Lisa Barry: Today brings us to the end of our series on the book STEPPING HEAVENWARD. There are many more chapters, of course, and I would highly recommend you get a copy for yourself. But for today, we'll take one final look into the life of Katie, who seems to be the author herself-Elizabeth Prentiss. I'm thankful to have been introduced to this wonderful author by the program's host, Elisabeth Elliot. And now, let's join her as she reads one more installment of STEPPING HEAVENWARD. Here's Elisabeth.

Elisabeth Elliot: "You are loved with an everlasting love." That's what the Bible says. "And underneath are the everlasting arms." This is your friend Elisabeth Elliot, reading again today from the book by Elizabeth Prentiss called STEPPING HEAVENWARD. It is ostensibly the diary of a young girl who has grown up and gotten married. Not very long after her marriage, her husband moves his father and his sister into their home.

She writes, "March 10. Things are even worse than I expected. Ernest [that's her husband] evidently looked at me with his father's eyes, and his father has got jaundice or something, and is certainly cooler towards me than he was before he went home. Martha still declines eating more than enough to keep body and soul together, and sits at the table with the air of a martyr. Her father lives on crackers and stewed prunes, and when he has eaten them, fixes his melancholy eyes on me, watching every mouthful with an air of plaintive regret that I will consume so much unwholesome food."

I imagine that there are some people listening to me today who are perhaps having to take care of older people in your home. Is it a trial? Well, we can all step heavenward through the trials that God brings. I'll continue my reading.

"Then Ernest positively spends less time with me than ever and sits in his office reading and writing nearly every evening. Yesterday I came home from an exhilarating walk and a charming call at Auntie's and at the dinner table gave a lively account of some of the children's exploits. Nobody laughed. Nobody made any response.

After dinner, Ernest took me aside and said kindly enough, but still said it, 'My little wife must be careful how she runs on in my father's presence. He has great dread of everything that might be thought levity.'

Then all the vials of my wrath exploded and went off. 'Yes, I see how it is!' I cried passionately. 'You and your father and your sister have got a box about a foot square that you want to squeeze me into. I have seen it ever since they came, and I can tell you, it will take more than three of you to do it. There was no harm in what I said, none whatever. If you only married me for the sake of screwing me down and freezing me up, why didn't you tell me so before it was so late?'

Ernest stood looking at me like one staring at a problem he had got to solve and didn't know where to begin. 'I am very sorry,' he said. 'I thought you would be glad to have me give you this little hint. Of course I want you to appear your very best before my father and sister.'

'My very best is my real self,' I cried. 'To talk like a woman of forty is unnatural to a girl of my age. Your father doesn't like me. I wish he would go away and not come here putting notions into your head and making you as cold and hard as a stone. Mother liked to have me run on, as you call it, and I wish I had stayed with her all my life.'

'Do you mean,' he asked very gravely, 'that you really wish that?'

'No,' I said. 'I don't mean it,' for his husky, troubled voice brought me to my senses. 'All I mean is that I love you so dearly and you keep my heart feeling so hungry and restless. Then you went and brought your father and sister here and never asked me if I should like it. And you crowded Mother out and she lives all alone and it isn't right. I always said that whoever married me had got to marry Mother, and I never dreamed that you would disappoint me like this.'

'Will you stop crying and listen to me?' he said. But I could not stop. The floods of the great deep were broken up at last and I had to cry. If I could have told my troubles to someone, I could have thus found vent for them, but there was no one to whom I had a right to speak of my husband. Ernest walked up and down in silence. Oh, if I could have cried on his breast and felt that he loved and pitied me!

At last as I grew quieter, he came and sat by me. 'This has come upon me like a thunderclap,' he said. 'I did not know I kept your heart hungry. I did not know you wished your mother to live with us. I took it for granted that my wife, with her high-toned heroic character, would sustain me in every duty and welcome my father and sister to our home. I do not know what I can do now. Shall I send them away?'

'No, no,' I cried. 'Only be good to me, Ernest. Only love me. Only look at me with your own eyes and not with other people's. You knew I had faults when you married me. I never tried to conceal them.'

'And did you fancy I had none myself?' he asked.

'No,' I replied. 'I saw no faults in you. Everybody said you were such a good, noble man. You spoke so beautifully one night at an evening meeting.'

'Speaking beautifully is little to the purpose, unless one lives beautifully,' he said sadly. 'And now is it possible that you and I, a Christian man and a Christian woman, are going on and on with such scenes as this? Are you to wear your very life out because I have not your frantic way of loving? And am I to be made weary of mine because I cannot satisfy you?'

'But Ernest,' I said, 'you used to satisfy me. Oh, how happy I was in those first days when we were always together and you seemed so fond of me.' I was down on the floor by this time and looking up into his pale, anxious face.

'Dear child,' he said, 'I do love you, and that more than you know. But you would not have me leave my work and spend my whole time telling you so.'

'You know I am not that silly,' I cried. 'It is not fair and it is not right to talk as if I were. I ask for nothing unreasonable. I only want those little daily assurances of your affection, which I should suppose would be spontaneous if you felt at all towards me as I do to you.'

'The fact is,' he returned, 'I am absorbed in my work. It brings many grave cares and anxieties. I spend most of my time amid scenes of suffering and at dying beds. This makes me seem abstracted and cold, but it does not make you less dear. On the contrary, the sense it gives me of the brevity and sorrowfulness of life makes you doubly precious, since it constantly reminds me that sick beds and dying beds must sooner or later come to our home, as to those of others.'

I clung to him as he uttered those terrible words in an agony of terror. 'Oh, Ernest, promise me, promise me that you will not die first,' I pleaded.

'Foolish little thing,' he said, "and as silly for a while as the silliest heart could ask." Then he became serious again. 'Katie,' he said, 'if you can once make up your mind to the fact that I am undemonstrative man, not all fire and fury and ecstasy as you are, yet loving you with all my heart, however it may seem, I think you will spare yourself much needless pain and spare me also.'

'But I want you to be demonstrative,' I persisted.

'Then you must teach me. And about my father and sister, perhaps we may find some way of relieving you by and by. Meanwhile, try to bear with the trouble they make for my sake.'

'But I don't mind the trouble. Oh, Ernest, how you do misunderstand me! What I mind is their coming between you and me and making you love me less.'

By this time there was a call for Ernest. It is a wonder there had not been forty. And he went. I feel as heartsore as ever. What has been gained by this tempest? Nothing at all. Poor Ernest. How can I worry him so when he is already full of care?

March 20. I have had such a beautiful letter today from dear Mother. She gives up the hope of coming to spend her last years with us with a sweet patience that makes me cry whenever I think of it. What is the secret of this instant and cheerful consent to whatever God wills? Oh, how I wish I had that, too.

She begs me to be considerate and kind to Ernest's father and sister and constantly to remind myself that my Heavenly Father has chosen to give me this care and trial on the very threshold of my married life. I am afraid I have quite lost sight of that in my indignation with Ernest for bringing them here."

I'm sure that these diaries from a woman who calls herself Katie have rung a lot of bells out there with my listeners. You've certainly had some arguments with your husband, you married women, over how much time he spends at work, how much time he spends at other places than at home, and at how little he seems to demonstrate his love for you.

I want to give you two simple principles which will prevent either one from ever wanting a divorce, either of the two parties. Number one, the intention of unity. If you aim always at the intention of unity in every conversation, that will make a very big difference in your married life. Instead of arguing-which of course is my nature-arguing, correcting, suggesting, trying to get Lars to do things differently than the way he does them-that is not aiming at unity. So the intention of unity is the first one.

The second one is aiming always at the good of the other person. That takes the grace of God. Wives sometimes say to me, "But why do I always have to be the one who aims at the good of my husband? Why doesn't he aim at the good of me?" Well, of course, that's not a wife's business. A wife's business is to aim at the good of her husband. And what's the husband's business? To aim at the good of his wife.

I hope you've been edified and encouraged by my reading of STEPPING HEAVENWARD. It is down-to-earth, practical stuff, isn't it?

Lisa Barry: You can say that again. And so humbling, too. I know many of you have appreciated this book as much as I have. That's why I want to give you one last opportunity to purchase either the book, STEPPING HEAVENWARD, or the tape series called ON STEPPING HEAVENWARD.

For more information on how to purchase either of those, feel free to call us at this toll-free number: 1-800-759-4JOY. That's 1-800-759-4569. Or you can write to us at Gateway To Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68501. Our Internet ministry address is gatewaytojoy.org. Gateway To Joy has been a production of Back to the Bible.

Monday be listening when Elisabeth devotes an entire week of programs to the topic of discouragement. Find out more on the next Gateway To Joy.