Defining Moments - Elizabeth Fry

1780–1845

“I fear that my life is slipping away to little purpose.”

So wrote Elizabeth Fry at the age of thirty-two, with six children and another on the way. (She would bear eleven in all.) Elizabeth had become a leader in her Quaker meeting, and she did charitable work when she could, sometimes teaching children in a London workhouse. Yet she was frustrated because there just wasn’t enough time to do everything she wanted to do. Maybe you know the feeling.

Fry would soon become famous as a prison reformer, but she didn’t know that yet. She was just struggling to get through each day. Fortunately for us, she kept a journal throughout her life.

“I am a bubble, without reason, without beauty of mind or person,” she wrote on her seventeenth birthday. “I am a fool. I daily fall lower in my own estimation. . . . I am now seventeen, and if some kind and great circumstance does not happen to me, I shall have my talents devoured by moth and rust.”

A teenager dealing with self-esteem issues is no great surprise. Yet long into her adulthood, Elizabeth seemed to struggle with the idea of what kind of person she would be. Shortly after getting married, she wrote about all the deeds she wanted to do, but “my good wishes and good endeavours are of short, very short duration.” She took an odd comfort in the fact that even the apostles couldn’t pray with Jesus for one hour.

In 1813, she heard a speaker issue a challenge for prison reform. London’s Newgate Prison had horrible conditions. Women were crowded there, often with their children, without beds or proper clothing. Elizabeth was moved to visit the prison, bringing clothes and clean straw (for bedding), but further ministry was delayed for a few years while she tended to her own children’s illnesses.

In 1817, Fry returned to prison ministry with a dedication and passion that would make a huge difference. Newgate was transformed. She testified in Parliament about prison conditions. Other prisons were improved. The Quaker homemaker was changing the world.

You don’t need to become famous for your good deeds. Maybe your calling involves home, family, or a job. But keep seeking God’s guidance to be the kind of person he wants you to be.

Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves.

Philippians 2:3