“Sometimes God allows what he hates to accomplish what he loves.”
Those compelling words were shared by a woman who plummeted the depths of suffering. Yet she did not allow the waves of pain to drown her. Instead, she chose to let God lift her from the bottom of that sea of despair.
Joni Eareckson Tada is a living testimony of God’s healing—a healing that goes deeper than physical pain and suffering.
I first read Joni’s story as a teenager. It was a story of a seventeen-year-old girl, just a few years older than I was at the time. She was a Christian who had given her life to Jesus at the age of 14, just as I had. Joni was spunky, fun, and athletic. She loved tennis and horse riding and she was a strong swimmer.
But, in the summer break after her high school graduation, Joni’s life changed forever. What should have been a simple dive into a bay, turned out to be a catastrophic accident. Joni found herself face down in the water, unable to swim to safety, after severely damaging her spine. Doctors would later confirm that Joni’s injuries had left her a quadriplegic for the rest of her life.
It has been decades since that diving accident. Decades of living in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the shoulder down. Decades of living with daily pain. Decades of being dependent on others for routine activities.
But it has also been decades of relentlessly faithful ministry. Decades of traveling the world in a wheelchair to speak of how God heals souls in the midst of pain. Decades of singing and writing about Jesus.
Without a doubt, when I think about modern-day heroes, Joni tops my list.
Of course, I’m not saying she is perfect or incapable of making mistakes. That would be naïve of me. And I’m fairly sure Joni herself would never make that claim. She is as flawed and human as any of us. I do not intend to put her on a pedestal.
But I do believe her extraordinary ministry from her wheelchair is something that all of us can learn from.
Joni doesn’t sugarcoat her suffering. I’ve had the privilege of being in the audience when she visited Bangalore where I live. I’ve heard her interviews, sermons, and songs, and enjoyed the deeply incisive, passionate articles that she writes. She keeps things real. She speaks of dealing with debilitating pain. She speaks of her sense of helplessness where she can’t even comb her own hair. In recent years, she has battled cancer twice and experienced the drastic side effects of chemotherapy.
But as raw and vulnerable as she is about her pain, she doesn’t dwell there. Instead, moment by moment, this extraordinary woman, now in her seventies, lives in complete dependence on the Lord.
Friends, suffering can drive us away from the Lord—or to His Throne of Grace. We can harden our hearts and choose self-reliance and pride. Or, like Joni, we can choose to be real before the Lord. We can lament and grieve over our pain. We can cry out to Him and simply say, “Lord, I can’t do this thing called life without You.” And then we can let our utter helplessness drive us into the arms of Jesus.
May we cultivate that sense of earnest dependency on Jesus through every moment of our lives. Most of us are not confined to a wheelchair and we are not physically paralyzed. But we are confined by our beliefs and find ourselves paralyzed by fear and anxiety. Could we let that brokenness lead us to our Beautiful Saviour?
I love the eloquent way Joni says it: “The weaker I am, the harder I must lean on God’s grace; the harder I lean on him, the stronger I discover him to be, and the bolder my testimony to his grace.”
In a world that says, “Show people you’re strong,” know that it’s okay to be weak. Because it’s in acknowledging our not-enoughness that we discover God’s strength.
In a world that says, “Figure it out for yourself,” know that it’s okay to not have all the answers. It’s in acknowledging our ineptness that we discover God’s infinite wisdom.
In a world that says, “Fix your appearance,” know that it’s okay to be flawed and broken and not match up to external standards of perfection. It’s in acknowledging our brokenness that we discover the precious healing of the soul.
God often uses our pain to paint a picture of His perfect love.
