Though None Go With Me

by Jerry B. Jenkins

• ISBN13: 9780310243052
• ISBN10: 031024305X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-08-01
• Publisher: Zondervan

Summary

One woman's costly decision will touch a lifetime of hearts. Born at the turn of the century, Elisabeth Grace LeRoy longs for something more in her life. Something only an eternal love can offer. It is a love she encounters at last-one that promises to fill her passionate heart completely and that calls forth her utmost in return. In response, Elisabeth makes the commitment that will shape her entire life: a decision to follow Christ always, no matter the cost. So begins a remarkable love story-a legacy of faith that weaves together two world wars, the Great Depression, and deep personal sorrows as the dramatic background for displaying the courage, grace, joy, and far-reaching impact of a life lived truly and fully for God.

Excerpts

Though None Go with Me
Copyright © 2000 by Jerry B. Jenkins
Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530
ISBN-10: 0-310-24305-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-310-24305-2
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or
any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the
publisher.
Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard
Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920.
Interior design by Michelle Espinoza
Printed in the United States of America
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PART ONE
Apart from a healthy birth,” Elisabeth’s father had told her, “no
good news comes after dark.” He should have known. Tall and portly,
Dr. James LeRoy was Three Rivers’s most popular general practitioner.
Her own birth, on the first day of the new century, had come after
dark. Her father had told her the story so many times it was as if she
remembered being there. “Your mother went into labor so quickly
that I had to deliver you myself. I hadn’t planned to. I didn’t trust
my instincts over my emotions. Your mother was—”
“Vera!” Elisabeth blurted.
“Yes. She was young and frail and worked hard to produce you, a
healthy child. But her own vital signs—”
“She was sick.”
“Yes.”
“And what did you do, Daddy?”
“Hmm. I’m not sure I recall.”
“Yes, you do! The bundling part.”
“Oh, yes. I bundled you in a blanket and allowed you to exercise
your lungs in the parlor while I tried to save your mother.”
“Your wife.”
chapter one
He nodded. “I begged her not to leave me, not to leave us. All she
wanted was to talk about your middle name and her own epitaph. I
pleaded with her to save her strength.”
“And what did she want you to call me, Daddy?”
“We had settled on Elisabeth, after her own mother,” he said. “It
had seemed too soon to worry about a middle name.”
“But she thought of one.”
“Yes, sweetheart. ‘Call her Elisabeth Grace,’ she said, ‘after the grace
that is greater than all our sin.’ And on her tombstone—”
“I know, Daddy. It says, ‘My hope is in the cross.’”
“If I hear that story one more time, I’m going to vomit!” first-grade
classmate Frances Crawford hissed, shaking her ringlets. “All you talk
about is your dead mother.”
Breath rushed from Elisabeth, and her eyes stung. “Little girls
oughtn’t say ‘vomit,’” she managed. “Daddy says the proper word is
‘regurgitate,’ but at least say ‘throw up.’”
“‘Daddy says regurgicate,’” Frances mocked.
“Regurgitate,” Elisabeth corrected, but Frances skipped away. Elisabeth
pursued her. “You’re lucky you’ve got a mother!”
Frances stopped to face her. “Just quit bragging about your father
and quit bein’ so—so—churchy!”
This time when Frances ran off, Elisabeth let her go. Churchy? They
were in the same Sunday school class! But Elisabeth was churchy?
Three blocks from Dr. LeRoy’s rambling mansion on Hoffman
Street—not far from Bonnie Castle—the slender steeple of Three
Rivers Christ Church rose above the first ward. That pristine monolith,
old as the church itself, came to serve as a reminder of God’s presence
in Elisabeth’s life.
Her father had often recounted how she talked every day about
going to Christ Church. She toddled along to play in the nursery
when he attended Wednesday night prayer meetings, Sunday school,
and morning and evening services. “You skipped on the way to church
and tried to pull me along faster,” he said. “And once there, your eyes
shone at the little sanctuary, the pictures on the wall, and every nook
and cranny that seemed to offer something of God.”
Her father and his older, widowed sister, Agatha Erastus, raised Elisabeth.
Aunt Agatha did not share their love of the church. “I cannot
worship a god who would take my own daughter at birth and my husband
in the prime of his life,” she often told her brother in Elisabeth’s
hearing.
“You’re depriving yourself of God,” Dr. LeRoy said.
“Housework, cooking, and looking after your little one is more than
fair trade for food and shelter,” she said. “Getting scolded is not part
of the bargain.”
“I worry about you, Agatha,” he said. “That’s all.”
“Worry about yourself and your motherless child.”
“I thank God you’re here to help, but don’t be filling Elisabeth’s
head with—”
“You’d do well to not associate God with my coming here, and
when you start worrying about who’s filling your daughter’s head,
start with the man in the mirror. I saw the reply from the last missionaries
she tried to lecture.”
Elisabeth saw her father blanch. “I’ll thank you to keep out of my
mail,” he said. “Now I’d like to be alone a while.”
“What’s she talking about, Daddy?” Elisabeth said. “We heard back
from the missionaries?”
Her father hesitated. “Show her!” Agatha crowed. “You’re always
telling her honesty is the best policy. Show her the effect she had on
the missionaries.”
Dr. LeRoy waved his sister off, but Elisabeth followed her father
into his study and insisted on seeing the letter. He sighed and handed
it to her, but she could not read cursive writing. He read it to her.
“Dear Dr. LeRoy, my husband’s letter of thanks precedes this, so I
trust you know we’re grateful for every kindness from you and from the
church. I feel compelled, however, to exercise Matthew 18 and inform
you that the letter from your daughter, well intentioned though it may
have been, was offensive. For a six-year-old, and a girl at that, to take it
upon herself to counsel us and admonish us to remain strong and true
in our faith evidences naivete and impudence of the highest order . . .”
Her father had to explain what the words meant. “But I was just
trying to ’courage them,” she said, tears welling.
“I know,” Dr. LeRoy said, gathering her into his arms. “People just
don’t expect it from one as young as you.”
Elisabeth would be forever grateful for her father’s tutelage—prayer
upon waking, prayer before every meal, prayer at bedtime, memorizing
verses (thirty before she was five), and the recitation of the books
of the Bible. Her dour and sour aunt was Elisabeth’s first evangelistic
target. She prayed aloud at mealtime for Aunt Agatha’s soul, sang to

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Excerpted from Though None Go with Me by Jerry B. Jenkins
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