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  JONI & KEN

  AN UNTOLD LOVE STORY

  KEN & JONI EARECKSON TADA

  with LARRY LIBBY

  If any couple draws inspiration from this book,

  may it be credited to the staff and volunteers

  of Joni and Friends who run our Family Retreats.

  These amazing men and women have a heart

  to mend marriages, safeguard families affected by disability,

  and show the weakest couple

  that Jesus Christ really is the Answer.

  Epigraph

  Some people talk about faith. Some write and read about faith. And some people model faith. Jon and Ken model it. This book is a treasured glimpse into the faithful lives of two faith-filled people. They are my heroes. I recommend this book with no hesitation.

  MAX LUCADO, pastor and bestselling author

  Selfishness may well be the deadliest disease we bring into marriage. While Ken and Joni are quick to admit their imperfections, I can’t think of a more selfless couple to learn from. I pray that many will read this book and benefit from their example as much as I have.

  FRANCIS CHAN, author and speaker

  From the time I first read Joni back in the 1970s I’ve marveled at the amazing journey of faith that Joni has traveled. Hers has not been a story of gliding down an easy path, but down a tough and seemingly impossible road. Her resilience has given hope to millions. The story of Joni and Ken falling in love and their marriage is a beautiful love story, but it’s a story that is anything but saccharine-like sentimentality. It’s the kind of sacrificial and unconditional love that only God can supply. They are cherished friends and beautiful examples of the kind of faith that weathers storms and endures the harshest realities. When you read their story, you’ll have a new perspective about yours.

  MIKE HUCKABEE

  I first met Joni a few years after the accident that dramatically altered her life. But until I read this book, I had little appreciation for the challenges she and Ken have faced together: the normal stresses of marriage complicated by quadriplegia, a life lived in the spotlight, and her recent life-threatening illness. My goodness — and the rest of us think we have problems! Their hard-won fidelity stands as an inspiring and redemptive example. Thank you, Joni and Ken, for baring your lives in this most vulnerable way.

  PHILIP YANCEY

  Joni & Ken will grip couples and singles as they contemplate what commitment really means. What I love about this story is that it includes the greatest story ever told — that Jesus set the example of endurance in the face of deep trials. Joni and Ken are remarkable witnesses to the strength that comes when we surrender to the One who cares for our every need.

  FRANKLIN GRAHAM, president & CEO of Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

  Ken and Joni are a couple who model real love and real commitment, in a real marriage between two very real people. Their “love story” will motivate you to excel still more in your marriage, and it is one of those books you are going to give to your friends. Buy a case of their books and encourage your family and friends. This is a great story that needs to be made into a movie!

  DR. DENNIS RAINEY, CEO of FamilyLife

  The words “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health” don’t begin to capture the challenges that Ken and Joni have encountered in their marriage. But they have overcome those challenges through steadfast commitment to one another and continual surrender to Jesus Christ. Theirs is a love story for the ages.

  JIM DALY, president of Focus on the Family

  Joni and Ken have allowed us an up-close-and-personal glimpse into their marriage — a thirty-year journey characterized by challenges few of us can imagine. As we witness the pruning, purifying, transforming effects of trials in their lives, we dare to believe our own sufferings and flawed human relationships can press us closer to Christ, mold us into His likeness, make us more fruitful, and fit us for eternity.

  NANCY LEIGH DEMOSS, author and radio host of Revive Our Hearts

  All those years ago, we had the privilege of sharing some music at Joni and Ken’s wedding. We even had a trio with the bride, Joni — singing Pelle’s song, “Unfailing Love.” And what an unfailing love their journey has been! Unfailing love for the Lord and His work, and unfailing love for each other. We thank God for their amazing example and testimony, and we say, “Thanks, Joni and Ken! We see Jesus in your love and in your lives!”

  EVIE AND PELLE KARLSSON, Christian musicians

  Joni and Ken are loved throughout the globe for their groundbreaking ministry to the paralyzed and broken, yet their lives together have not been without immense challenges. Here is an honest story of commitment, surrender, and selfless love that will inspire and give hope to all who long to know if their day-to-day struggles and victories matter to God. These two lives beautifully lived will speak right to your heart from theirs.

  RAVI ZACHARIAS, author and speaker

  This profoundly beautiful love story shreds the deceptive “happily ever after” myth and portrays something far more powerful, fierce, and eternal. Joni and Ken’s story will leave an indelible mark on you, heart and soul. It has on me, and I am deeply grateful to my friends, Joni and Ken, warriors both.

  SHEILA WALSH, Women of Faith speaker and author of God Loves Broken People

  In this book, a remarkable couple tells a remarkable story that radiates their devotion to Christ and therefore to each other. It makes you laugh, cry, and praise God as it so well reflects the highs and lows of Christian marriage.

  R.C. SPROUL

  We’ve always known that Ken and Joni face the unique challenges of quadriplegia, fame, and ministry demands. Now, through the pages of this book, we get to peek inside their marriage to see its struggles and triumphs. Best of all, this book shows that what has made their marriage work can also make our marriages work — tenderness, patience, unselfishness, and, most importantly, the power of the Holy Spirit to generate these things in us when our resources have run out.

  NANCY GUTHRIE, Bible teacher and author of Holding On to Hope

  For every couple who faces adversities and challenges, Joni & Ken is a must-read story of hope and encouragement that reflects God’s heart for marriage.

  STEPHEN ARTERBURN, founder and chairman of New Life Ministries and bestselling author

  Poignant and profound! Joni and Ken’s love story will transform your understanding of “for better, for worse” and “in sickness and in health.” Through almost unimaginable adversity, their tender commitment to Christ and each other is elevating. This book is sure to change many lives.

  JUNE HUNT, founder, CEO, and CSO (Chief Servant Officer) of Hope for the Heart

  The integrity of making a vow has lost much of its impact in our world today. When you read this book by Joni and Ken, you will have a picture of what God intended when He instituted the covenant relationship of marriage.

  VONETTE BRIGHT, cofounder of Campus Crusade for Christ International

  Jesus never said, “I am the power cord; you are the iPhone.” He said, “I am the vine; you are the branches.” Only Joni can so gently remind us of the kind of faulty thinking that positions God as our charger instead of as the very source and sustenance of our lives. This self-sufficiency heresy in my heart has been dealt a lethal blow by Joni and Ken’s courageous telling of their story. Thank you, friends.

  NICOLE JOHNSON, author and dramatist

  Joni & Ken is an engaging, eye-opening, and heart-touching love story that cried out to be told. Nanci and I love Joni and Ken. While I love all of Joni’s books, this one is unique, containing much that is new to me. Joni & Ken is hone
st, penetrating, at times riveting, and ultimately transcendent.

  RANDY ALCORN, author of Heaven and We Shall See God

  I’m so thankful to Ken (and Joni) for his openness, honesty, and transparency in letting us see beyond the brave and godly persona of Joni to what God has brought about through their marriage, Joni’s cancer, and the unending day-by-day difficulties — simply because of a paralysis that leaves one entirely dependent on others. Jack and I were there at the beginning of this romance — a romance that serves as an example of our Savior’s love for His bride, the church. You two are our heroes of the faith.

  KAY ARTHUR, cofounder of Precept Ministries International

  Joni and Ken’s words seem wet with tears … I think they’re mine. Their journey is tender, honest, and soul-searching, and it quickly winds itself around your heart. It’s a stunning love story laced with hurts, hardships, and a great deal of hope. Come and see what the Lord hath wrought.

  PATSY CLAIRMONT, author of Stained Glass Hearts

  I love this book. Ken and Joni open up their life — the good and the bad — in a way that is gripping, challenging, and hope-giving. Reading their story made me want to trust Jesus more. It made me want to love my wife more sacrificially. It reminded me that God can use the worst trials in life for our good. Whether you are single, engaged, or married, I highly recommend this book.

  JOSHUA HARRIS, pastor and author

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  WRITER’S PREFACE: A Different Kind of Love Story

  CHAPTER ONE: The Gift

  CHAPTER TWO: “With Great Purpose”

  CHAPTER THREE: The Prayer

  CHAPTER FOUR: It’s Not about Us

  CHAPTER FIVE: At the Altar

  CHAPTER SIX: The Testing Years

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Samurai

  CHAPTER EIGHT: Stepping Up

  CHAPTER NINE: Unfathomable Depths

  CHAPTER TEN: Reflecting on the Journey

  CONCLUSION: A Personal Note from Joni and Ken

  Acknowledgments

  Resources for You

  Notes

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Share Your Thoughts

  WRITER’S PREFACE

  A DIFFERENT KIND OF LOVE STORY

  The world has probably been singing love songs since Jubal, sixth from Adam, began experimenting with his newly invented musical instruments, tootling on his hand-carved flute or plucking his prototype harp while his long-suffering and more practical brother Jabal was out in the fields looking after the family livestock.

  Have you missed the story of Jubal and Jabal? It’s right there, what there is of it, at the beginning of your Bible in Genesis 4:19 – 21.

  There weren’t all that many women in the world in those days, but it’s an even bet that Jubal attracted some positive feminine attention with this intriguing new activity. What had he called it? Music? Sitting by a murmuring stream under a spreading willow, running swift fingers across plant-fiber harp strings, he probably sang tuneful ballads about the big empty world newly wounded by the fall and not far removed from the memory of paradise, needing love, sweet love.

  There have always been love songs, and the lion’s share of them through the long ages have been wistful, sad, and melancholy. Someone falls in love with someone else, glorying in a brief, improbable burst of happiness, only to have something go wrong. A misunderstanding. A rejection. A betrayal. A slow dwindling of the flame that blazed so brightly. And then the music comes, the song from the bruised heart, telling the old, sad story of what had so briefly flowered, what almost was, what never was, what might have been, and what was lost forever.

  The songs have a million titles, and after the fiasco at the Tower of Babel, the world found itself with songs in a bewildering multiplicity of languages and dialects.

  In years to come, disappointed lovers would be singing in Etruscan, Indo-European, Sanskrit, and Proto-Germanic about cheating hearts, last dances, moonlit walks, heartbreak hotels, try-to-remember Septembers, and silhouettes on the shade.

  It’s the same today. If you have any knowledge of songs from thirty, fifty, or even seventy-five years ago, just hearing a fragment of melody can weave a web of nostalgia or call up a particular shade of melancholy from some forgotten archive of memory.

  The shadow of your smile, when you have gone …

  Are you lonesome tonight, do you miss me tonight? …

  Eleanor Rigby, picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been …

  I really am indeed, alone again (naturally) …

  I remember the night, and the Tennessee waltz …

  One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do …

  My heart will go on …

  I fall to pieces …

  I need your love. Godspeed your love to me …

  Back in the 1940s, a popular song tapped into a theme that has been repeated over and over through the centuries:

  Missed the Saturday dance

  Heard they crowded the floor

  Couldn’t bear it without you

  Don’t get around much anymore.1

  A February 2009 article in the Los Angeles Times was titled, “For the lonely: 150 songs for sobbing on Valentine’s Day.” In the introduction, the author promised “150 of the saddest songs in the world, subjectively selected and specially arranged for maximum depressive potential.”2

  Why are so many love songs and love stories sad?

  They’re sad because we pin our fondest hopes and dreams on a romantic relationship, but life hardly ever falls together the way we had hoped or imagined. We might “wish upon a star,” along with Jiminy Cricket, but wishes are generally wispy, tenuous things that don’t hold up to the rough-and-tumble of real life.

  Love songs reawaken that soul-deep desire within us for a shining, transcendent experience of romantic love. Through that experience, we hope to escape the disappointments of a broken and mostly cynical world. But then the dream ends, the hope slips away — and we have to return to a shades-of-gray world that seems ordinary, lonely, and just a little bleak.

  Why did more than 750 million people around the world sit in front of their TVs thirty years ago to watch the wedding of Britain’s Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer? Was it just the fairy-tale spectacle of it all, with the carriages, the glittering uniforms, and the ivory silk wedding gown with its twenty-five-foot train?

  Yes, it was certainly a spectacle.

  But it was more than that, wasn’t it?

  I think many people wanted to set aside their cynicism and really believe — if only for a moment — in a man and woman living happily ever after together in a palace somewhere. Why? Because maybe if that marriage worked, perhaps some of the magic, some of the romance, some of the happiness, might spill over into so many other love stories — stories that began so well, showed such promise, raised such hopes, and faded so quickly.

  That’s what makes the love story in this book worth thinking about.

  It isn’t some sweet, shallow love song, but it has music with deeper roots and a more celestial melody than most of us could imagine. There are no artificial ingredients in this account, with a union movie orchestra playing strings in the background. It is authentic life, complete with disappointments, pain, disillusionment, struggle, tenacious faith … and what you might call a surprise ending.

  Yes, it begins in the traditional way, with a handsome young man and a lovely young woman falling in love with each other. There is a courtship, a wedding, a honeymoon, world travels, and the promise of a bright future.

  Other than that, the story is anything but normal. Joni, who has become known all over the world for her writing, speaking, singing, and painting accomplished with a brush held in her teeth, was paralyzed from the neck down in a diving accident in 1967 when she was just seventeen years old. At age thirty-two, she had pretty much given up t
he idea that any man would or could look beyond her wheelchair and her disability to see her as a prospective lover and wife.

  But she hadn’t reckoned on Ken Tada.

  A high school history teacher and football coach, Ken saw in Joni a beautiful woman with an even more beautiful personality and spirit. Most important of all, he saw a woman with a great passion for the One they both called Lord and Savior — Jesus Christ.

  This was the girl of his dreams.

  But life is more than a dream, and Ken, with proverbial stars in his eyes, had no concept of the difficult path that lay ahead of them. Joni had a much clearer picture of it all. Women usually do.

  So they married.

  And the account on the following pages dips into their story here and there, skipping back and forth through the years, showing some of the scenes from their life together.

  It’s a marriage that began strong, ran into hard times, faded a little, hit much harder times, and … well, I don’t want to give away the ending. We need stories like Ken and Joni’s. We need to hear about dreams that don’t end, even when trouble comes in the night to scramble the story.

  This book is essentially about two people who had every reason on earth not to fall in love and marry each other in the first place … whose marriage faced obstacles beyond what most of us could imagine and innumerable justifications for giving up … who stayed together when their impossible obstacles unexpectedly became impossibly more difficult … and who found a way, through it all, to attain to a new level of love rather than simply surviving or grimly hanging on.

  Remember the song Susan Boyle sang to win Britain’s Got Talent and launch her stellar YouTube fame? I had a dream my life would be so different from this hell I’m living …

  We all dream dreams and know very well that they don’t always work out. Life is particularly hard on high expectations. Things hardly ever fall together the way we would have scripted them. The fact is, if we put our hope in a certain set of circumstances working out in a certain way at certain times, we’re bound to be disappointed because nothing in this life is certain.