Anyone who knows me knows that Elisabeth Elliot is my favorite author. I discovered her books in 2010, and I’ve been reading and re-reading them ever since. So, you can imagine how excited I was when Lars Gren, Elisabeth’s widower, called me in response to a letter I had written requesting to visit him in the house he and Elisabeth lived in until she died in 2015. He told me he’d be glad if I visited.
When I arrived at the quaint cul-de-sac of Strawberry Cove, Lars was outside hanging sheets on the clothesline. I was on time, down to the minute, and he commented that I must have been parked somewhere, waiting it out so I wouldn’t be early. In actuality, I left my hotel early but hit so much traffic I made it on time by the skin of my teeth. And thankfully I did; I would have been so embarrassed if I were late!
I was beyond excited to be able to see their house. Elisabeth often wrote about things she saw from her study window, which overlooks the sea. Lars told me that Elisabeth designed the house so that there are large windows all along the back of it. In the living room, hanging over the large window overlooking the sea, there’s a wooden plaque with Psalm 95:5 on it: “The sea is His, and He made it.”
As I walked around the living room, looking at all of the books and pictures, I noticed 2 triple-hinged frames on one of the bookshelves. In one of them was a picture of each of Elisabeth’s husbands — Jim Elliot (her first husband) on the left, Addison Leitch (her second husband) in the center, and Lars Gren (her third husband) on the right. In the other, was a picture of Elisabeth with each of her husbands in chronological order. I had never before seen a picture of her second husband, so I was thrilled to see what he looked like.
Photo of Elisabeth and Jim
Elisabeth became well known when her first husband, Jim Elliot, and 4 other missionaries were speared to death by Auca Indians in the jungle of Ecuador in 1956. They had only been married 27 months (after waiting 5 years to get the green light from God to marry), and they had a 10-month-old daughter, Valerie. Elisabeth told the story of Jim’s and the other men’s martyrdom in her book Through Gates of Splendor, and she tells her and Jim’s love story in her book Passion for Purity.
Elisabeth stayed in Ecuador after Jim’s death, and 3 years later moved into Auca territory with Valerie to bring the gospel to the very people who killed her husband. Her experience there is recounted in her book The Savage, My Kinsman.
Elisabeth and Valerie moved back to the States in 1963. Thirteen years after Jim’s death, in 1969, she married a professor at Gordon Conwell, Addison Leitch, who was 18 years her senior. Three years after they married, he was diagnosed with cancer. He died less than a year later.
While Addison (whom Elisabeth called “Add”) was sick, she invited a seminary student to live with them in order to help her with Add’s care. Just days before her new boarder was supposed to move in, Add died. Well, she figured she could still use some help, so she invited him to come anyway, and called the seminary to let them know she could use another boarder, too. She got one. And in God’s unbelievable providence, one of her boarders married her daughter, and the other one married her. Lars Gren and Elisabeth were married from 1977 until June 2015, when Elisabeth passed away at the age of 88.
Photo of Elisabeth and Lars
One thing I’ve always wondered was whether or not it bothered Lars that Elisabeth’s ministry was birthed out of her and Jim’s love story and his eventual martyrdom. When I asked him about it, and if it bothered him that she was married twice before, he burst out laughing and said, “Don’t be ridiculous! Why would it?” Then he said, “I used to encourage her to talk more about the second husband because he never got mentioned. Sometimes at the platform in between sessions [at one of her speaking events], I’d tell Elisabeth, ‘Why don’t you tell them something about Add? Poor guy doesn’t get mentioned’.”
Lars has a great sense of humor, and I had so much fun spending the afternoon with him. I can’t fit even a fraction of what we talked about in one blog post, so I’m going to write 2-3 (maybe even 4). Stay tuned!
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