Shortly after September 11, 2001, the news media began airing coverage of Martin and Gracia Burnham, a missionary pilot and his wife, who were abducted by Muslim terrorists with ties to Osama Bin Laden. The Burnhams remained hostages of the Abu Sayyoaf for more than a year, struggling to overcome constant fear, illness, and near-starvation. The seventeenth Military gun battle they endured left Martin dead and Gracia free at last.
Gracia returned to her home in Rose Hill, Kansas, where she has spent the last year rebuilding her life with her three children and carrying the mantle of her husband’s legacy. In a recent conversation with In Touch Magazine, she talked candidly about her spiritual journey during captivity and how that translates to her life now.
On May 27, 2001, Gracia and Martin – along with 18 other hostages – were seized at dawn from the resort where they were celebrating their wedding anniversary. They were forced by gunmen into a speedboat and whisked away with only the clothes on their backs. For the 377 days that followed, they trekked through a dense, hot jungle as the military attempting to rescue them strafed them with gunfire.
During her tenth week of captivity, Gracia made a critical decision that stabilized her throughout the remainder of her 53 weeks of perilous hardship. Angry and discouraged, she wrestled with God until her soul reached the conviction that she would let God be God and do whatever He wanted with her life. “Life’s not all about me getting my way; it’s about Him getting His way,” she says. “We can fight it, or we can go with it and make the best of it. I decided that I was gonna believe God was good, no matter what.”
As the weeks rolled into months, her captors beheaded three male hostages, forced marriage upon four women in the group, and opened fire on a village, killing many of its civilians. Aside from the terrorism she endured, dysentery, hunger, and oozing blisters became daily afflictions for Gracia. She fought her discouragement with prayer, always seeking to find the Lord’s purpose for her life. “It seemed like God would answer every prayer but to get us out of there. So I started asking God for a hamburger, because that would mean I was out of there,” she recalls. “In a very unusual way, God got us out of the jungle for 24 hours, and I got my hamburger; and then we went right back in. I think it’s then that Martin and I saw that truly God can do anything. God has the power to do anything. He could get us out of there if He wanted to. Very easily. This wasn’t a problem for God. He showed us very clearly that He could get me a hamburger. I think we realized that He wanted us in there for a reason. Our prayers really changed at that point – we just wanted God to be teaching us.”
After a harrowing year in captivity, only three hostages remained. Two were killed and Gracia was shot in the leg during a bungled rescue attempt. “When Martin died that day, I thought, ’Well, you know, we’ve been asking for an answer and here’s the answer. Now I go on,’” She says. “You forget those things that are behind you, and you press on for the prize.”
When she returned to America, Gracia faced a barrage of questions from the news media. One of the most frequently asked is, “Do you ever just sit down and say, ‘Why me, God?’” She responds to this query with questions of her own. “The first time someone asked me that when I got out, I said, ‘You know what? I have those thoughts all the time, But it’s “Why me God? Why did you choose for me to be born in America where I hear about you, where I have a loving family, where we have plenty to eat, where I can make a choice of my career? Why did I have beautiful children that are healthy? Why do I have a place to live when there are some people who live in a little cardboard box somewhere? If I write down the bad things that have happened to me in my life, there’s very, very few. One of them lasted quite a long time. But when I write down the good things God’s done for me, my goodness! You just go on and on and on. You just fill page after page after page after page.’ That’s what I say to people. ‘Why me, God? Why have you blessed me so totally?’
“When a bad thing comes along, why do we expect a perfect life? I don’t know. Why do we think that nothing bad is supposed to happen to us? Is that something that someone has told us is supposed to happen? Scripture never says that. The servant is never greater than his lord. And look at what Christ suffered. People hated Him. People misunderstood Him. Bad things happened to Him.”
The strength and clarity of vision Gracia gained during her captivity are evident in her graceful demeanor and humble outlook on life. Her children will attest to that. “I’m much more, I think ‘lenient’ is the word. If somebody’s bed doesn’t get made, how does that effect eternity? I guess it doesn’t, you know. Just have a messy bed. If you don’t get somewhere on time, well, you didn’t get there on time. I’m just more lenient and not so hard on myself. And I know that kids have to have discipline and that you have to get to your job on time or you’re gonna lose it. I know all those things, but I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to perform and to be perfect. The Lord calls us to keep our hearts right with Him. He doesn’t call us to have a perfect home and perfect kids. He calls us to have a perfect heart.”
That grace extends to her theology as well. “I’m just not dogmatic about things the way I used to be. I am choosing to believe that God’s good. I’m choosing to believe that Jesus is who He said He was. I’m choosing to believe that He died and three days later, He rose from the grave. I’ve rethought my faith from start to finish. I think back to when Jesus told the disciples some things that were hard for them to understand. Jesus asked, ‘Do you believe this?’ One of the disciples said, ‘Yeah, were else could we turn? You have the words of eternal life, and if we didn’t believe this, what else would we believe?’”
While her belief is a choice, Gracia’s faith is supported with solid evidence. “The Lord gave us the strength to go through that,” she says. “I believe the Lord did it. I certainly don’t think Mohammed did it. I don’t think I drummed it up within myself.” When Gracia was in the jungle, the strain of her ordeal exposed flaws in her personality that she never imagined existed. “I saw myself as I really am – I saw sinful man. When you take everything away from a person, you see what a person really is. I didn’t want to believe that that Gracia even existed. I wanted to think I was a better person than I was seeing. I didn’t drum up the peace God gave me because it didn’t come from me. I certainly saw the Holy Spirit work it Martin’s life.”
The same strength that sustained her in the jungle upholds Gracia today as she works to raise her children alone and to move ahead. Although she has a support group, she struggles with loneliness and the weight of her new responsibilities. “Just like everybody, I wonder if I have the strength to do what’s on my schedule,” she says. “Everybody faces that. I don’t see that there’s a lot of strength in me. I think the Lord grants me the strength I need every day.” To other single mothers, she says, “Just go one day at a time. Trust that Lord for each day. That’s what we did in the jungle, and it’s a jungle out here too.”
Gracia’s objective in life now is to be a channel for giving. The Martin and Gracia Burnham Foundation supports missions aviation and work in Muslim communities.
“I think of people that have been persecuted totally because of their faith in the Lord Jesus and that won’t back down,” she says. “They won’t stop doing what they feel God has called them to do, and they have lost their lives over it. Those people have families, communities, and churches – I would love to be a help with the persecuted church.”
A conduit of God’s grace to others, Gracia lives up to the origin of her name. “Martin’s spiritual gift was giving,” she says. “I used to just watch him give, and I loved it. No matter how much or how little we had, he was always giving to the lord’s work over and abundantly. One of our friends that has known Martin since he was young said, ‘I just think that’s neat that you’ve got a foundation, because Martin’s giving is living on.” That’s comforting.”
Would you like to have the power of the Holy Spirit in your life? Why don’t you pray the prayer below, and ask the Lord to fill you with His Holy Spirit.
Father, I need you. I acknowledge that I have sinned against you by directing my own life. I thank you that You have forgiven my sins through Christ’s death on the cross for me. I now invite Christ to again take His place on the throne of my life. Fill me with the Holy Spirit as You commanded me to be filled, and as You promised in Your Word that You would do if I asked in faith. I pray this in the name of Jesus. As an expression of my faith, I thank You for directing my life and for filling me with the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“A Work of Grace” by Tonya Stoneman appeared in In Touch magazine, August 2003. Copyright 2003 IN TOUCH MINISTRIES. P.O. Box 7900, Atlanta, GA 30357. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
