The Olasky Interview preview - Joni Tada

NICK EICHER, HOST: Season 2 of The Olasky Interview podcast began last week, so for the next nine weeks, we’ll be releasing a new episode on Tuesdays. That means today’s episode is live now! Just search for The Olasky Interview on your favorite podcast platform. 

We’re also releasing these interviews on our feed of The World and Everything in It each Saturday. You probably noticed the first two episodes showed up this past Saturday. We just want to make it as easy as possible for you to stumble upon it.

This week WORLD Editor in Chief Marvin Olasky talks with author and disabilities advocate Joni Eareckson Tada. Here’s an excerpt.

MARVIN OLASKY: There’s the children’s song that if we believe in Jesus will be “happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, all the time.” Are you happy all the time?

JONI ERICKSON TADA: In the morning, when I get up, I mean, I’ve got like 13 different women who helped me get up seven different mornings, 20 different ways. But I hear them come into the kitchen, I hear them running water for coffee. And I know that they’re going to be coming into my bedroom with a happy: “Hello,” and give me a bed bath, do my toileting routines, put on my corset, pull up my pants, put me in the wheelchair, give me breakfast, shove me out the front door…and I’m thinking, I’m lying there thinking: “Oh God, I am so tired of this routine. I am so weary. I have no strength for this day. God. God, I can’t do quadriplegia.”

And Marvin maybe the really handicapped people are the ones who, I don’t know, they wake up in the morning, they hit the alarm, they pull throw back the covers, they take a quick shower, they scarf down breakfast, give God a “speedy tip of the hat” of a quiet time. And then they’re zooming out the door on automatic cruise control. God says if you live that way he’s against you. 

EICHER: That’s Joni Eareckson Tada. To hear more of this conversation, catch this week’s episode of The Olasky Interview wherever you get your podcasts.

(Photo/Facebook, Joni Eareckson Tada)

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