About Joni Eareckson Tada

Joni Eareckson Tada, the founder and chief executive officer of Joni and Friends International Disability Center, is an international advocate for people with disabilities.

A diving accident in 1967 left Joni Eareckson, then 17, a quadriplegic in a wheelchair. After two years of rehabilitation, she emerged with new skills and a fresh determination to help others in similar situations. She founded Joni and Friends in 1979 to provide Christ-centered programs to special-needs families, as well as training to churches. Joni and Friends serves thousands of special-needs families through Family Retreats, and has delivered over 100,000 wheelchairs and Bibles to needy disabled persons in developing nations.

Joni’s lifelong passion is to bring the Gospel to the world’s one billion people with disabilities. Joni survived stage 3 breast cancer in 2010, yet keeps a very active ministry schedule. She and her husband Ken were married in 1982 and reside in Calabasas, California.

Every New Day For Joni Eareckson Tada

“Well, I’m coming up on forty-seven years and I tell you, Michael, I’m not going to believe the lie that I’m too old or too disabled to do this. So I’m going to believe that despite the pain, despite the challenges of just getting me up in the morning in a wheelchair, I can do this. I can do this!

And Michael, I was so grateful, to sense this, I don’t know how you put it. It was just a wave of fresh grace entering my heart. It is just amazing to me constantly how prayer is such a means of grace that when we pray unceasingly here, there and everywhere, long prayers, short prayers, on the spot, on the moments intercessions, or petitions, God uses this as an incredible means of grace.”

Why Joni Eareckson Tada Stopped Painting

“It’s just been a little too hard, too challenging, for me to wheel up to my easel, park the brakes and twist my neck this way, and that, and  lean to the left to the right, just to make all these exacting brush strokes. I realized somewhere along the line that probably, all those many years of painting and the many years that I drove my own van, I know that sounds crazy, but, yes quadriplegics can drive. The van did not have a steering wheel, but that’s another story. But all the years I was twisting and leaning over to steer and brake the van, and even to manage my brush strokes at the art easel, it was doing pretty significant damage to my spine.”

How Joni Eareckson Tada’s Experience of Pain Changed Over Time

“I don’t know the answer to that. All I know is that for thirty years, I had no pain. If I were to close my eyes, I could of imagined that below my neck, I was just sitting on blocks of concrete. That’s what it just felt like. I felt like my body was a big block of concrete. But as soon as I crested fifty years of age, and forgive my immodesty, I went through menopause.

Oh my goodness! Suddenly, I began experiencing searing pain in my hip and lower back and my shoulders. I still insist that that menopause had something to do with it, but doctors say, “No, It’s just an anomaly of spinal cord injury quadriplegia.” As spinal cord quadriplegics get older, they just have an increasing level of this inside kind of pain.

I wish there was a drug for it. But no medication can really touch this. It is a strange anomaly. It is  connected only with spinal cord injuries. So, for me its just a matter of taking deep breaths, deep breathing, stretching, drinking lots of water, making certain I’m sitting up properly, getting good rest, eating right, taking anti inflammatories. Anything I can do to live well and lean hard on the grace of God.”

Being Like Christ in Suffering

“Michael, I cannot tell you how often I think of that verse. And it touches me deeply, that my Saviour, Jesus, dying on the cross going through unthinkable, unbearable, excruciating pain, even while He was on “His deathbed” He’s reaching out to others. Jesus is ministering to the thief dying next to Him on the cross. He’s counseling His mother. He’s advising His best friend, the apostle John, at the foot of the cross. At His greatest point of need, crushing, bruising need, He’s thinking of others. That’s the example you talked about in I Peter chapter two.

That’s the example, that we are to follow. It’s sets a high bar, but you know what, the Holy Spirit resides within us to give us strength, to give us courage, to give us the enablement, the divine functioning needed to follow in Jesus steps. I keep thinking, Michael, of that rich welcome the Bible speaks of. One day we will enjoy a rich welcome into heaven, and I want to do all I can down here on earth to enlarge my eternal estate.

I mean sometimes my days, my days, are miserable. They’re just, knock my head on the wall, I can’t stand living like this and when I start thinking that way, it’s so real, it’s so honest, it’s so human, I remember that if I persevere, I am enlarging my eternal estate. I’m increasing my capacity for worship, and service and joy in heaven and the finish line isn’t all that far away. Oh my goodness! I can almost hear the cheering crowds in the grandstands of heaven. I know that’s what spurs me on and I hope that’s what spurs my friends on who are listening.”

How Joni Eareckson Tada Makes it Through The Day

“Well there are many days, and perhaps your listeners have heard me say this, but it bears repeating. There are so many days, Michael, my head is on the pillow, my eyes are closed, and I’m already either winning or losing, the battle for the day with my eyes closed. I’m thinking about what’s ahead: the appointments, the expectations, the routines, and it just feels overwhelming before I’ve even open my eyes. So before I do open them, I pray, Lord Jesus, I have no strength for this day. I can’t stand the thought of another bedbath, more toileting routines, someone giving my legs range of motion exercises, giving me a bed bath, strapping on my corset, putting on my leg bag, putting on my support hose, pulling on my slacks, flinging me into a wheelchair, pushing me to the bathroom, brushing my teeth, brushing my hair, ahhhh.

‘God, I am so overwhelmed with this routine, and it hasn’t even started. I have no strength for it. But, Lord Jesus, you do. You have the energy. You have the resources. Would you please get up for me this morning, because I cannot do it. Just fill this instrument, this weak vessel with your power, and your prospective. When my girlfriend comes in this bedroom to start this routine, to get me up, may I welcome her with a smile. Give me your courage for the day.”

God’s Gift to Joni Each Day

“And you know what, by 7:30 in the morning, when the routine starts, I do have a smile sent straight from heaven. But, I tell you what! It does not come easy. It is rigorous, rugged, hard fought for, hard won, but I think that’s the Christian way to begin a day. God forbid, I should be the kind of person who would hit the alarm, throw back the covers, jump out of bed, take a quick shower, scarf down breakfast, give God a “tip of a hat” quiet time, and then zoom out the front door on automatic cruise control. Too many Christians live that way. I don’t think that’s the Christian way to wake up. You got to wake up needing Jesus desperately.”

We Are Not Meant to Suffer Alone

“Well I think the insidious thing about suffering, is that it demands to have a man alone. It’s just like sin in that regard. It demands to have you alone. But God never intended for any of us to suffer alone. As you were reading, Michael, that passage, I kept thinking how as we shared today, our struggles, and yet our victories, theses wonderful anchors from God’s Word, we’re not alone.

They’re a lot of people listening to us who are feeling overburdened by the twenty four seven, non stop, day to day, routines that are just wearing them down from pain, or a difficult family situation, perhaps caring for someone with a disability in the family, maybe a child or an elderly parent. People are gaining strength. They are being built up. They are enriched and encouraged by these wonderful Scriptural anchors that we share. Yes, the sufferings of Christ come to us in abundance, but so does God’s comfort.

I think if we can just break beyond the prison walls of silence and share our heartfelt needs and our weaknesses and just tell a close intimate friend, “I can’t do this anymore. I need you to pray for me.” That friend could very well be the means of grace through which God will pour out his enablement upon you. So, I think one way to put shoe leather on it is to call up a friend. Confess your weaknesses, describe your propensity to become bitter against God when the pain seems overwhelming, ask for help. These are all good ways to create spiritual community around yourself when you’re feeling so alone in the midst of your suffering.”

Alone, Yet Not Alone

“I should say it was last year around this time, that I was at the same National News Broadcast Convention in Nashville, and I was the main speaker for the closing banquet and in my message, I wove hymns of the faith in and out of my points. I would speak a little and then I would sing a hymn to illustrate the point I had just made. After singing seven or eight hymns in this speech, friends came up to me. I learned later on that they were connected with the production of the movie, Alone, Yet Not Alone.

They asked if I would be willing to record the theme song of their movie of the same name. And my first honest to goodness response to them was, “Are you sure you don’t want Amy Grant? She’s a singer. I don’t make a career of it. I’m a disability advocate. I’m not a professionally trained vocalist.” They were insistent. They said, “No, the fact that I was in this wheelchair, they would give credence and depth to the performance of that song.” Well they weren’t kidding, because I agreed to do it and last fall I was in a little studio in Santa Monica, California, and I needed God’s strength singing that song. My husband had to, Oh, he had to push on my diaphragm to help me get enough lung power to hit the high notes, at least on somewhat good pitch.”

A Picture of God Moving

“I didn’t realize it at the time, but there was a video camera. They were videotaping this song and then it ends up on youtube and people actually have a chance to observe, how desperately hard I am leaning on God and my husband and on prayer to perform this song. When I listened to it after it was finished, I thought, Michael, “That’s not me. Is that my voice?” Oh, my goodness. I felt that the Lord somehow in some way, must have graced, must have anointed that ballad in a very personal way during that recording session. Because it certainly was listened to by a great many people, not the least of which is a lot of people in the Academy of Motion Picture, Arts, and Sciences, who voted for the song to be nominated an Oscar, which to me was quite an honor.”

Ready for Part II? Listen now.