A friend named Jane was watching me talk to somebody in a wheelchair the other day – the person in the chair was really struggling and we spent a long time in conversation. Jane stayed at a distance, just kind of standing back and looking on. I wasn’t certain why Jane was so curious, why she hung around, but she stood back far enough away that I knew she couldn’t hear what I was talking about – she was just looking. Later on in the afternoon Jane asked about my time with that wheelchair-user who had questions. She said the most interesting thing – “Joni, you make it look so easy when you talk to somebody else who’s paralyzed. Believe me, I wouldn’t know what to say if I were in your shoes.”
I smiled and shook my head and I replied, “Jane, it may look easy, but honestly, I don’t always know what to say either. The long years I’ve been in this wheelchair haven’t made paralysis any easier.” Jane gave me a funny look, but I told her that my disability has not become routine. Quadriplegia isn’t something you get used to, anymore than a person gets used to chronic pain or blindness. You learn how to work it, you learn how to accomplish things in spite of it, you know how to move on, but you can never totally forget about it.
To this day I can only handle so much in this chair of mine and some days I feel like I'm at my limit. That’s when it’s particularly hard – I start looking at the future and I think, “Oh, Jesus, I don’t know that I can face five or ten more years of this, or fifteen years. That’s just too much to comprehend!”
So I told Jane, “Jane, have not come this far through my own determination or my own fortitude or by my own strength. I cannot underscore enough that it is only been a work of God's grace from beginning to end. In fact, I'm a living example of what the apostle Paul was talking about when he wrote in 1 Corinthians 15, ‘But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them — yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.’ I said to Jane, “Jane, that’s me. I have worked harder at this wheelchair than I ever worked at anything in my life – yet not me, but the grace of God that has been with me all these years.”
So like I told that paralyzed friend who had the questions that day, the only thing you can do is grab hold of God's grace with all your heart. And how does He give it? One day at a time. I can’t worry about the future and what it will be like ten or fifteen years from now – I can only cast all my cares on Jesus – knowing He cares for me -- and then ask Him for grace, ask Him for strength and power and peace, and smile – one day at a time. I am what I am – and, friend listening, you are what you are because the grace of our Lord Jesus always has an effect on those who need Him most.
Used by permission of
JONI AND FRIENDS
P.O. Box 3333
Agoura Hills, CA 93176
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