Give a wheelchair and the Gospel to someone in need today! Visit www.joniradio.org for more details.
Visit www.joniradio.org to gift a wheelchair!
SHAUNA: This is Shauna, on Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope. Today Joni has a great story about a gift that was pretty near perfect.
JONI: And I received that gift back in the summer of 1968. Let me tell you why it was so perfect. You see, exactly a year earlier in the summer of 1967 I had broken my neck in that awful dive into shallow water. You know the story: the depression, the suicidal despair that felt so suffocating. And what made it worse is that I spent months and months in the hospital on a Stryker frame. That first year of my paralysis, I lost a great deal of weight. I just couldn’t eat. I was so discouraged; I had no stomach for anything. I ended up weighing just under 100 pounds; that’s pretty thin for someone who’s 5 foot 7. Being so thin and lying flat all the time, all my bones, my hips, my sitting bones, my elbows – all those boney points began to break down into pressure sores. And I spent nearly a year on that flat Stryker frame as I went through one surgery after the next. Yet, I hated the idea of getting better, only to sit up in a stupid wheelchair. I did not want to get better if it meant living in a wheelchair. And so, I laid flat on that Stryker frame for 12 months. And 12 months is a long, long time.
But as time did slowly pass, I started to hate the Stryker frame more than the idea of a wheelchair. I began tiring of lying flat and counting tiles on the ceiling. When they would flip me face down, I got tired of counting tiles on the floor. Sometime later, when all my sores got healed, I started to, you know, kind of favor the idea of a wheelchair. After lying flat for so long, I could not wait to get out of bed. To see life face forward. And a wheelchair started to look pretty good to me. Much better than staying in bed all the time. And once I sat up in my new wheelchair, it was like, oh, my goodness, like, I’ve got a whole new life. A wheelchair meant I could move; I could go places; I could do things; I could be out and about in the mainstream of life. For me, that wheelchair was the perfect gift, meeting the need of that moment and changing my life. And it was a wonderful morning when I wheeled out of that hospital room, down the hallway, and started to learn how to live life anew.
And now, so many, many years later? I want you to help me reach into other dark, back bedrooms around the world and help disabled people, like me, who are stuck in bed with no hope and very little help. Tens of thousands of people cannot get out of bed for lack of a wheelchair. And I understand their plight in a way; I have been there. And I want you to help me give them the love of Christ through a Bible, the Gospel of hope, and the gift of a wheelchair. It is the perfect gift. A wheelchair means they can rise up out of bed and move, and go places, and do things. A wheelchair means they can be out and about in the mainstream of life. You can still give that perfect gift of a wheelchair. Join me in spreading the hope of Jesus. Just go to joniradio.org to get all the details. And as you do, I’ve got a blessing for you from 1 Timothy 6. It says that as you are generous and willing to share, “[You] will lay up treasure for [yourself] as a firm foundation for the coming age.” Oh, friend, you are laying up treasure for yourself as you join me in passing on the blessings to needy, disabled children around the world. If God can use a wheelchair to help me move, what more can He do with those who’d give anything to have a wheelchair. So, visit joniradio.org where we love giving perfect gifts.
© Joni and Friends