her hammock, floating and singing? Not a very workable idea. But I shall be remembering, and giving thanks.

One day I would like to recall my children's words.  We will forget.  I can read through my children's sayings from 5 years ago and laugh at them because I have deeply forgotten their humor when so little.  Even a video doesn't capture their heart as their words do.  Words, so important.  If you want more encouragment to write your families stories down, see "The Gift of Family Writing" !

May the Lord bless you deeply this Mother's Day!  Theresa

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