Being Elisabeth Elliot: The Authorized Biography: Elisabeth’s Later Years

by Ellen Vaughn

The average cost of a new house was about $12,650. The standard wage was about $4,400 a year—roughly 84 bucks a week. A loaf of bread cost 22 cents, a gallon of gas, 30 cents. Cars were large and shiny, with big fins, happily guzzling all that cheap gas. A failing car company called Studebaker was the first to offer new devices called seat belts as standard vehicle equipment. The U.S. Postal Service introduced its own new idea: zip codes. Beatlemania had not yet hit America. Billboard’s top song for ’63 was a cheery balled called “Dominique,” recorded by a habitual musician known as “The Singing Nun.” A new vaccine for polio was introduced; since it was delivered via a sugar cube, schoolchildren had no problem ingesting it. Coca-Cola introduced its first-ever diet drink, a foul concoction called TaB. It was sweetened with cyclamate, which was later banned for causing cancer in calorie-conscious rats.

“Mother has never allowed her children to be persons. They are mere projections of herself, and when they cease to project what she visualizes she feels threatened, she cannot cope. She has never acknowledged the validity of my experience. On what ground can we meet, then?” In the margins of these 1960’s frustrated journal jottings, there are addenda written in 1986 and 1997, as the older Elisabeth periodically reread her journals from earlier decades. “Conflicts with poor mother!” the ’86 entry notes. “Forgive me!” Later, in a shakier hand, the seventy-year-old Elisabeth wrote: “Deep, heartfelt repentance, 9/30/97.”

*Forgive me **DEEP HEARTFELT REPENTANCE