Joni Eareckson Tada's Diving Accident and Faith

The call came while we were packing the van for the overnight at the lake. I picked up the receiver in the lodge kitchen and heard Joni’s sister on the other end, her voice thin and breaking over the line from the pay phone at the beach. A dive gone wrong, shallow water, no movement below the neck. I dropped the sleeping bag I was holding and drove straight to the hospital in Baltimore without stopping for gas.

The emergency room smelled of salt and antiseptic. Joni lay strapped to a board, eyes open but unfocused, the sheet pulled to her chin. Doctors spoke in low voices about the fracture at the fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae. We waited in the hallway for hours while they moved her upstairs. No one told us how long the paralysis would last.

Rehab started two weeks later. The ward was long and bright, rows of beds with pulleys and sandbags. Joni hated the traction. She asked the nurses to loosen the straps so she could roll over, then cried when they refused. At night the monitors beeped steadily and she stared at the ceiling tiles.

I visited on weekends with the other Young Life kids. We brought records and played them on a small turntable beside the bed. She asked us to turn the volume down after the first song. The noise made her head hurt. We sat quietly instead, watching the afternoon light move across the floor.

Months passed. She learned to hold a pencil between her teeth and sketch the view from the window. The drawings showed the parking lot and the chain-link fence. She tore most of them up before we could take them home. One afternoon she asked if we still went to the beach. None of us answered.

She tried everything the Bible verses seemed to promise. Oil was rubbed on her forehead by visiting elders. She confessed every sin she could name over the phone to friends. We drove her to the Kathryn Kuhlman meeting in a borrowed station wagon. The ballroom held thousands. Spotlights swept the crowd while testimonies echoed from the stage. Our group sat in the wheelchair section near the back. The light never reached us. Ushers cleared the row early so the aisles would stay clear. We waited at the elevator in silence, the wheels of the chairs lined up like parked cars.

On the ride home she said the spotlight was not the point. She said it quietly, almost to herself. After that the requests for healing stopped.

The depression came in waves that lasted whole seasons. She rammed the new power chair into the walls of her room until the plaster cracked. Some nights we found empty bottles under the bed. We stopped bringing the records. Instead we read Scripture out loud, the same passages again and again, until the words stopped sounding like instructions and started sounding like company.

One winter evening the four of us loaded her chair into the van and drove into Baltimore. The railway station was nearly empty at eleven. Marble floors echoed when we sang. Our voices rose into the vaulted ceiling and came back multiplied. A guard appeared and told us to leave. He pointed at the chair and ordered her to put it back where she found it. She told him it was hers. He stared, then walked away without another word. On the drive home one of the guys knelt beside the chair in the driveway and thanked her for claiming it out loud.