Ken Tada

Joni Eareckson Tada is well known as the Christian quadriplegic whose ministry, Joni and Friends, ministers the gospel to people with disabilities around the world. What is less well known are the details of her marriage to Ken Tada, that handsome "island guy" she noticed in church one Sunday some thirty-plus years ago. Joni and Ken: An Untold Love Story is the chronicle of their marriage — its sweet joys, painful trials, and deep complexities.

What would it be like to be married to show more someone who cannot move anything below the neck? The daily grind for non-impaired people can be hard enough, but how does one cope with the daily grind of quadriplegia? How do the grooves of marriage run when all the things we take for granted are complicated and intensified by disability?

Unlike Joni's other books, this is told in the third person — our perspective as outsiders peering over their shoulders into their real lives. This approach was very effective; I found myself tearing up at certain passages, getting a lump in my throat, suffering with them as I read about their struggles. Rejoicing with them as God taught them new things, wondering with them what His purposes were.

This is a very honest book. As much as we might want to make Joni a saint (a danger mentioned in this book) and put Ken on a pedestal for marrying a woman with such a profound disability, their honesty won't allow it. As their love story unfolds, we get to see their moments of frustration and anger, of pain and emotional separation. We see the physical burden Joni's disability puts on Ken, and the emotional toll it takes on both. We see incredibly dark moments when they were tempted to accuse God and ask Him why He would let them suffer like this. Chronic pain, cancer, pneumonia. Depression, distance, grief.

But we also see God's faithfulness, proven again and again. We see incredible grace and strength and help given in just the worst moment of need. We see, in the broken frame of fallible people, a masterpiece of God's work. He never lets go. And He has done truly amazing things in and through Joni and Ken.

This is a quick read — and once you start reading, it's hard to put down. It leaves me taken aback at the suffering in this world, but also marveling at how God sustains His children and uses their pain for great good.

Thank You, Lord, for Your faithfulness to Joni and Ken. Please continue to work out your good purposes in their lives. show less

This is not great literature, but if you've followed Joni Eareckson Tada's story so far, as I have off and on, this book provides a glimpse into her later years. In 1967 Joni developed quadriplegia as the result of a diving accident. She credits her strong Christian faith with allowing her to live a productive life.

The book starts off with four pages of endorsements from many of the big names in the American Evangelicalism, most of whom are known for promoting a complementarian approach to show more marriage. This means that the husband, by virtue of being male, must "lead" and the wife, by virtue of being female, must "submit". No exceptions. That's interesting, because in the Eareckson-Tada marriage, it seems just the opposite. For most of their marriage, Joni is the visionary leader, the CEO of a large nonprofit organization that helps disabled people all over the world, and Ken is in the background, teaching high school and going fishing as often as possible. Living in her shadow, he grows resentful and depressed. She develops chronic pain related to her quadriplegia and later breast cancer. They are not very happy until Ken reads John Eldredge's Wild at Heart and realizes that his true purpose in life is to "rescue a beauty"--Joni. He has since retired from teaching and now devotes his life to traveling with her and taking care of her. One could even say that he's her "helpmeet". This is great, in my opinion, but I'm not a complementarian. It just makes me wonder why so many Christian complementarians endorsed a book that's antithetical to their views.

Unlike Joni's previous books, this one is written in the third person. The effect of having an omniscient narrator relate the couple's intimate moments and thoughts, which it's pretty safe to say he didn't witness, is rather strange. Speaking of intimacy, the book mentions, but leaves unanswered, questions of sexuality and fertility. It's only natural that readers would wonder how these issues are impacted by quadriplegia, but the narrator maintains a discreet silence. Similarly, Joni's experience of inexplicable, chronic pain is mentioned (it sounds like a horrible thing to experience), but it is never fully explored. Does she still have it? The narrator doesn't say.

This book is may be worth reading if you want to know whatever happened to the girl in the wheelchair who painted beautiful landscapes by holding a brush in her mouth, but it would be unsatisfying to those not already familiar with Joni's story. show less

This book was good, but it was sort of disjointed- it read like a series of diary entries all scrambled up, with one entry being from 1985, then it jumps to 2000, then back to 1991, etc..
I also wish, as another reviewer mentioned, that there would have been more about Ken and his struggle with depression. As it was, the trials mentioned were only touched upon, and in this sense the book lacked some depth. One of the difficulties Joni faces, and she says so herself, is that people idolize show more her and put her up on a pedestal.She wanted people to know in this book that she is a real person, with struggles like anybody else. Her attempt to share some hardships here and to dispel the myth that she is ever-patient and ever-kind is good, but she stops short of it simply because the descriptions of her arguments with Ken, her short, sharp replies, are little mentionables. She doesn't reveal too much. So I'm not sure her goal was met here.

I admire Joni and her ministry very much. She is an example of someone who experienced tremendous losses in her life, but instead of growing bitter and isolating herself, she formed an organization to help others in similar situations. I only wish this book had gone into more depth. show less

Joni & Ken: An Untold Love Story
Ken Tada , Joni Eareckson Tada with Larry Libby

Book Description: This is the true love story of Joni and her husband of 30 years, Ken Tada. A love story showing what it truly means for a man and a woman to live in love ... in sickness and in health. Even the honeymoon wasn't easy. Did Ken realize what he was getting into when he proposed to Joni, a quadriplegic woman? As their marriage years moved on, Ken became increasingly overwhelmed by the never-ceasing show more demands of caring for Joni, who begins to experience chronic, extreme, nightmarish pain. Ken sinks into depression, and the couple finds themselves on parallel tracks in life, married and living under the same roof but drifting apart emotionally. But as they fight for their marriage and find their way through the mazes of depression and pain, they wrap their two lives around their rock---Jesus. During Ken's denial of Joni's diagnosis, and Joni's thoughts of how wonderful a quick exit to heaven would be, they experience a personal visitation with the savior you will never forget.

Review: I found this to be a great read. Easy to get absorbed in it and so well written that I could not put it down. It was like being let into a side of Joni that is hidden. I felt privileged to read this story. It was the first ebook that I made notes in and highlighted things. That says a lot since I was storming through this book rapidly. There were many things that made me cry and laugh. I enjoyed the frank honesty of their life together. So many things were precious like their meeting and how sweet Ken was during their dating and up to their wedding. He was more the unknown in this story and it made the man into a real person. I can honestly say that any disability makes a life interesting. I have thought a lot about pain and the changes that occur while married. There is no guarantee that the state of one’s abilities will remain even young. It is more realistic to understand the in sickness and in health. I can empathize with the chronic pain and the cancer on top of it was a lot to wrestle with. I have often thought that the church has lost her understanding of suffering. To me this has been a struggle and found the resounding theme to be that of the Bible with life there is suffering. I am so appreciative to have the privilege to read and review this book. As the beginning promised this is the real love that is lost today. Not easy and not neatly packaged but definitely a love story of all time.
I would like to thank Net Galley and Zondervan Publishing for allowing me to read and review this book in return for a free copy and I was never asked to write a favorable review by anyone. show less