Joni and Ken’s Anniversary

By |Published On: July 3, 2017|Categories: 4-Minute Radio Program|
Joni and Ken's Anniversary

Today Ken and I are celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary. And just for fun we have decided to go back and listen to a “Joni and Friends” radio broadcast with Ken and me just one year after our wedding. As I listened to it I learned a few things I had entirely forgotten. Ken sounds the same but you can tell mine is the voice of a very young adult. So let’s go back to July of 1983, just one year after our marriage.

CARL: On July the 3rd you two were married at the Grace Community Church in Panorama City, California. Thinking back to that momentous occasion, maybe you’d like to give us some highlights of that special day in your life.

KEN: I’d like to answer that. I think that the highlight of that day was unlike anything that either of us, and I think I speak for you too, Jon, that either of us expected. We had heard that we were going to be nervous; certainly the anxieties that we were going to face that particular day were going to be so great that we might not even enjoy it.

JONI: Sick, scared…

KEN: The closer we came to that day, I think that whole last a week, it was like we just knew that that’s where we were supposed to be.

JONI: I had a tremendous sense of peace, just real peace. Not even giddiness or silliness or happiness, as the world knows it, but just a real comfortable peace about having made, what I knew to be, a right decision. Not what I felt or what I hoped would be a right decision, but what I knew.

KEN: I felt the same. When I woke up that morning, I guess it was like waking up Christmas when you’re ready to open your presents. I just felt like I was in the right place and there wasn’t anywhere else I would rather be.

JONI: What I enjoyed, too, during our wedding day, so many disabled friends of mine: lots of girls, single women, some single parents who were in wheelchairs. I kind of asked at the reception all the able-bodied women to take a back seat to let lots of the girls in wheelchairs up to the front to catch the bouquet. Because I know that I have been at many weddings where I could get nowhere near the front of the line because of the wheelchair. And it was kind of neat to see, oh what, 10-15 wheelchairs all around that platform where my mom helped me throw the bouquet and see them catch it.

KEN: I think about that day too, Jon, and how exciting it was that we had so many neat friends, not only participate and share in that time of joy, but also we had talked about a small wedding and it ended up a fairly large wedding. But there were people that we were really blessed with that just seemed to come forward and offering up help. It made for such a beautiful day, and I guess one that we will never forget.

JONI:  I am so glad I could share this memory with you today. And you know what? I had forgotten all about throwing my bouquet to all those girls in their wheelchairs. Wow! That really touched my heart hearing that. Thirty five years! Onward and upward friends—into the future! And friends, on another note, thank you for joining me in praising God. Yes, I just want you to praise God with me today for His faithfulness in sustaining me in my wheelchair for 50 years. In fact, my wheelchair is a little like my stone of remembrance—my Ebenezer as it were. Just like Samuel raising a memorial and proclaiming, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” My wheelchair is a similar memorial and I am happy to proclaim that God’s grace is not only sustaining but amazing, especially considering living five decades without use of my hands or my legs. So, rejoice with me today and celebrate the amazing grace of God.

© Joni and Friends

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