In the Presence of My Enemies
This book leaves me unsure. It’s an account of missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham, who went away for a romantic anniversary weekend, and were kidnapped by terrorists and held for over a year in the Philippine jungle. Gracia lived to tell the tale.
In the Presence of My Enemies is about the story, not the writing. It persistently rejects the temptation to adorn the events it recounts as “lit-ra-chur.” Time after time, it gives a terse account of a highly dramatic situation, and characters who run the gamut from diabolical to saintly, without much description. There’s enough, surely, to suggest the kind of misery the Burnhams (and the other hostages) endured. But it’s paced in a way that keeps us moving through the material almost deceptively quickly. This is a story, after all, of “hope deferred making the heart sick” – of an ordeal that lasted far longer than anyone thought at the beginning.
I read this book on the heels of Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot, another tale of missionaries enduring cruel trial. Having the longer view historically, my reading of that story included the luxury of seeing at least glimpses of good that was brought out of horrific events. Those who committed brutal murder underwent a transformation that started with their crime, giving it a meaning that, if it fails to make it any less horrific, at least gives it purpose.
This book is a different animal. It doesn’t provide a context or a larger perspective, partly because it’s so recent and any significance remains to be seen, and partly because Gracia Burnham’s personality — at least her writerly personality — is less reflectively wise and more visceral, somehow, than Elliot’s. Several times I felt myself wanting a different narrator, one who could guide me to a more comfortable view of things, or — admittedly — who didn’t seem so much like me.
No such luck. Whereas Elisabeth Elliot is steadfast, mature, wise, deep, Gracia Burnham struggles. She often retreats into the jungle to cry. She gets angry at God. She struggles with hating her captors. As she says at one point, “I realized that when everything is stripped away from you and you have nothing, you find out what you are down deep inside. What I was starting to see was not pretty.”
In the same way that I found myself closely resembling Gracia, I kept noticing the ways my husband is like Martin Burnham: more steadfast, more quiet about any inner turmoil he may be feeling, more stubbornly hopeful. All in all, it was eerily easy to slip myself into this story, and I think that’s why I don’t know how to evaluate it, or even how I feel in my gut about it.
I do know that it offers an answer to whether God can be sufficient, and unthreatened by our doubts, when we struggle to respond in a situation that’s unquestionably evil. The answer comes in scenes where Martin and Gracia share the food sent them by their missionary friends with their captors, even though they’re starving. It comes when Gracia washes the bedding of a sick terrorist. It comes when the Philippine army accidentally shoots Martin to death in a recue attempt (revealed on the flyleaf), and Gracia forgives them. It comes when Martin quotes Psalm 100 hours before his death, desiring to “serve God with gladness.” Fully human, but also fully for real as Christians, this couple inspires me in the midst of a story without a completely happy ending. I’ll conclude with Gracia’s own words:
When you stop and think about it, the Abu Sayyaf are not the only “bad guys,” are they? We all have pockets of darkness inside ourselves. Recognizing how much I carry inside of me was one of the most difficult parts of my entire ordeal in the jungle. I already knew I was a sinner, of course. It’s one of the first things I learned as a child in Sunday school. But I was also a missionary, a pastor’s daughter, a life-long “good girl.” Weren’t people like me supposed to be able to react to adversity with strength and kindness and courage? Why wasn’t I showing more of those traits?
…I begged the Lord at times, “Please just give me some peace. I can’t find it in my own heart. I can’t find long-suffering. I feel anything but gentle right now. Please work some gentleness into my life. Give me some joy in the middle of this horrible situation.
And he did.
