50th Anniversary Reflections
During July, Joni is reflecting on the past 5 decades of God’s faithfulness following her 1967 diving accident.
Decade 2: 1978-1987
Fifty years has a way of accruing countless memories, but two stand out – the first, starting Joni and Friends in 1979. I was barely 30 years old when I left our farm in Maryland and moved to Southern California to begin this ministry (it wasn’t too scary since I had completed my rehab in California). It all started in a one-room office at Worldwide Pictures in Burbank (BGEA’s film company that produced the JONI movie). I had no skill in leading a Christian nonprofit organization, but I had a great board of directors and a great many more friends who supported me in prayer. It was my desire through Joni and Friends to simply pass on to other disabled people the blessings with which God had encouraged me.
Still, running a fledgling ministry was filled with challenges. But whenever I felt overwhelmed, I would take a deep breath and claim Hebrews 13:21, “May the God of peace… equip you with all you need for doing his will.” I was super-confident that when God calls us, He also enables us for the task. So, I leaned hard on Him, studied non-profit management, and kept Jesus always before me, and people with disabilities as my focus.
Now, almost 40 years later, hardly a day goes by that I don’t wheel through the doors of our headquarters at Joni and Friends and shake my head in amazement – countless special-needs families are being reached this summer for Christ through 50 Family Retreats in the US and overseas, plus thousands more through Wheels for the World. And it all began sitting around our kitchen table in our Maryland farmhouse as I answered letters from people who who read the Joni book!
There is another memory that stands out from those early days – marrying my husband, Ken Tada. We ‘dated’ for about a year or so, and when Ken asked me to marry, I was stunned. I didn’t know how marriage with quadriplegia would work. Some people advised us to “go away for a weekend to see if you can manage it.” Ken and I disagreed: God’s commands about keeping yourself pure for marriage should not be modified just because you have a disability. It meant that on our wedding day, we still had lots of questions (so our honeymoon was a little like Handicap Awareness Week)! I was so happy that warm July morning in 1982 when, in my wedding dress, I wheeled down the aisle of Grace Community Church. It was quite a celebration! John MacArthur, who married us, later shared, “Joni, you were a beautiful bride and, coming down the aisle, you looked a little like a float in the Rose Parade!” He was right :-).
