Amy Boucher Pye

Tag: marriage

  • Interview with Joni Eareckson Tada, and review of Joni and Ken

    A couple of months ago I had the privilege of interviewing Joni Eareckson Tada in connection with her new book, Joni & Ken: An Untold Love Story (Zondervan). I’ve long admired her, and got to meet her and her husband one year when I was working for her publisher. She exudes God’s grace and love in person and online. And in her new book, detailing the story of her and her husband’s thirty-year marriage, she and Ken share so honestly about their challenges, struggles, and joys.

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    For when Ken Tada made his wedding vows, he knew he would especially have to live up to the phrase “in sickness and in health.” After all, he was marrying a quadriplegic. He also knew his life would hold particular challenges and joys, for he was marrying the internationally known author and speaker, Joni Eareckson. But he didn’t reckon on the debilitating sameness of her daily routines, such as her toileting challenges or the need to reposition her several times each night.

    Their book journeys through their 30 years of marriage, warts and all. It chronicles the early days of romance and international travel along with the crushing middle years of depression, excruciating chronic pain, and a growing distance between them. The severe mercy of breast cancer a couple of years ago was the agent to bring them back to a full dependence on Jesus – and to union with each other.

    Not many biographies of people in the public eye are so searching and honest. I can’t recommend this book highly enough, not only for people who hope for a closer marriage, but for anyone wanting to witness how God can change lives – even those who have been following him for years.

    Run, do not walk, to your local Christian bookshop to get a copy of this book; I loved it! It’s real, gritty and honest – and dripping with God’s hope and redeeming love.

    In Joni’s Words

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    Here is Joni sharing her love of books, an interview that appeared in the May 2013 issue of Woman Alive (the book club that I run); reprinted with permission.

    There are lots of surprises in Joni & Ken, not the least of which is Ken’s part of the story. How does a strong, handsome, virile man keep passion alive when he’s married for three decades to a quadriplegic woman? For years, Ken has gotten up every night to “re-position” me in bed (I can only lay in one position for four hours). So how does he manage that with such a good attitude? Or does he have a good attitude?! This book reveals all.

    The Liberty of Obedience by Elisabeth Elliot remains a favorite book of mine. I first read it when I was released from the hospital after the diving accident in which I broke my neck. Suddenly I was expected to trust God in the midst of utterly overwhelming circumstances. This little book gave insight and wisdom as to how I could embrace the Lord in the midst of total quadriplegia. If Elisabeth Elliot could do it amidst the Acua Indians after they killed her husband… then I could, by God’s grace, do the same.

    The saints of old, such as Amy Carmichael and George Muller, inspire me. One of the dangers of the Christian life is that we too often imagine it – we imagine we’re walking closely to the Lord or that we’re being obedient or kind or loving. But trials – such as the kind faced by Amy Carmichael and George Muller – put our love for God and for each other to the test. What we believe about the Christian faith must be lived out in reality and tough trials are the best way of forcing our faith to be real.

    I resonate with Paul and Silas [from the Bible], deep in a dark jail cell at midnight singing praises to God… loudly! These two inspire me to always ask God every morning for “a hymn in my heart” so that I might follow their example. And throughout the day, it’s the melody I keep humming, like “praying without ceasing.”

    Runaway Home is one of the children’s books that I love. It’s a marvelous series about a family who packed up all their belongings in a trailer and set out to find adventure across the United States. Since I have always loved geography and maps, even as a child, I thrilled at all their new discoveries on every page. The book series may be out of print, but, to me, it’s a classic.

    You asked if I could only save one book from your burning house, which would it be and why? After the Bible, my family’s photo album – with my parents long gone to heaven, these old photos are precious memories I would never want to lose!

    Joni Eareckson Tada, founder and CEO of Joni and Friends, is an international advocate for people with disabilities. She’s the author of over 50 books, including her bestsellers Joni, When God Weeps and A Step Further. She and her husband Ken Tada have been married for 30 years.

     

    So tell me, have you read any of Joni’s books, or watched the film of her life? Has her ministry made an impact on you?

  • A tribute to marriage

    Today my parents celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary – five decades of loving each other and modeling that love to us in their quiet and understated way. I am so grateful for their commitment to each other and to us through the good and challenging times.

    DSCN5087My mom and dad both grew up on farms in America’s Midwest, and both went to live in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul in the late fifties. My dad had left home when he was 17, for he wanted to be an artist. He worked hard to put himself through college, selling expensive cookware and sewing machines door to door and being a security guard during the night shift. My mom lived with a few other young women and was a good typist, so she got a job at Minnegasco (that sounds a funny name for a company now, doesn’t it?).

    My dad became a different kind of artist, one who designed computer systems, than he might have thought as a child. Now that he has more time, he can pursue his visual art. Here's a painting of my mother.
    My dad became a different kind of artist, one who designed computer systems, than he might have thought as a child. Now that he has more time, he can pursue his visual art. Here’s a painting of my mother.

    They met on a blind date that my dad’s friend Jerry arranged. At first my mom thought she had been paired with Jerry, but when my dad got into the back seat of the car with her she realized that he was her date. The evening must have gone well, for they went out for my dad’s birthday in October. After that my mom kept hoping he’d ask her out again so she could tell her work friends that she had a date for New Year’s Eve.

    That first Christmas, my dad painted my mom a picture to give her as a present, and she gave him a sweater. How did she know his size? “I put my arms around him.”

    They dated for three years before getting married, having such a long courtship because my dad had to do some national service, and wanted to get his degree and a job so that he could provide for his wife and any children they might have one day. Two years after they got married, they had my sister, then two years later me, then three years later my brother. Their family was complete.

    But times haven’t always been easy for my parents, their love having to weather health-related storms. When my brother was three, he started to have seizures, which was terrifying for my parents to witness. Then he had such terrible stomach pains that he was operated on to see if he had an obstruction or cancer. He was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory disease of the intestines, which is not common in children.

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    One of the favorite activities with Gramps is painting.
    A grandma and granddaughter.
    A grandma and granddaughter.

    My brother was in the hospital for over a month, and although as a six-year-old I didn’t know it at the time, he was near death. He looked like a starving child from a developing nation, for his stomach was extended and he was so thin. But after our parish priest came to the hospital and prayed over him, he eventually got well.

    But his seizures continued, and he was diagnosed with epilepsy. The seizures were the worst when he was a teenager, as his hormones were wreaking havoc on his body and his medication seemed to have no effect.  My parents learned what it meant to be sleep-deprived as they cared for my brother during the night, taking shifts while trying to get enough sleep for the next day as my dad went off to work and my mom cared for us three kids.

    Their faith sustained them. As my dad said, “Through these great challenges, our faith has kept us strong and in love in our marriage. We’ve been able to forgive each other and live one day at a time, when it would be easy to hide from life. Eventually we got to the place of not even worrying – we would think, ‘Have we done everything we can?’ If the answer was yes, then we would give it all to the Lord and not even worry.

    “My favorite bit of poetry goes like this: ‘But every desire we have for God, and every prayer, is like the stroke of a carpenter’s plane, wearing down the boards of our wooden-hearted incredulity. And when the boards are quite thin, we will see that God has been there all along, waiting for us to break through.” (From That Man is You by Louis Evely, translated by Edmond Bonin, Paulist Press, 1964.)

    Mom and Dad, I love you and celebrate your marriage.