Joni Eareckson was seventeen years old when a diving accident in Chesapeake Bay in July 1967 left her a quadriplegic, paralysed from the shoulders down. In the months that followed, she battled depression so severe that she begged friends to help her end her life. She could not feed herself, dress herself, or turn over in bed. The idea that God could meet her in her body felt like a cruel joke.
The Decision to Be Baptised
In 1968, a year after the accident, Joni decided to be baptised. Not because she felt ready or worthy or even particularly hopeful. She decided because she wanted to do something physical — something her body could participate in, however limited that participation would be. She wanted the water on her skin to mean something.
The Descent Into the Water
Friends carried her to the edge of a church pool. She could not walk in. She could not lower herself. Other people had to lift her, hold her, and guide her body beneath the surface. The immersion required complete dependence on others — a physical enactment of the surrender she was trying to learn in every other area of her life.
When she came up from the water, Joni described feeling something she had not felt since the accident — a sense of being fully present in her own body. Not healed, not restored, but present. The physical act of baptism did not fix what was broken. It reframed it. Her body, with all its limitations, had just participated in something sacred.
The Life That Followed
Joni Eareckson Tada went on to found Joni and Friends, an organisation that has distributed over 200,000 wheelchairs to people with disabilities in developing nations. She became an artist, painting with a brush held between her teeth. She wrote over fifty books. She has spent more than five decades demonstrating that a body does not need to be whole to be used.
What This Means for You
Baptism is not a ceremony for the strong. It is a physical act that says: this body, exactly as it is, belongs to God. You do not have to be healed first. You do not have to be whole first. You just have to be willing to go under.