Do The Next Thing…

If you know me, you may know that I have a great amount of esteem for Elizabeth Elliot. The feisty New Englander was different from me, but her passion for her God and her relentless pursuit to growth and obedience make her a model for anyone. My first born bears the name Elliot as his middle name in honor of her.

If you don’t know, Elizabeth Elliot was the wife of Jim Elliot and the two of them traveled to the rainforest of Ecuador, hearts passionately bent on sharing the Gospel with a tribe of people who were considered unreached by the American church and “savage” by neighboring tribes. Whether it was a tradition interrupted or a preemptive strike, warriors of this tribe killed the band of men intending to preach to them and left Elizabeth Elliot a widow far from home with a child not yet a year old.

In a choice that she probably didn’t realize would make her famous, Elizabeth returned to Ecuador as a young mother and picked up where her husband left off. She reentered life, raising a toddler in a country still foreign to her. She was immediately thrown into dozens, if not hundreds, of little decisions: figuring out how to power a diesel generator and keep a landing strip cleared, teaching the Bible by slowly translating it from Spanish or English or Greek to Quichua (for which their were no written Scriptures), teaching a literacy class for women, and continuing the work she and Jim had started of translating the Gospel of Luke.

Regardless of what you think of traditional missionary work or Elizabeth Elliot, this was a heavy burden to bear for anyone, not to mention someone grieving the loss of her husband and living far from her home culture. The way she writes it, she might have wanted to simply “plunk myself down and say, ‘There is no way I can do this.’” But, of course, she didn’t do that. Instead, she chose each moment of each day to “simply” did the next thing.

I remember hearing Elizabeth Elliot (who was no longer Elliot at that point, she had lost her second husband to cancer and was married to her third husband then) speak year ago when I was still a teenager. When there was time for questions at the end, some poor soul raised her hand and timidly asked this stalwart saint some version of the following:

“I have a really hard time waking up early in the morning. I know I should to get started on the day, to pray, to read the Bible. But I don’t do it. Can you give me advice on how to do this?”

Ms. Elliot, without a smirk or any seeming intent at sarcasm, looked right at her and said (paraphrased…barely): “I’ll tell you what you do. When that alarm goes off, you take one foot and you put it off of the bed. Then you take the other foot and push it off of the bed. Then you pull your body into an upright position. Then you are awake.” I still smile to remember it, and I still feel a little bad for the girl who asked the questions. But what I remember is that this woman who had experienced so many difficult things in life was trying to express to this eager young soul that you don’t decide “I’m going to get up every day and have an hour of quiet time and an hour of exercise and I’m going to do that every day this year.” No, you put one foot down. You put another foot down. You focus on only the next thing that you must do and you don’t give yourself a choice.

With her own humility, Elliot writes about visiting her grown daughter, Valerie, who now had several children of her own. Valerie and her husband were taking the nursing baby and going away for a weekend and had asked Elliot if she would keep the other kids. After a full day of meeting the hundreds of little needs that young children have, Elliot tells of talking to her daughter on the phone that evening. After assuring her that everything was fine and her children were wonderful, Elliot asked her own daughter in wonder, “I keep thinking, ‘Valerie’s got the baby to nurse. That takes about six hours a day. How does she do it?’ So tell me, Val, how do you do it?”

Elliot describes her daughter laughing and saying, “I do what you told me years ago to do. Do the next thing. Don’t sit down and think of all the things that are involved in a task. Just pick up the next thing.”

And so, just as Elliot learned in the jungle with a baby and likely while in a thousand other difficult times in her life, she once more was reminded of the power of the next thing. And she extends that power to us. She asks, “What is the next thing for you to do? Small duties perhaps? Jobs that nobody will notice as long as you do them? A dirty job that you would get out of if you could have your own preference? Are you asked to take some great responsibility, which you really don’t feel qualified to do? You don’t have to do the whole thing right this minute, do you? … What is the next thing?'“

Throughout our marriage, both of my husband have had to admit time and again that we aren’t naturally great systems people. We get bogged down or frustrated or overwhelmed and can’t see our way from point A (for example, our house looking like a tornado swept through it) to point Z (a tidy home with everything in it’s place). It’s been many many times that we have one of us said to the other “I just need to do the next thing.” And each of knows the other is nodding to Elizabeth Elliot.

While this giant of the faith passed away in 2015, we will never forget her legacy. Her simple words (which she herself borrowed from a poem with no known author), “do the next thing” ring in my ear every time I start to feel that overwhelming urge to give up.

So, in homage to Elizabeth and as a daily reminder to myself, I had these little mugs made. Nothing glamorous or adorned. Straightforward and practical like Elizabeth Elliot herself, I hope these little items will help me remember to do my next thing every day.