IPHONE7 IMAGEDOWNLOAD SOFTWAREMonday, June 28, 2010
Torn by thurst
Sarah, our Secretary, gave me a nice present for my birthday this year - a copy of Elisabeth Elliot's tear-jerking novel, Torn. All the women in the book are either kidnapped by terrorists or taken hostage by them. Two of the women are taken to the very edge of the cliff and threatened to jump and fall unless their husbands return to their terrorist groups. Sarah said I would really enjoy the book, and she was right.
The book is the result of a three-year effort by the author to gather photographs and films that were originally shot for her movie script. There are several shots of the wife of a kidnapped American, and I suppose that was the reason I was drawn to this book. Because it reminded me of I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. I didn't, though. I saw a woman lying on the ground with her feet in the air, crying, because her terrorist husband had ordered her to jump off the cliff. And that is when I got teary-eyed.
Why? It was because I had been in situations very similar to hers, times in my life when I'd had to choose between taking the cowardly way out, or going through a very real and possibly horrible ordeal - to live or to die. I hadn't made it through those experiences and in many cases, the ordeal wasn't over yet.
I don't know if there is any way to describe the situation Sarah's wife was in. I mean, that's what the book is about - a woman's courage and determination to live through an ordeal that no one can ever understand. And we can't even fathom what goes on in the mind of a man that would order his wife to jump off a cliff, much less a cliff that would end her life.
When I was in high school, our Principal gave us a play called "Death of a Salesman."
"Do you know what it's about?" he asked us.
"Of course," we all said.
"It's about a man whose wife has died and he's come to accept that she's dead. But, he doesn't know what to do. He thinks that if he moves on with his life, he will lose his mind. He thinks that by accepting the reality of his wife's death, he will lose his hold on life and fall be359ba680
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