Sam Wellman - Amy Carmichael: Selfless Servant of India

1998 by Sam Wellman

Print ISBN 978-1-61626-908-1

eBook Editions:
Adobe Digital Edition (.epub) 978-1-62029-644-8
Kindle and MobiPocket Edition (.prc) 978-1-62029-643-1

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All scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Cover illustration: Greg Copeland
Cover design: Kirk DouPonce

Published by Barbour Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683, www.barbourbooks.com

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Printed in the United States of America.

Steady there, girl, murmured twelve-year-old Amy Beatrice Carmichael one summer day in 1880 along the Irish Sea.

She patted her ponys sweaty neck. Its barreled sides were heaving. Although most of the shore was rocky, Amy knew the soft spots well. She had ridden the small animal hard through the sandy patches. She surveyed the rubble-strewn shore to make sure Norman and Ernest werent lurking about. They could be ornery to be sure, especially when trying to even the score with Amy for some delicious trick she had pulled on them. They knew Fanny was a frisky pony who had thrown Amy more than once when startled. Confident that her two younger brothers were not nearby, Amy dismounted.

Nice filly, she said soothingly.

Amy loved animals, and as she grew older, Amy found herself returning more often to the beach to ride. While the pony rested, Amy examined the tidal pools. The shoreline seemed to be Gods creation in the raw: plants, which her father said were really animals, clung to the rocks and swayed in the surging surf; stalk-eyed crabs skittered in the shallow pools left by the retreating tide; mute, blind, deaf clams sent their bubbling breath to the surface of the sand. All these creatures thrived in a sea that appeared chaotic from the distance but on close inspection was clear and teeming with life. As the ocean ebbed and flowed, the creatures moved endlessly to and fro, only to eventually pass out of existence. Could such exquisite creatures be accidents?

Thats too silly! snapped Amy.

She brushed aside the heavy thoughts and watched with rapt attention as a snail oozed across an open space between the rocks. Its helical shell seemed a royal design. Yes, how Amy loved animals. At home she had cleared her dollhouse of the insipid, rosy-cheeked, glassy-eyed dolls, replacing them with beetles and crickets. She had substituted moss and rocks for the tiny chairs and beds that furnished no comfort to her insects. A mouse or a toad would have been a nice addition, but Amy knew that her nursemaid, Bessie, would complain to Mother.

AMY STUDIED THE ENDLESS SEA. THE SEA WAS SO PEACEFUL WHEN IT WAS BLUE.

Amy studied the endless sea. She loved the color blue. The sea was so peaceful when it was blue. She remembered watching the sea from her nursery window on the second floor of the old house, when she must have been three years old. A green sea was an angry sea. A gray sea was an anxious sea. But a blue sea was peaceful. The sky was peaceful, too, when it was blue. She had told Norman her great discovery about colors, but he had merely burbled in his crib.

To think the little wretch has blue eyes!

She had prayed for blue eyes. Please come and sit with me, she had said to Jesus as she did every night, smoothing a place on the sheet beside her. Welcoming Jesus into her bed was her very first memory. One night when she was young, she had asked Jesus for blue eyes. Mother had said that Jesus hears our prayers and answers them. But no, in her mirror the next morning her eyes remained brown as dirt. Later, much later, she wrote:

Where, O where

Could the blue eyes be? Not there;

Jesus hadnt answered.

Hadnt answered her at all;

Never more

Could she pray; her eyes were brown

As before.

Did a little soft wind blow?

Came a whisper soft and low,

Jesus answered. He said, No

Like a bright ray of the sun on a gloomy day she had realized His answer was No. That didnt make it any less disappointing. Her mother had eyes as blue as forget-me-nots. So did her brother. Maybe that disappointment explained her peculiar torment of him. For she would pinch him until the tears glistened in his angry eyes.

Lord, forgive me, said Amy, remembering, but the pain caused the most gorgeous sapphire blue!

She glanced over at the great mill that sat near a creek that emptied into the sea. There was a second mill half a mile upstream on the same creek. The stream had been dammed just beyond the second mill, creating a pool of slack water. How well she knew that murky vastness. Her father had tied a rope around her waist and held the other end as Amy thrashed about in water that felt as unyielding as a slurry of concrete. But eventually she began to swim. Or at least she could dog-paddle to safety in an emergency. Norman and Ernest passed the same ordeal. And so it was with every Carmichael child. Of course, the sea was quite a different challenge. Once, Amy and her brothers were rowing a small boat in the long tidal channel near Portaberry, where Grandmother Filson lived. The current caught the boat and swept it toward the open sea. Amy began to beseech God with a hymn:

He leadeth me, O blessed thought,

O words with heavenly comfort fraught;

Whateer I do, whereer I be,

Still tis Gods hand that leadeth me!

LIFE SEEMED LOST, THEN FOUND AGAIN, AND AMY WOULD NEVER FORGET LOOKING DEATH IN THE FACE.

Frightened, Norman and Ernest joined in at the top of their lungs as their small arms cranked the oars against the current. Just as the rowboat seemed destined to cross the bar into the open sea, a coastguard lifeboat rescued them. God had surely answered Amys plea. Life seemed lost, then found again, and Amy would never forget looking death in the face. But it was a good thing Norman and Ernest quickly forgot their brushes with death with their brash older sister, or else they might not be so willing to follow me in my next adventure, she admitted.

In the middle of the reservoir at the mill where Amy learned to swim was a tiny one-tree island. This rather insignificant feature gave her home village its name: Millisle. The mills were very old, first bought by James Carmichael, Amys ancestor, in 1705. James was from Ayr, in southwest Scotland. He was a staunch Presbyterian, too, one of those Scots who defied the English kings who wanted to shove the Church of England down their throats. It was no surprise that the Carmichaels had crossed the Irish Sea to practice their faith in northern Ireland.