Joni Eareckson Tada: Clinging to Christ in Suffering

Crushed and reshaped—Joni’s earrings reflect the beauty God brings through suffering

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the people who’ve most shaped my faith—some through their words, others through the way they live. Joni Eareckson Tada is both. Her life and words have marked me, so it felt right to begin this series with her.

A Story That Has Shaped Me

Most people know about Joni because of her diving accident—how, at seventeen, she broke her neck, became a quadriplegic, and went on to impact millions through her ministry, Joni and Friends. They know about her inspiring books, her mouth drawn artwork, and her radiant faith. But Joni isn’t just known for what she’s done. She’s known for who she points to—Jesus.

From childhood, I heard about Joni because people often mentioned her story to me. But I didn’t read anything by Joni until I was trying to make sense of my son Paul’s death.

I picked up Joni’s book, When God Weeps, and was intrigued by questions on the back cover: If God is loving, why is there suffering? When bad things happen, who’s behind them—God or the devil. As I read, my questions were answered. God was not scrambling to fix what had gone wrong. No, He was using this for good. As Joni said, “God permits what He hates to accomplish what He loves.”

Beauty from the Crushing

I attended the 2008 True Woman conference where Joni appeared by video— intense pain had kept her from attending in person. She told us how God was refining and reshaping her, making her more like Jesus, through her suffering. She was wearing a beautiful pair of earrings that glistened as they caught the light. Joni explained they’d once been smooth gold, but she accidentally crushed one under the tire of her wheelchair, mangling it. She took it to a jeweler who couldn’t fix the broken one but said he could reshape the other to match. He hammered and twisted it, producing a pair of earrings that were battered yet breathtaking.

What a vivid picture of the beauty God brings from what felt crushing. I took so many notes during her talk, not knowing how soon my world would be upended. Reeling after my ex-husband left months later, I wandered into a bookstore and spotted Joni’s A Lifetime of Wisdom. Once again, her perspective turned mine around. She wrote,

 “There is something about maintaining a faith-filled, positive attitude toward life in the midst of tragic events that takes a simple testimony and pushes it over the top. There is something about a song of praise rising out of brokenness that opens an artesian well of life. Friend, if we can hang onto God for dear life when we are in the midst of a deep affliction, nothing—absolutely nothing—could be more powerful. For then we are showing God to be massively and supremely worthy of our trust and confidence despite the suffering.

When severe suffering and spontaneous joy mingle in a human soul in the same moment, something powerful results … and the resulting reaction ripples through time, space, and beyond into eternity. All who see it are caught up in wonder. And more people do see it than we might believe possible” (p. 196-197).

I needed those words to fight for joy in the dark. Several years later, I had the chance to have dinner with Joni and saw those spectacular earrings in person. I wrote about how I was struck by Joni’s graciousness when things were difficult.  

I said, “It must be hard to never have things exactly the way you want them.” She looked straight at me and said, “I’m a type A person, and with quadriplegia, nothing is exactly the way I want it. Nothing but my writing. But it’s all these little decisions, these everyday things I surrender, the choices that I make daily, that will one day shine in glory. These will all count.”

Through Joni I’m learning that every hardship is as an opportunity to glorify God.

Over the years, I’ve had the joy of connecting with Joni in different ways. She wrote the foreword for my first book, The Scars That Have Shaped Me. She has encouraged me personally and spiritually through her writing and through a small PainPal group she invited me to be part of, made up of her friends who also live with chronic pain.

Lunch, Prayer, and a Holy Song

In 2023, I interviewed Joni for my Desperate for Hope podcast. In that conversation, Joni once again inspired me. We talked about our fears, her picture of heaven, our husbands and our heroes. I so wanted my husband, Joel, to get to know Ken and we got that opportunity this spring, in March 2025, when we all had lunch together. We talked about books, fly-fishing and the PainPals as we swapped stories and shared life. Ken and Joel bonded over their love of history. Joni’s assistant Lisa, who radiates joy and faithfulness, helped us all get our lunch together.

At one point I told Ken how much I admired the way he serves Joni, laying down his life for her. I was thinking of Joel too—how he stops working mid-thought to help me when I call, how he never makes me feel like I’m a burden, though I know it’s not easy. Ken responded without hesitation: "I love serving and being with Joni, but I am laying my life down for Jesus. He is who I am serving." Ken’s words reminded me that all acts of love, especially the hidden ones, are ultimately for Christ.

As we neared the end of our time, I asked Joni how we could pray for her. She lives in intense chronic pain, can barely sleep, and struggles to breathe but she didn’t ask us to pray for relief. She simply said, "I want to love Jesus more. Pray I would love Him more."

A Deeper Healing

I was stunned. Joni’s love for Jesus already spills out in everything she says and does; I couldn’t imagine how she could love the Lord more. But that’s what she wanted most.

As I write this, I’m reminded of a message she shared at NRB, recalling a moment with Ken at the Pool of Bethesda—how she had asked Jesus, more than once, why He healed the paralytic in John 5 but hadn’t healed her. But then, with tears in her eyes, she thanked God for not healing her physically, because it had meant yes to a deeper healing—a healing that gave her a deeper faith in God, purged sin from her life, forced her to depend on God’s grace, increased her compassion, and helped her to love Jesus more. “O God you were so wise,” she said, “to not give me the physical healing that I wanted but the deeper healing.”

We closed our time in prayer—Joel and Ken and Joni and me—and then Joni began to sing: “Oh, how I love Jesus” and we all joined her. It was a simple moment. And a holy one.

That’s the power of a surrendered life. Joni doesn’t draw attention to her pain—she draws our eyes to Jesus. Her suffering hasn’t made her extraordinary; it’s made Christ visible. And through her, we see that Jesus is worth everything.

May we live the same way—clinging to Christ, offering Him whatever we have. Because worship like that never fades. It echoes into eternity.