In the Presence of My Enemies by Gracia Burnham & Dean Merrill

Author:Gracia Burnham & Dean Merrill [Burnham, Gracia]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Biographies, RELIGION / Inspirational
ISBN: 9781414358680
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
Published: 2010-01-01T04:30:00+00:00

14

Wedding Time

(October–Mid-November 2001)

It was about this time that my ever alert husband, being mechanically inclined, discovered that his handcuffs didn’t stay shut anymore. Something had rusted through.

* * *

* * *

October 5

Abu Sayyaf defectors lead AFP troops to the remains of Guillermo Sobero.

* * *

* * *

We didn’t tell the Abu Sayyaf, obviously. We let them think they were locking him up securely every night. But in Martin’s mind, he knew he was free.

“What would people think,” he worried, “if they knew I could have escaped any time from here on, and I didn’t? Would they think I’m a coward?”

I just smiled and said, “They would know you were staying with your wife until the opportunity presented itself for both of us. And they’d respect you for that.”

Now in hindsight, I suppose there was one night when we maybe could have gotten away if we had really been on our toes. They put us in a farmer’s little shelter on the very edge of the camp. Right beside us was a big hill that went straight down to the ocean.

Could we have slipped out in the middle of the night, gotten down the hill without being noticed, and somehow fled to a town or army camp? It’s hard to say. Anyway, we were exhausted that night and went to bed as usual. We woke up the next morning and hadn’t given it a thought.

We always asked the Lord, “If there is an opportunity and you want us to try to escape, please make it clear to both of us, and give us the courage to act.” That time never came. We never sensed it was what we were supposed to do.

I do remember one conversation about the fact that I wasn’t guarded nearly as closely as Martin. “Maybe I should just go off for a walk and not come back,” I hypothesized. “You could follow me whenever you got the chance.” I wasn’t entirely serious about this, but it was something to mull over.

Not long after that, I stood up to go to the bathroom out in the woods. I ended up staying there for a while just to cry. It must have been half an hour before I returned.

Martin’s face was as white as a sheet. “I thought you were gone!” he exclaimed under his breath. And then he confessed, “In fact, I believed it so much . . . that I ate your share of the rice!”

We broke up laughing. But in that moment, I saw how afraid for me he was, and how we both needed to be careful not to do anything foolhardy.

Meanwhile, the daily dangers continued. The AFP was clearly on to our scent. One day the firepower jumped to a whole new level, beyond automatic rifles and artillery shells. Helicopter gunships with big machine guns blazing out the sides swarmed over our heads. What an ominous sound they made as they swooped down. Every pass seemed like it would mean our last breath.

And as

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