Customer Reviews

A Lifetime of Wisdom: Embracing the Way God Heals You

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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

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!

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!

This book contains wisdom that only years and years of suffering with Christ can bring. Suffering with Christ can bring one into pure joy and happiness beyond the physical realm in order to endure the hardship life can bring. Christ says that He will never give us more then we can handle. Joni shows us how to handle life in the good and bad times! Great Read!! Endearing!!

I highly recommend this book to anyone that has or knows someone who has a physical problem. We are all broken in one way or another. Embracing the Way God Heals You will help you to not feel sorry for yourself but to look at what God has given you and how you can use what you do have to honor Him. It will help you turn an "I can't" attitude to an "I can" attitude. Once you read one of Joni Eareckson Tada's books, you will want to read them all.

Joni has been a quadrapeligic for 40 years since a diving accident at
age 18. In spite of complete dependance on others to survive, she has had a global ministry.She takes wheelchairs to those who cannot afford one and offers hope and encouragement from lessons hard won.
God has not given her back her mobility, but He has given her something much richer;
a peace in His presence and years of Wisdom gained through her obediance to God's
purpose for her life. This is a "must read" for anyone wondering what their purpose is while on this earth.

The author, Joni Eareckson Tada, was only seventeen when she became paralyzed after a diving accident. She says God asked her for everything she had....health, hopes, independence, dreams, freedom, and mobility. At first she was angry...

More than forty years later, thru trials, disappointments, challenges, and fear, this amazing woman has produced her best book yet. A lifetime in a wheelchair has enabled her to share with us, some of the wisdom she has acquired about her faith in God.

Along with her autobiography, "The God I Love", Joni, an accomplished artist, musician, author of many inspirational books, is also an international disability advocate. She once told God "I can't live like this. If You won't let me die, then show me how to live". He did. She listened. The world loves this beautiful woman.

Reader, if you need more proof that our creator God indeed exists, check out this book and the resource pages Joni provides in back of the book that will inspire you to rise above your present circumstances. Joni's lifetime of wisdom "lifts us higher" and she has learned how to do it as a quadriplegic. You cannot help but love her and all those who have assisted her over the decades, including her devoted husband.

We are reading this book in our book club and it is excellent. Joni weaves her story with Biblical principles in such an interesting way. After spending more than 40 years in a wheelchair, she definitely has some wisdom to share. What's great is that she doesn't just "preach" it to you. She shares it in a new way that will defnitely make you think. I have recommended this book to several friends.

This book provides a very powerful personal testimony to one of the greatest truths in God--that He loves us and has the best for us "always," no matter what we suffer or are permitted to endure in this life. The scriptures she points out and her own moving, personal experience, teaches or reminds us that God loves us, that He is always with us, and that He cares for us through every hardship we encounter.

I recommend this book to anyone whose personal faith needs inspired and strengthened in the face of any blow life deals out.

What a challenge from someone that truly understands "challenge"! I have recommended this book to many of my friends, and I also recommend to others, to understand that we are living in a broken world, and we need to realize that this old world is temporal, and we need to keep our focus on what we don't see, but is eternal.(2 Cor. 4:17-18) She is a quadriplegic, but all I could ask myself is; "what is paralyzing me?"