After almost 60 years paralyzed, her right arm stopped working and she gave herself 15 minutes to grieve
Losing the ability to feed herself became a nightly ritual where neighbors help with dinner, her husband gets rest, and she prays over the hands that hold the spoon.
Not Dead Yet · Joni Eareckson TadaJoni Eareckson Tada came home from the hospital roughly eighteen months ago and learned that her right arm no longer worked. She could still move her left arm a little, flailing and gesturing with shoulder and upper arm muscles, but the right arm was still. She could no longer lift food to her own mouth.
Tada, a longtime advocate for people with disabilities who has been paralyzed since she was a teenager, had counted feeding herself as one of the few physical abilities she still enjoyed. Losing it meant losing another piece of independence, in a life already shaped by dependence on others for bathing, dressing, and getting to the breakfast table.
At 77, nearly 60 years after a reckless dive into shallow water snapped her neck and crushed her spinal cord when she was 17, she gave herself very little time to mourn. Doctors in the 1960s had told her that total paralysis meant she might live 10, 15, or maybe 20 years. She has now lived with it for six decades, and it takes her about two hours every morning just to get out of bed, use the bathroom, get dressed, and reach breakfast.
When she understood that she could no longer feed herself, Tada said, "I was depressed for about 15 minutes." Then she began to ask a different question, what she could do to honor God in this new loss, and an answer came to her.
She would invite a few neighbors to stop by and feed her dinner. That way her husband, Ken, who helps care for her, could get a break in the evening and would not have to do that task himself. The neighbors would serve her, and she would bless them for it.
Now a neighbor comes to her home and feeds her dinner. Before they say grace, Tada prays over the meal and over the person holding the spoon. She asks God to bless the hands that serve, saying the neighbor is not really serving her but serving Jesus, and that the act glorifies him.
Tada called it "a useful way of losing your functioning ability."
Questions people ask
How did Joni Eareckson Tada become paralyzed?
She broke her neck in a diving accident when she was 17, which damaged her spinal cord and left her with very limited movement from the neck down. She has used a wheelchair ever since, and over time aging with that kind of injury has taken more strength and function.
Who is Ken?
Ken Tada is her husband of more than 40 years. He helps with much of her daily care, which is why she looked for a way to give him time off from the evening meal when she lost the use of her arm.