A Lifetime of Wisdom: Embracing the Way God Heals You [Hardcover]

Joni Eareckson Tada (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 2009

It's not what I lost. It's what I've found. I was only seventeen, just a girl, when God asked me for everything I had ... my health, my hopes, my independence, my dreams, my freedom, and my mobility. He took it all. I was so angry with Him that I tried to push Him away. God relentlessly held me more closely. Looking back, forty years later, I understand that God has changed and healed me---my heart and my mind---in the most unexpected ways, giving me rubies of His wisdom about an unbending faith and an experience of His mercy I can now tell you about. Was it a fair exchange, my freedom and no wheelchair for the rubies of wisdom I've been given? Absolutely. In this I have learned at the feet of the Lord Jesus, embracing the way that God heals us, even when we rage at Him in anger, fear, and despair. This book is not about what I lost in that diving accident so long ago. It's about the wisdom He's given me to live life victoriously in the face of disappointments and challenges that we all face.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When a diving accident in 1967 paralyzed her from the neck down, Tada, then a teenager, questioned God and life itself. Decades later, the author and founder of Joni and Friends, a ministry for the disabled, writes from her wheelchair, [T]here are more important things in life than walking. In her latest book, Tada jumps back in time to reveal her thoughts as a young quadriplegic, then pleads with her teenage self and the reader to be patient and hopeful. In each chapter, Tada offers a ruby of her own hard-won wisdom (e.g., God may not always provide healing; courage in the midst of suffering is a testament to God's love; God gives grace in tough times) and encourages readers to dialogue with God to understand the purpose for hardships. Tada then supports this argument about suffering with Scripture, folding some verses into the chapters and compiling others into three appendices. Those who are ill, struggling or hopeless may be comforted by her testimony and perhaps roused to pray and perform good deeds while awaiting relief in whatever form it may take. (Mar.)
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Review

Heaven has a special room for Joni and Ken. A room large enough to contain the crowds of people who, like me, want to tell them, 'Thank you.' And all of us---friends, readers, listeners---will take our turn, though we already know what Joni and Ken will say. They will point to Christ: 'Thank Him.' -- Max Lucado, bestselling author and minister <br><br>

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Zondervan; First Edition edition (February 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0310273420
• ISBN-13: 978-0310273424
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #131,060 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joni Eareckson Tada is the founder of Joni and Friends, an organization accelerating Christian outreach in the disability community that numbers 610 million people worldwide. This organization operates out of the new Joni and Friends International Disability Center located in Agoura Hills, California. Joni is not only an international disability advocate but an artist and the author of numerous bestselling books, including Pearls of Great Price, Diamonds in the Dust, More Precious Than Silver, the Platinum award-winning Joni, Heaven: Your Real Home, When God Weeps, and The God I Love.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tada Has Written Faith and Hope On Every Page, June 10, 2009

By 

FaithfulReader.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Lifetime of Wisdom: Embracing the Way God Heals You (Hardcover)

Though Joni Eareckson Tada does not divulge her exact age in these pages, she's clearly pushing 60. It's hard for some of us to imagine this, because we were so influenced by the images of her first book, JONI, in which she was such a young woman, struggling to accept the realities of her physically constricted life: a quadriplegic confined to a bed or wheelchair as a result of a diving accident.

But her mature age is the hook that makes this current book work. Looking back, over more than 40 years of confinement, often with physical pain, she speaks the wisdom of age and faith to emotions, feelings and questions that virtually defined her in her youth.

Each chapter starts with a brief scene from Tada's past, written in the present tense. You are there with her --- in a Baltimore hospital feeling as if someone is suffocating her in the middle of the night; a month later, after a surgery, alone, afraid, despairing; on another day when a friend visits and reads a requested Bible passage; a decade later, when she's speaking to a captive audience, prisoners at a correctional facility in Northern Virginia. "I told them how weak-kneed I sometimes got when I thought about living twenty or even thirty more years in a wheelchair."

Tada then addresses the scene from a contemporary vantage point. In the chapter titled "Sufficient Grace" that starts in a prison setting, she reflects: "I'll admit it, the long years haven't made paralysis any easier."

Yet the book is bigger than Tada's personal story. As founder of Joni and Friends, "an organization accelerating Christian outreach in the disability community," she draws vignettes of hope from a wide network of people needing and finding help and hope in difficult situations. And she presents a lot of scriptural teaching that broadens the text out to appeal to any reader who has faced disappointment, depression, discouragement, disillusionment --- and who hasn't? Chapters specifically deal with the place of anger, feelings of "suffocation," loneliness, and discontentment, the weight --- or waiting --- of time, the use of prayer, the place of hope, the promise of heaven...

I have not read many of Tada's intervening books --- including three volumes of 366 daily readings and a work titled HEAVEN: YOUR REAL HOME --- so I cannot judge whether A LIFETIME OF WISDOM presents significantly new material. Having said that, I found this book refreshing. Tada has suffered too much to give easy answers, and yet she has written faith and hope on every page. And at the end, appendices provide 20 pages of Scripture passages (NIV) dealing with "God's Control over Human Suffering" and "God's Purpose in Our Sufferings" --- excellent resources for personal insight or ministry.

--- Reviewed by Evelyn Bence

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If this book doesn't make you cry, check your pulse!, March 30, 2009

By 

Bocadillo Descarado "that's not my name" (Zimbabwe) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Lifetime of Wisdom: Embracing the Way God Heals You (Hardcover)

Joni writes, "Please hear me on this, a woman who has lived with total paralysis for 14,965 days (give or take)...." and she shares beautiful "rubies" of wisdom from her four decades in a wheelchair.

She honestly speaks of the desperation and depression she dealt with. Joni gives amazing words of truth which is incredibly inspiring. It is a must-read for anyone who loves someone in a wheelchair. The insight is priceless.

It will make you cry to realize what she's been through. It will also give you incredible hope because this world is not all there is. We have Heaven to look forward to!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reflections, July 1, 2009

By 

Gerard F. Zemek "Boston Fan" (Parma, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Lifetime of Wisdom: Embracing the Way God Heals You (Hardcover)

I haven't read a Joni book in a long time but found this one while browsing through the library. I'm so glad I did! What makes this book so good is that Joni goes back to how she thought about things when she was a teen and now shares 40 years later what she has learned since. As always, the writing in Joni's books is superb. This book is hard to put down. It gave me sort of a spiritual bath, which I think we all need from time to time to reflect on the really important things in life. Bless you, Joni! I highly recommend you read this book!