Product Description

The Silver Medallion award-winning memoir by Joni Eareckson Tada that captures her heart and thoughts by portraying her walk with God in the events, dialogues, memories, images, and scenes of her life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #287186 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

From Publishers Weekly
"Memory means everything to me," writes Tada. In this tender, beautifully written memoir, she reflects with vivid detail on the idyllic Maryland childhood that shaped her Christian faith and the 1967 diving accident that left her a quadriplegic but showed her that "there are more important things in life than walking." As the youngest of four girls, Tada idolized her father and namesake, Johnny, who instilled in her a daredevil sense of adventure and shaped her view of God. When as a teenager she drifted from faith, she prayed that God would turn her around. Tada believes the accident she had at age 17 was God's response: "It wasn't some flip-of-the-coin in the cosmos, some turn in the universe's roulette wheel. It was part of God's plan-for me." She shares how her experiences with suffering have given her a platform to encourage others with disabilities through her speaking, writing, artwork and the organization she founded to aid the disabled, "Joni and Friends." Intermixed with humorous stories about her friends, marriage and professional triumphs are vulnerable glimpses of her dips into depression, anger and frustration over infertility. But, almost 36 years after "the dive," Tada has learned that "true wisdom is found in trusting God when you can't figure things out." Christian readers should appreciate this mature, absorbing reminiscence of a remarkable life.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Tada has had a blessed life. From an idyllic childhood, during which a larger-than-life father beguiled her with tales true and tall, to an adult life as actress, author, and motivational speaker, attended by a devoted husband and friends, hers is a remarkable story of grace, good luck, and God's love. Not everyone might wish to trade places with her, however, because being quadriplegic would not be their idea of good luck. Nor, for some time after a swimming accident at age 17 paralyzed her, was it Tada's idea of God's love. The accomplished horsewoman and swimmer was sidetracked by an act of a God she thought she knew. And indeed, through prayer she discerned God more clearly and emerged from personal anguish. A moving, well-told memoir of both the desperate and the hopeful hours that led Tada to realize her mission in life as a minister to disabled persons the world over. Donna Chavez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"The God I Love is the book that captures my heart and thoughts in the events, dialogues, memories, images, and scenes of my life . . . my walk with God."

Customer Reviews

Irresistible
When Joni Eareckson Tada completes a book, I buy it immediately.
Since her first book detailing her accident, I have purchased every one since and given many as gifts. I love them all but this one is the most revealing.

The God I Love, is wonderful. I relate to Joni and her horse accomplishments and her life before the accident. She is an incredible writer. Now in this book, she fills us in on her entire life up to the present.There are several surprises. Her family, her friends, her travels thruout the world, how she deals with her physical condition, and what makes her joyful, are all here, written so beautifully and so sincerely.

I recommend this book to everyone - young and old - no matter what your religious affiliation - this book is about a life well lived despite being confined to a wheelchair because this talented intelligent woman reached out to God.

This autobiography may be Tada's best work to date
For Joni Eareckson Tada's memoir to turn out to be anything less than stellar would be difficult to imagine. A long-time bestselling author with an amazing story and a highly successful ministry, Tada outdoes her remarkable record with an autobiography that may be her best book so far.

The basics of Tada's life are well-known in Christian circles. Reared in a Christian home, Joni Eareckson was planning to enter Western Maryland College in the fall of 1967. But a trip to a Chesapeake Bay beach in July of that year permanently changed her life. A "simple" dive went wrong, and Joni ended up paralyzed from the neck down, confined to a wheelchair for life. In the following decade, Christians in America would become familiar with the once-unknown young woman who had learned to draw and paint with her mouth and was steadily producing a successful line of artwork sold in Christian stores. Her story was told in print and on film, and her voice later became a mainstay on Christian radio. In the intervening years, she has become an advocate for the disabled, not only in the United States but also around the world.

In no previous book has Joni Eareckson --- now married to Ken Tada --- been quite so transparent and open about the highs and lows of her relationship with God, particularly in the years immediately following the accident but also amid the day-to-day frustrations that come with being dependent upon others for the basic necessities of life. Through it all --- through the extraordinary accomplishments of someone who at one time had every reason to give up on life --- you get the sense that many of Tada's inner struggles are very ordinary, very human, and therefore very easy for others to relate to.

Tada writes about social issues, such as her firsthand experience with oppression in former communist countries, with as much sensitivity as she writes about highly personal issues, like her disappointment and sorrow after learning that she was infertile. She seamlessly intersperses detailed accounts of her many international trips with loving stories about her close-knit family, her circle of friends, and her marriage to Ken. Especially poignant are passages relating to the deaths of her mother and father.

Throughout, of course, the focus always returns to Tada's relationship with God and the subtle irony inherent in the subtitle, "A Lifetime of Walking with Jesus." Even from her wheelchair, Tada "walks" with God. She writes, "Ah, this is the God I love. The Center, the Peacemaker, the Passport to adventure, the Joyride, and the Answer to all our deepest longings. The answer to all our fears, Man of Sorrows and Lord of Joy, always permitting what he hates, to accomplish something he loves...There are more important things in life than walking."

Fans of Joni Eareckson Tada's previous books will not be disappointed with this one. It's a beautifully written tribute to the love of God as seen through the life of one woman who found freedom and joy in Christ in the midst of what another might consider a cruel confinement.

The BEST so far!!!
This is by far the best of all the books that Joni Eareckson Tada has written. Once I started it I couldn't put it down. I have a personal interest in anything Joni writes..I also had a diving accident and I'm also a quadriplegic. Joni expressed it so well in this book...living in a wheelchair does not have to be a burden but an ADVENTURE! God is GREAT and I wish everyone could come to know the love and peace He gives us.