“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Well, your wheelchair is one thing … people not knowing how to relate to you — or what to say. And the fact that you’re well-known — famous, really — is another. Lots of people think you have it all together. That you never struggle or have off days.” He paused a moment to study his menu, made a quick decision, and closed it again. “But I don’t need to be afraid just because you’re Joni Eareckson or because you’re different.”
It wasn’t a rehearsed speech, but Joni could tell he’d thought this through. And after thinking it through, he had laid to rest whatever apprehensions he may have had. Or at least, for now he had. She couldn’t help but admire his confidence.
Ken ordered steak, and she went for the shrimp. Without a moment of self-consciousness or hesitation, he leaned across the table to give her a forkful of his appetizer. She asked for a drink, and he stretched his arm across the table again, lifting the glass to her mouth.
Just as if he’d done it a hundred times before.
They chatted about Joni and Friends, Judy and Kerbe, his students, and their mutual friends at church. When their dinners arrived, and before she could ask the waiter, Ken had his knife and fork poised over her plate, ready to cut up her shrimp. “May I?” he asked.
She couldn’t get over how comfortable, how happy, she felt with this man.
“I would guess you’ve been around disabled people before,” Joni suggested, scooping up another bit of shrimp.
“Well, yes and no.” Ken leaned back from the table and dabbed the napkin to the corners of his mouth. A gentleman, Joni thought. “Sometime back when I was surfing the channels on TV,” he said, “I came across a program on Special Olympics. There were some great shots of mentally challenged kids barreling down the track. Some stumbling. Some skipping. Others going flat out. And there were people at the finish line, cheering each one of those kids on. Everyone, I mean everyone, hugging each other. And then the announcer said something like, ‘In a world constantly seeking perfection, where is there room for those who aren’t?’ Then he said, ‘What really matters isn’t winning but finishing.’ I liked that.”
He was quiet for a moment, reflecting on the memory, stroking the folded napkin.
He reached for his water glass. “So, that’s when I signed up at my school to get involved in Special Olympics. I’ve only worked with them, officiating or whatever, for a couple of years.” He put the glass down. “But dating someone in a wheelchair?” He smiled, leaning back in his chair. “No … I’ve never done that before.”
“Well,” Joni replied, “there’s something else you’re going to have to do that you’ve never done before.”
“What’s that?” he asked, reaching for his wallet to pay the bill.
“My leg bag needs emptying.”
Would it throw him — just a little? Apparently not.
“OK,” he said. “Just tell me what to do.”
Ken negotiated her wheelchair through the tables toward the door. They paused in front of the alcove leading to the women’s room on the left and the men’s room on the right.
He glanced quickly from the left to the right and said, “Uh, I guess we have a problem here.”
“Yes. Well, I hadn’t thought about this one.”
“Come on, Joni, no jokes.” He was whispering now, as several people walked around them, going in and out of the restrooms. “What do I do?”
Joni was still smiling. “Is this the part where you’re not afraid, even though I’m different?”
He waited patiently.
“OK, OK. There’s a bottle in my bag on the back of the wheelchair. Let’s head outside and find a tree and empty this thing.”
“A tree?”
“Well, it is more inconspicuous than a fire hydrant, don’t you think?”
So it all began with laughter. What could have been awkward or uncomfortable somehow wasn’t. Ken learned he could pretty much be himself with an already-famous Christian icon and household name who also happened to be paralyzed from the neck down. And Joni realized that she could enjoy an evening out with a handsome, good-hearted man who could look beyond her celebrity status and her disabilities to talk to her as a woman and a friend.
Friend sounded really good.
And so did that unspoken, back-of-the-mind thought that hinted at something more.
CHAPTER FOUR
IT’S NOT ABOUT US
God is not unjust; he will not forget your work
and the love you have shown him as you have
helped his people and continue to help them.
We want each of you to show this same diligence
to the very end, so that what you hope
for may be fully realized.
HEBREWS 6:10 – 11
FEBRUARY 8, 1982
Questions, questions, questions.
Over the last fifteen months, there had been any number of uncertainties swirling around Ken and Joni’s courtship. And now, just as many questions surrounding their engagement.
Would it work? Did a marriage make sense? Even Ken and Joni’s parents had misgivings. How would it work? Everyone said that marriage was a substantial life adjustment to begin with. Wouldn’t it be exponentially more difficult when you added in the reality of a profound disability? Would the responsibilities of caring for a quadriplegic spouse (“Remember, Ken, this is for the rest of your life …”) eventually be too much for Ken, wearing him down? Would the pressures and never-ending day-to-day routines put too much strain on a new marriage? What about Ken’s teaching career? What about sex? Was that the elephant in the room nobody was talking about? Would they be able to have children? How would Ken handle living every day with someone famous? Would Joni find adequate time to invest in her marriage with a myriad of other things going on in her ministry?
And what did God think about it all?
It really came back to that last question; Ken and Joni were devoted Christ followers, and His will trumped every other concern. He had known both of them before they were born. Ken Tada and Joni Eareckson had been on His mind when He spoke the galaxies into being, spun the nebulae, and strolled with Adam and Eve through Eden in the cool of the day.
Ten years after Ken and Joni’s marriage, Pastor Rick Warren would write a bestselling Christian book that began with a stark four-word sentence.
“It’s not about you.”
He would go on to write, “The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It’s far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions. If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with God. You were born by his purpose and for his purpose.”8
In the spring of 1982, mere weeks away from Ken and Joni’s marriage, God began to speak to them as a couple about something much, much larger than themselves. Joni had invited her fiancé on a ministry trip to multiple nations in Europe. And in the course of that journey, all the questions surrounding their marriage began to slip, like pieces of a puzzle, into a larger context. If God had brought them together for a reason, what purpose did He have in mind for them as a team? What might they accomplish as husband and wife that they could never accomplish on their own as singles? It wasn’t about them. It was about how God might be pleased to use them, together, for His purposes. If God was giving them a greater sphere of influence as Ken and Joni Tada, they needed to rise to that calling.
Ken Tada had grown up as a Burbank, California, boy who liked to stay close to home. As a high school senior, he had turned down a football scholarship to the University of Hawaii because he couldn’t imagine himself so far away from Southern California. For a man who hadn’t traveled much out of the country, the trip with Joni seemed like an absolute whirlwind. Accompanied by Judy and Jay, Joni’s sister, they swept through London, Paris, and Amsterdam.
Big Ben solemnly tolling the hours under an overcast sky? The lights of
Paris at night from a hotel balcony? Canals and windmills in Holland? It had all seemed so exotic and romantic.
And then came Romania.
APRIL 2, 1982
“We just crossed the Iron Curtain.”
Joni had been peering out the window of the aging Aeroflot jet en route to Bucharest, and she spoke her thought out loud. Her comment brought a quick, hostile glare from the flight attendant.
“Shhh,” Judy whispered, “I don’t think we’re supposed to say those words.”
Flying over Germany and Austria, they had marveled at the glorious green landscape, tidy villages, and neat hedgerows. Halfway through their flight, however, the world below them morphed into a different reality. Even from an altitude of 15,000 feet, they could tell that the towns were poor and unkempt, connected by dirt roads rather than asphalt highways.
In a sullen red sunset they landed in Bucharest and taxied to the gate. This was the Bucharest of 1982, still clamped in the steel vise of the brutal Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, seven years before his overthrow and execution. The ostensible purpose for the visit was to meet with government officials on behalf of Joni and Friends, but the true focus was to connect with and encourage brothers and sisters in Christ and look into the plight of that nation’s disabled population.
As they prepared to exit the plane, Ken looked out in amazement at a ring of armored vehicles and grim-faced soldiers carrying AK-47s. “Unreal,” he said, pulling out his camera.
“Sir!” the flight attendant suddenly barked. “You must put away your camera. No photos are allowed.”
Startled, Ken quickly complied. Yes … truly this was a different world. London, Paris, and Amsterdam seemed like a planet away. And America? Southern California? It might as well have been in a different galaxy.
Romania in 1982 was a ravaged and denuded police state, with fear and dread hanging over the towns and countryside like a freezing fog. In J. R. R. Tolkien’s universe, this was the land of Mordor, under the all-penetrating eye of an evil, highly paranoid, possibly demonic government. The once grand old boulevard leading into the city was potholed. And where were the cars? Very few and far between. Ken marveled to see horse-drawn carts clopping through the city, their drivers slump shouldered and sad, and even the horses seemed dispirited. Old-fashioned streetlights lined the boulevard, hinting vaguely of a grander bygone era, but now, not a single one was lit in the gathering gloom. The only lights in the city, it seemed, were the stoplights at intersections, but even many of those were darkened. Once-stately baroque buildings along the route appeared to be crumbling in on themselves and encrusted with grime. In some ways, it seemed more like Calcutta, minus the teeming crowds, than a European capital. A literal cloud, thick and dismal, hung over the once-magnificent city, heavy with the smell of leaded fuel and coal dust. The few people on the streets appeared like ghostly shadows clad in gray.
It brought to mind novelist Ray Bradbury’s description of a land he called the October country: “… that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people … passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.”9
They had been directed to stay at the Intercontinental Hotel in rooms predetermined by the Securitate. The hotel itself, however, didn’t live up to the promise of its conventional, Western-sounding name. It turned out to be yet another drab, dirty building, probably erected in the 1950s. They were given rooms on the second floor near the end of the hallway. Prewarned by a Romanian friend, they assumed the suite was bugged. Before saying anything of consequence, they had been instructed to open up both water faucets in the bathroom so the noise of the filling tub would prevent the listening devices from picking up their words.
As Judy removed Joni’s coat, Ken whispered, low and urgent, “Look!” They watched as he tried to move the mirror on the wall above the dresser. It didn’t budge. He tried to peek behind it with no success. Stepping aside out of its view, he silently mouthed, “It’s part of the wall.”
They looked at one another stunned, remembering the strange door to the room next to theirs, a door with no room number. What a ghastly feeling to think of some gray-faced Communist apparatchik sitting in a dim little room staring at them through a two-way mirror. Or was it just a camera? Whatever it was, it gave one an eerie feeling.
But this side trip into Communist Romania was never intended as a pleasure cruise. They had ventured into the heart of totalitarian darkness for the sake of God’s sons and daughters who lived out their lives in that oppressive place, and for the disabled men and women who had to be there too, though no one had heard of them or from them for years.
As Judy and Jay got Joni ready for bed in the next room, Ken looked out the grimy hotel window at the scene below. The darkened windows of the building across the deserted street gaped back at him like empty eye sockets. What am I doing here? He felt a wave of homesickness for his sunny, bustling Southern California, so brimming with life.
At that moment, however, a fragment of Scripture intruded into his thoughts. Something from the latter chapters of Matthew’s gospel, speaking of a time beyond time when all nations would be gathered before the King for judgment: “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, … when did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me’ “ (Matthew 25:37, 39 – 40).
He wasn’t in Romania for Joni’s sake alone. He wasn’t there just because they were getting married and he needed to learn the ropes about all this travel stuff.
He was there because Jesus wanted him there.
The thought sobered him. He, Ken Tada, history teacher and football coach, had a job to do. And whatever their team was able to do to encourage the oppressed believers in that place, to look into the plight of orphans and the disabled, “the least of these brothers and sisters of mine,” would be a direct service to Jesus Himself. And He would take note of it.
According to the government, however, there were no disabled people.
In Ceausescu’s workers’ paradise, everyone was able-bodied and whole … or so their government guides informed them.
Their official tour of the country’s few “rehabilitation centers” seemed to bear out the government line; they were practically empty. Told that they would be taken to a “school for the rehabilitation of children,” they were escorted into a roomful of unsmiling teenagers dressed in blue uniforms and sitting erect and silent at their desks. On cue, one boy dutifully showed them his leg brace, another her amputated arm. These were the disabled? Seriously?
At another so-called facility for people with disabilities, they toured dim hallways lit by a few hanging lightbulbs. In one of the many white-tiled rooms, the official showed them a few prosthetic legs and braces. But where were the people? Where were the wheelchairs?
Toward the end of the visit, a few disabled people were ushered into the hallway to meet the “Western visitors.” One man was in a vintage wheelchair, and several others hobbled along on crutches. Joni tried to strike up a cheerful conversation with them, but they replied in tight monosyllables, their faces as blank as the white-tiled walls. They’re afraid, Joni thought. Scared to death. And they can’t wait for us to get out of here.
As they drove in silence back to the hotel, Joni remembered studying about the Soviet Empire in her Modern and Contemporary History class in high school. She recalled being afraid of the “people behind the Iron Curtain,” as if they were of a different race — stalwart and strong like those imposing Leninist sculptures of farmers holding sickles and workers wielding hammers. She had felt sure that, given the chance, they were ready to storm across the borders and overpower the West.
; But none of the citizens she had seen so far looked anything like the statues or the propaganda photos. They didn’t look stalwart and strong; they just looked afraid.
Pastor Sarac prayed the blessing over their dinner but seemed in a hurry from the first bite.
Two elderly women dressed in long skirts and wearing babushkas bustled in and out of the kitchen with steaming platters of garlic chicken, sausage, and onions. Joni later learned that these women and several others from the church had taken turns standing in long food lines to make sure they got two chickens and some onions for their American guests.
Wind-driven rain spattered against the windows as they ate.
After what seemed no longer than ten minutes, the pastor pushed back from the table, wiping his hand on a napkin. “We must hurry to get into the church,” he said.
Surprised, Joni glanced at a clock. “But the service doesn’t begin until nine o’clock,” she said. “It’s early yet.”
Pastor Sarac flashed a quick, nervous smile. “Oh … I do not think so, dear sister.”
Leaving the pastor’s apartment and stepping out into the night, they were stunned at the sight before them. Rain was pelting down on a sea of people lined up in the darkness. Clogging the path to the church entrance were elderly men huddled beside their wives, young mothers holding babies, fathers clasping the hands of their children — and all of them seemingly oblivious to the soaking rain, smiling and staring wide-eyed at Joni in her wheelchair.
Jay and Judy shook hands vigorously with everyone and kept insisting, “Thank you, yes; please, let’s go inside the church.”
The crowds cleared a path for Joni’s wheelchair, but no one else could enter because the church was already packed. Ken and Joni looked around the auditorium in wonder. Elderly people crowded each pew, while younger ones stood in the aisles, shoulder to shoulder, three abreast, in row after row up the middle aisle. Up the stairs to the balcony, the kids were jammed like sardines, and the upper section appeared to sag from the weight of many more. The air was hot and steamy and smelled of wet garments — and flowers. When Joni glanced to see if the windows could be opened a little, she found herself looking into the smiling faces of young children and teenagers sitting on each and every sill. Behind them, even more people stood outside in the rain, jostling to get a view.
Joni & Ken Page 5