Joni Eareckson Tada Shares Her Story on Larry King Live: From Paralysis to Faith

you know i dream i dream a lot about walking tonight at 17 a diving accident left her quadriplegic too paralyzed to even act on suicidal urges and then a miracle she finds faith in god that's done so much more than help her survive and now she sees her tragedy as a blessing an inspirational hour with the remarkable johnny erickson tada next on larry king live great pleasure to welcome to larry king live tonight extraordinary lady johnny erickson tada at 17 a careless dive into shallow water left her a quadriplegic yet she's a best-selling author and artist her daily radio program received the radio program of the year award from the national religious broadcasters she's founder and president of johnny and friends you'll be seeing some of her extraordinary paintings through the show tonight and she paints with the brush in her teeth how did all this happen what happened to you you were 17 years old where was this well i was back in baltimore i just graduated from high school that's where you grew up that's right had my bags packed for college and where were you going to go western maryland college and i wanted to be a i wanted to be a physical therapist so i ended up getting into it on the wrong end i think ironic so my sister said hey let's go for a swim and i went down to the beach with her the chesapeake bay and there was a raft anchored not too far offshore swam out to it hoisted myself up onto it took a reckless dive into what i thought was deep water but i i my head hit the bottom it snapped my head back and crunched my fourth cervical vertebrae and i was underneath the water hoping that my sister kathy would notice that i hadn't surfaced from my die but she she was ready to step up onto the shore out of the shallow water and a crab bitter toe and she whirled around in the water to scream to meet johnny watch out for crabs and when when she turned around she saw my peroxide blonde hair i just nice and easied my hair the night before and it was kind of floating against the murky you know water and she saw that shock of blonde hair and she came swimming after me and pulled me up out of the water and i can't eat a crab salad sandwich this day without thanking god for those little critters were you uh conscious all the time yeah never lost consciousness no did you know something serious was wrong well i thought maybe i had stunned my self or i it all happened so quick but yet at the same time it felt so slow and when my sister pulled me up out of the water i was spittering and spattering and gasping for oxygen and i saw my arm slung over her shoulder and yet i couldn't feel it no pain no pain but then and there i knew something awful had happened because i felt as though my arm were somehow dismembered from my body and they whisked me off to the university of maryland hospital where i stayed for quite a long time what was the prognosis a broken what broken neck at the fourth fifth cervical level causing quadriplegia quadriplegia is is is being delusion right right just you can't use your hands or your legs i i can i have a little bit of shoulder muscles and pretty good biceps yeah um but that's about it so you can't move your fingers no but if you if you reached out and touched it yeah right it looks good it looks good and often i i i'll reach my arm out with what strength i have to welcome a handshake although i can't feel it sure does look good no feeling at all in the legs or no anyway so you have no if someone punch you in the stomach you wouldn't feel it for 37 years it's been a long time i've been paralyzed like this why are you johnny my dad wanted a boy and i was the last of four girls and uh before i even came out of my mommy's womb my had my father's name and so you are married to a mr tata for a long time right what does he do he's a retired um us government and history teacher and now he works at our ministry at johnny and friends and we travel to our family retreats to take wheelchairs around the world we do lots of fun things together did you ever expect to be married considering your physical situation oh my when i was in the hospital i thought this is it oh god my life's over i was depressed i was discouraged there were many nights i would wrench my head back and forth on the pillow violently hoping to break my neck up at a higher level i wanted to die i wanted to die or if one of these one of these times when they might set me up in one of those power jobs one of those nifty wheelchairs perhaps i could cream myself off some high curb and thereby break my neck up higher that way were you like planning it how i would do it if i got the chance well then i thought i'd only get brain injury would only make things worse so i decided one night lying there in the hospital i said god if i can't die please show me how to live because i don't like paralysis i don't i'm not prepared for this i i don't know anything about it this is not what i bargained for in life god if i can't die show me how to live and well shortly thereafter friends of mine came into the hospital with their bibles and they'd sit on the edge of my bed we were believing we were religious well you know i i went to church but i went to church but i tucked jesus away in the back hip pocket of my levi jeans and when i prayed it was like pulling the levers of a vending machine and and i vote yeah i thought god i thought i'd done god a great big favor by believing in him but so what happened when the friends came they would open up their bibles first they'd give me pizza or or winchell's doughnuts or they'd sit on the edge of the bed and they'd they'd um bring their guitars we'd watch ncaa football games they treated me like a person not a and then when they opened up their bibles they pretty much won the right to be heard so was it a slow then oh yeah and one of the first bible verses anybody ever gave me was out of the new testament first thessalonians 5 18 and it says there and everything give thanks for this is the will of god in christ jesus concerning you i should say what you you can't be serious i mean i i don't feel thankful for this no way and my friend said johnny wait a minute it doesn't say you got to feel thankful trusting god has nothing to do with trustful feelings it says give thanks and so take a step of faith and and do it how'd your family deal with all this your sisters your parents they were incredibly supportive i mean we were athletic hiking camping playing tennis and and for them it was as much of a shock as it was for me did you then become for one of a better word a kind of reborn a convert well i think up until that point following jesus christ for me was a religion but after my accident it became a warm deep personal relationship because the weaker i became the harder i had to lean on him but the harder i am the stronger i discovered him to be and and and honestly larry 37 years later don't be thinking i'm spiritually strong i'm no veteran at this paralysis thing i'm not a professional quadriplegic i wake up in the morning many times and i'll hear my girlfriend come into the front door and she'll be running water for coffee in the kitchen and i know she's going to come in my bedroom in a minute and she's going to give me a bed bath get me dressed sit me in a wheelchair brush my hair brush my teeth blow my nose okay one more time and there are times when i'm still having my eyes closed thinking god i have no strength for this i can't face this i can't i have no resources for this i have no smile for this woman but you do god you have strength you have resources can i please borrow your smile and and by the time my girlfriend comes through the door with that cup of coffee and a happy good morning i can give her a smile already hard fought for already um already won straight from heaven we'll be right back with this extraordinary lady find out why she thinks it's not her strength don't go away got me journey watch out for crabs johnny [Applause] it's okay i had never taken anybody out in a wheelchair before but i knew that if i was going to take johnny out by myself that i was going to have to lift her out of the wheelchair and put her in the car and take her out of the car and put her in the wheelchair and i didn't want anybody else to go along with us on our first date so i purpose to be able to to curl a certain amount of weight before i i went on this date on the weekend and fortunately i did not drop her on our first date and we got to the restaurant and everything else was was great we're back with the painter and broadcaster johnny erickson tada an amazing story you'll be seeing some of our paintings we'll be showing them along and then where do you exhibit by the way well um my my items were on exhibit at the biblical arts center in dallas i've exhibited at the arco plaza in new york and rubino galleries um i sell my prints and limited editions and uh all proceeds go to the ministry of johnny and friends to help other people other quadriplegics other friends with disabilities like yeah and you paint all kinds of things right people and settings and all with the brushing your teeth yeah well they should make them taste better is what they should do well we'll get to that in a minute how do you know that this faith is some sort of crutch and that it's you doing it your strength you don't need the strength of someone else it's you i i it's not me if you if you could be the fly on the wall uh in my bedroom on any given morning or if you could live in my skin for just a few days with quadriplegia you would see that it it it it can decimate you it just lays you flat you come undone you have no resources and sometimes i think that my affliction is like a a sheepdog snapping at my heels making me run down the road to the cross of jesus christ for help where where i just ain't got nowhere else to go but god because i it is so hard do you understand those people who in pain for whatever reason want to die well i certainly do because they'd be allowed to die well i i feel that each life is a is a gift from god that within our deepest inner resources there are gifts and talents and abilities i believe that each of us has been born for a purpose i believe that no life no life is wasted how about if you're in extreme pain i think if you're in extreme pain there are pain therapies there there is there is pain management that is available when i was injured my problem wasn't my paralysis so much as it was my clinical depression and i'm just so grateful that uh there were no jack of organs around 37 years ago anxious to put three grams of phenobarbital in my veins do you do are you treated for depression now no no were you ever treated for depression well when i was in the hospital i went to a lot of therapy sessions and talked to other people with disabilities the thing that helped me most was getting my attention off myself and and and helping other quadriplegics who who were more functionally limited than i was i'll never forget when i was in occupational therapy um they were teaching me how to write with a pencil between my teeth and i kept spitting it out on the floor i mean that's for disabled people i'm not going to do that but my occupational therapist would wipe it off with alcohol stick it back in my mouth and finally they wheeled into occupational therapy this ventilator dependent quadriplegic named tom and my therapist went up to him and said now tom you can't use your hands giving him the same spiel she gave me but you're going to have to learn how to do things with your mouth here take this pencil let's see you practice writing the alphabet and in my heart of hearts i was saying come on tom spit it out spit out the pen but when i watched him laboriously meticulously began to write a b c i felt so ashamed of myself and i realized that there were other people with more pressing challenges and greater needs than me and i wanted to help them how did you start to paint well just that way my occupational therapist said since i could no longer use my hands i was going to have to learn how to use my mouth and so i began splattering paint poster paint on on ceramic trays for christmas gifts for my family and friends and boy you know i'm not bad at this this is this is incredible i mean the talent really does lie in your head not not in the way you hold the pen with your hand and i was so amazed so impressed great colors yeah how does it work they bring you the oils no i've got an easel at my at my office and it's adjustable it can move up and down with a flick of a switch and and i have my pencils pastel pencils nearby and i clench them in my teeth and you have to pick them up out of the thing right because you can't hold them right i i've chewed through many pencils to get a good design i tell you it takes a long time i take i take perhaps uh six eight months to create one rendering and sometimes up to a year but um boy i like taking my time i think requires some patience doesn't it well that's the bruising of a blessing of this disability um larry um i just don't think i would be as persevering i don't think i would be as patient i don't think i would care about other people's needs but this wheelchair i think has been god's way of turning my life inside out and jerking my priorities and values right side up did someone then tell you one day you can paint well my daddy was an artist and so uh i used to sit on his knee and when i was a little girl he would fold his big hand around my little hand and he'd take our hands together and dab the brush in his his uh palette and together we would swirl these beautiful colors on his canvas and i always thought gee daddy look at me look what i'm doing but it was never really me it was my dad and in a way when i paint now i often think that the inspiration i received from the word of god the bible and and from jesus christ is is what it's like the father it's like gee daddy look look at what i'm doing my heavenly father's giving me the chance to create something that will inspire others what's the hardest thing to do any straight lines what's the hardest thing to do oh boy that's a good question i think the hardest thing to do is to paint big i can't wait for heaven to get hands at work and feet that walk and i'll not only jump up dance kick do aerobics but i'll paint big splashy murals yeah i'd like to do a mural we'll be right back with johnny erickson tada we'll talk about johnny and friends and lots of other things don't go away you

Channel: Joni and Friends

Views: 418,290

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Keywords: joni eareckson tada faith, Christian faith, Joni Eareckson larry king, joni tada larry king live, joni tada story, joni tada testimony, joni tada paralysis

Id: P_ItOxB-JpM

Length: 16min 33sec (993 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 23 2021