Joni Eareckson Tada
On picture book biographies and imagining adulthood
When our kids were little, I found it hard to imagine them as big kids, let alone teens or—gasp!—adults. But they’re prone to point out things like, oh, that our second-born daughter will be old enough to vote in the next presidential election, or that when our youngest is thirteen, we may only have two daughters living at home. A silence drops upon us when someone does math like that, and the years feel suddenly so swift and short.
I still find it hard to imagine our daughters as adults, even though our eldest—a junior in high school—is beginning to field those “What will you do when you graduate” questions, and the possibilities! They seem so endless! So I’ve found that an old idea takes on new weight in our household now, as we’re all trying to envision the years ahead and wondering how we might help her1 prepare for them.
Here’s the old idea: when the girls were little, I loved surrounding them with biographies that served as little windows into what life can look like, and of how different each of our callings can be. Now that they’re older I try to surround them with women—real women they know but also women in books—who are living faithful lives in all kinds of ways. I look for women who remind me of my daughters but grown, as well as women that help them see it: how wildly different all our lives can be. How faithfulness to God isn’t a list of directives but a craft.
Biographies still play a big part in this, and these picture book biographies continue to resonate for us. Though we have a stack of them now, this biography of Joni Eareckson Tada2 seems to be the one I find left open on the window seat or on the floor beside someone’s bed—her story is just so incredible, such a heartening picture of a woman who has witnessed and extolled the beauty of Christ through such intense suffering. I never tire of learning about her, and it seems my daughters don’t either.
I’m so grateful for women like Joni, and Maria Fearing, and Corrie Ten Boom, who help our family imagine the years ahead as stories in which suffering, joy, and goodness are all intertwined. What will my daughters’ stories look like, I wonder, when we look back upon them? May the beauty of Christ be sown throughout them, whatever the backdrop he gives our girls to work with. Whatever comes, I pray that they would find in him a constant companion.
You can find more (many more!) books reviews like this one at Little Book, Big Story.
Ha! Who am I kidding? Help us all prepare for them.
Though I did receive a free copy of this book for review, I am not being paid to promote it. My enthusiasm for this book is abundant and purely voluntary.