The Writer’s Legacy

The word legacy isn’t a word most of us think about on a daily basis. Writers are a little different in that regard. We think about these things more often. We want to leave something behind. We want to be remembered. We want to leave the world better than we found it. But even for the creative soul, legacy often floats on the edges of our day-to-day life. There but in a very ethereal, hard to touch kind of way.

Most of the time, we’re just trying to get through the Friday before us. Survive our schedule. Mold life into something we can live with. Be productive. Be happy. Enjoy the journey. Maybe just get through the stack of homework languishing in our bags. 

But every now and then something happens and the word legacy feels closer than it did the day before. At least that’s how it works with me.

This week one of my heroes passed away. I’d never met Elisabeth Elliot, but her life touched mine in a profound way. When I was a teenager–your age, probably–I read her book, Through Gates of Splendor. It’s the true story of her experiences reaching out to the Auca Indians of Ecuador. Experiences that included the brutal death of her husband and four others. 

When I opened the book, I thought I knew what I was going to read. A true account, sure, but one that would inspire me to do as she had done. I so wanted to mirror her legacy.

But the pages of her writing brought me something else. They brought me reality. This woman’s life was not easy. It wasn’t some fairy tale experience in another country. It was bloody and lonely and full of the kind of sacrifice I can’t even force myself to consider. And instead of being inspired to live like she did, I found myself honestly counting the cost of leaving behind such a legacy.

It was a surreal experience. But one that has never left me. And though my life has not taken me where hers took her, the journey she walked continues to inspire mine. Because even if I’ll never be as brave as she was, I want to be. I want to live with that kind of passion. She and I have many, many differences, but we do have something in common. 

We’re both writers. By my count, Elisabeth Elliot penned more than twenty books in her lifetime. Just this week I read that she toyed around with poetry as well. She was a writer, like you and me, but that’s not what we remember most about her. We remember that she lived. She fought. She suffered. She inspired. She took very seriously the path that was laid before her. And because she did, her life left behind ripples that will continue into eternity.

That’s what I want. I want to write stories. I want those to matter. But our legacies should be about more than what we put on the page. It should be about how we lived, who we touched. And when a person of such passion leaves this world, we’re reminded that this life is a temporal one. If we live it the way it’s meant to be lived, if we tackle the journey before us, maybe, just maybe, our lives will leave the kind of ripples Elisabeth Elliot’s did.