inContext Joni Eareckson Tada Interview

Johnny you've been sitting in a wheelchair 50 years makes me sound so old five decades of paralysis quadriplegia that's a long time I took that dive into shallow water when I was 17 and broke my neck that left me without using my hands or my legs and lung issues kidney issues all those sorts of things and God's been so gracious you say that's so easy well the other day I was reading in first Peter chapter 5 verse 10 came across it it's a passage I read so many times but this time when I read it the word stuck out after you have suffered quote a little while after suffering a little while the God of all Grace will himself what confirm restore establish you and when I read that I thought my goodness it really does feel just like a little wall Michael let me read it after you suffered for a little while the God of all grace not a little bit of all Grace who called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself perfect confirm strengthen and establish you I love that part the old Grace you're right not just a little bit oh I'll take it all Jesus I need it all I desperately need it all and I think I don't know but maybe when we finally learn to just go to him every morning and say I need you I can't do this quadriplegic but I can do through all things through you maybe maybe when we get a tune into his grace maybe when we step into the shower of his mercy maybe maybe when we live in him day by day moment by hour by hour that's when our suffering as we look back begins to feel like just a little while because honestly Michael I cannot recall the horror and the and the horrible anguish of those early days but but when you tell your story so many times which I almost hate to have you relive it and retell it but when you're in the Stryker frame when those long agonizing nights when you're alone when you're wondering where is God that's got a haunt you at some it it used to haunt me but 50 years that's a long time let me show you the sketch that I drew when I was in occupational therapy I learned how to write and type and hold brushes and charcoal pencils between my teeth and and this is the sketch I drew it's a it's a face that says oh god this is now my life I got to do this you expect me to do this even though I was trusting God incrementally I was still depressed for the longest of times took many years I think what five six seven one was 10 years for me to just find my find my way up out of that miry pit and and finally hold on to God desperately each and every day was there a turning point like a defining moment you can say okay I'm not going to live with this suffering miserable attitude I'm gonna well I'd tell this story a lot but it's it's it's so sweet it's so precious to me I can't tell her without tearing up my my friends who were praying for me and opening up the Bible to me and supporting me and you know just surrounding me and trying to cheer me on through all this they were only teenagers themselves but one night Friday night it was late they came to my house and they had this idea that we go go downtown to Baltimore City to the old Pennsylvania railway station and and sing because they knew I was in high school choir and and they liked to sing as well so we piled into the Camaro race downtown Lebanon o'clock at night we tumble out onto this this huge beautiful railway station with vaulted ceilings and marble columns and travertine floor and and there was hardly anybody there may be a few sailors waiting for a train a guy pushing a mop and we found this little corner we started singing and the harmonies were so beautiful and finally an officious looking guard comes walking over and looks at our little group and says you kids you shouldn't be loitering here you get out of here right now it's 11 p.m. you get out of here and then he pointed to me and say I knew you in that wheelchair put it back where you found it right now I said but Sir it's my wheelchair don't give any lip you put it back with found it and I said sir it's my wheelchair and everybody was laughing so hard and he felt embarrassed but still he kind of shoot us out the door and we laughed all the way home and I had left it a long time and when I when I was lifted out of my wheelchair that night and put in bed one of my friends stayed and said Johnny I just want you to know that really spoke to me because it's the first time I heard you call it my wheelchair and I think that was a turning point record call it my suffering I'm even when I went through cancer some years ago it's my cancer I'm gonna own this I'm gonna want to wrestle with it I'm gonna be like Jacob I'm gonna grab it and I'm gonna be you wrestle listening to the ground God you know bless me through this and I'm not gonna turn my back on it or try to ignore it or escape it or drug it or you know I'm just gonna walk into it and somehow find God in it and I think when I called it my wheelchair is when it became the suffering that God changed me in and he's still changing me so let's fast forward a little bit you define it now it's mine you own it you know you're not gonna get better better you've been to Kathryn Kuhlman you've been to healing seminars you've gone you've been cordoned off out of the range of the cameras mmm walk us through a little bit of the emotion of what your relationship with Christ is like when you train that pace not going this is now the new reality up until then I'd been imagining my Christian life you know how some people we Christians we we imagine it weird such a imaginary society you can imagine anything and do it nowadays everything is virtual and and I think I was imagining my Christian life I was imagining I had a great life of Prayer oh I love to pray I would say what do you mean you'd love to pray oh I share Christ regularly do you oh I love reading my Bible really and I think my disability is what what Papa hot air balloon bubble of my fantasy about my Christian life and I began to see that my goodness when you sign up at the army of Christ there's no fine print in the contract you're gonna you're gonna die you're gonna die to self die do you want some wishes you're gonna pick up that cross daily God tells you and you want to follow Jesus down the long bloody painful road to Calvary not to say it's not laced with joy but it's certainly not the kind of joy that you knew before the bubble burst this is a different kind of joy when you walk down that path this is joy that is so out of this world Heaven Sent the kind of joy that you fight for every day that is that is so deep and powerful and profound and glad and happy to go through anything Michael I was lying in bed the other night and I was at such pain and I was so darn happy how can you do that how can you I don't know it can tell me how to do that oh yeah seriously though you and I know people that live in chronic pain yeah with far less disability than you experienced and they don't have joy they grind their teeth they're miserable they're bitter they're sullen you spend a ton of your time trying to encourage those folks I do and sometimes it's very tough because we get this mindset that we've got to complain we've got a grumble we've got to not only we tell ourselves how hard it is but everybody else around us but I think verses like 1st Thessalonians 5:18 are so useful and everything give thanks that's a good place to begin it's small but did you start there yeah I did ok but not big I started small I remember when my friend told me this I said you got to be kidding I'm not thankful for this wheelchair and he said we don't have to be thankful give thanks I cannot do that I'd be a liar I'd be a hypocrite if I did that he said start small just find something anything for which you can give thanks do something physical mouthed the words and it'll begin informing and instructing your spirit because you're not being a hypocrite you're not doing something that's false you're you're doing the best you can to get yourself under the shower of God's mercy and say help me Jesus I'm gonna start I'm gonna obey I'm gonna trust in little tiny bits and I'm gonna believe that somehow is you're gonna give me the emotion one of these days of being actually thankful and he does he's a God of great reward he is our very great reward and thus God of gratitude I'm convinced as the one who well one day give my friends who are still struggling with chronic pain and being so growling about it it'll get them a spirit of thank you I can do this you and I have a passage that we have shared often out of second Corinthians where Paul writes blesses the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ the father of mercies the God of all comfort we like that part let's just stop Friday right who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God for just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance so also our comfort and abundance through Christ but if we're afflicted it's for your comfort and salvation or if we're comforted it is for your comfort which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer and our hope for you is firmly grounded knowing that as you are sharers of our suffering so also you are sharers of our comfort week it's been Wow a month talking about that but one of the things that I find so remarkable about you and Ken is that not only do you deal with chronic pain and cancer and pressure sores and and and and and you seem to transcend that and focus on comforting others and talking those I mean your celebrity for crying out loud well I comfort others because for one thing it is a great distraction you off my own pain you know you know let's talk about other people's pain for a while is let's get my focus off myself and how can I serve you how can I help you and I think the best model for us is the Lord Jesus I mean even when he was on his deathbed on the cross you know they hang him there like meat on a hook and he NE and he's helping this guy crucified next to him he's ministering to Kami's he's connecting with him and showing him the way and that's such a model for us first Peter chapter 2 verse 21 Christ suffered for you leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps that's my example if Jesus could minister to others and serve others and comfort others on his own deathbed still on the cross and I can tell a quadriplegic who's bedridden who is on a ventilator you can you can courage others you can do it you got this computer right by your bedside you got mouth connections with it you can do voice activation dictate write some notes of encouragement do that it'll do a world of good for your soul I mean it and it does we can comfort anybody at any I love that word any trial any affliction and I think it makes the body of Christ stronger it makes the community of those who enjoy common grace stronger and it certainly does our soul world of good you have talked about the fellowship of suffering hmm explain how you think through what it means that somehow our sufferings are Christ's sufferings and we have this intimacy this fellowship with him and suffering I'm nowhere near the inner sanctum of fellowshiping and in his sufferings nowhere near it but the world is skeptical and cynical and they're just waiting for some Christian to actually act like they have joy in the midst of their Payne because then that but raises the question why I mean it's surely what is the the seed of the church when martyrs shed their blood why should it be the seed of the church when other skeptics look at us in an unbelieving world and say why how could they have died with with a smile on their face how can you live with a smile on your face sometimes and I know you understand this Michael dying would be so much preferable you know for me to live is Christ yes but to die oh my goodness would be such game you tell the story in the book that you and Ken crafted about seeing this guy a few rows down with this dark shocking black hair you have a thing for guys with dark hair I was I was sitting in church one morning I was single I was in my early 30s I was enjoying life and I was bored with the sermon that day and I'm thinking I can't sit here being bored I got to do something that honors God okay so I'll pray so my eyes fell on the back of this man's head and I didn't know who he was but I felt strangely compelled to pray for him and I did through the balance of that boring sermon all the way up till the benediction I almost wheeled up to this man for whom I had prayed for 20-30 minutes and introduced myself but I thought that would look a little odd then we have to be introduced to mutual friends and the first thing I said to Ken tada but I met him was let me sit back your head I prayed for you you thought that was a little strange but you and Ken get married interesting romance interesting dating courtship give us a couple of slices of what that's like be on the honeymoon there's some things that don't go the way you intend what absolutely I don't think either of us reckoned how hard marriage would be and then you had a quadriplegia to the mix and it gets even harder and I remember about two or three years into our marriage I had plenty of help you know girls getting me up in the morning but still most of the burden fell on my husband and and I'm button by the way that's a two-hour process in the morning and into our process and evening every day so you know Ken he's you know washing dishes he's getting us dinner putting my spoon in my splint so I can feed myself and then he cleans up and helps me to bed with my girlfriend and you know she takes me and makeup off or whatever but still so he's kind of let stuff do and one night he sat on the edge of the bed and before lights out he just put his hand on his knees slum shoulder and shook his head and said I got Johnny eyes I wanted to tell you this but I I feel trapped I am right I feel awful and I feel trapped and my response where was your head when we got married don't you know what's gonna be this hard you think you feel trapped I think I feel I'm in this thing for so many years what do you think I feel I feel trapped - hmm as I'm saying these words I'm just wishing I stuff them back in my mouth because I know but I'm wounding this man who has taken a moment to be vulnerable and what have I done with it ripped him to shreds and I said to Ken I am so sorry I am so sorry that's not me that's not me at all but that night as I was in bed and the quiet the Holy Spirit whispered to me that's just like you that's you to the core don't be fooling yourself that's you and it was such a shock to hear that because aren't we all the Paragons our virtue that we'd like to think we are and it was then began a journey of me understanding that my disability was God's main way I think his main purpose for my disability was to squeeze it hard to reveal the stuff of which I'm actually made you know suffering is the textbook that'll teach you who you really are so get your eyes off your husband for a little bit and see how rotten to the core you are and how trapped by sin and bitterness and complaining and grumbling and murmuring you are and and I started praying together we started and I don't mean just over grace or at night before we went to bed I mean praying together you know getting in the car and going to visit a friend said when we pray together you know we just started this app we started reading the Bible together we started just going through the Bible every year year after year and there there came another time when I had cancer and I it was hard chemotherapy going to the hospital lots of doctor appointments bone scans x-rays PET scans and and one night he sat on the edge of pipetted and with his hands on his knees slump shouldered confessed I Johnny I can't do this we even have lots of help but man I just can't do it I feel trapped this time my response I don't believe it if I were you I feel just as trapped I probably feel more trapped but I think you're doing an amazing job I'm so proud of you I think you were doing awesome and I want to make it as easy on you as I possibly can I'm gonna buckle down we'll find new help we'll get more prayer support but we're gonna get through this canvas we can do this in Christ I know we can and I love you and I thank you for being honest but I don't blame you at all for feeling trapped what a contrast you know and it took a number of years to get there but I think that's what happens on a practical daily basis when there's no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us the life we now live in the flesh I live by faith in him by the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us it's not our response it's not our anger it's not all about us and our tract feelings and about him and it's a wonderful thing when you uh when you let him live through you and it makes for a incredibly rich happy marriage I love my husband dearly he still feels trapped and so do I sometimes but man we love each other talk to the discouraged hopeless friend out of ours what would you say to him he who holds fast to the end shall be saved you know if everything's not okay yet it's not the end yet but the end is coming and it's gonna look really really good look impaired all this stuff we go through oh what a glorious day that'll be

Channel: Joni and Friends

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Length: 20min 23sec (1223 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 02 2018