Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope

Shauna: This is Shauna on Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope. Like you, Joni and I sure do love our friends.

Joni Eareckson Tada: Friendship happens when two people discover they have more in common than they thought, or that there is a shared interest that draws them together. C.S. Lewis says that friendship happens when you connect with someone and find yourself saying, "What? You think that way too? I thought I was the only one who thought that way!" It's why friendship happens so easily between Christians because we've just got so much in common.

But for me, there's a special dimension to friendship. My wheelchair has drawn me and my friends together in a beautiful but unusual way. Recently, my husband left on a fishing trip at 2:00 in the morning, a lot earlier than he had planned. So I had to call a girlfriend and ask if she could please stay overnight with me. I can't lie in one position all night; I've got to be turned in bed. My friend would have to get up once or twice a night to move my pillows and readjust me on my side.

When someone stays overnight, it means sacrificing a good night's sleep in order to help me. I could have felt awkward asking, calling my girlfriend and proposing that she help me do this, but our friendship is built on honesty and openness. If she can help me, I know she will. If she can't, neither of us feels bad about it. In a way, my friendships are unusually close. Actually, when I ask for help because of my disability, it's a way of asking to be close, very close.

And when a friend does help, it's their way of saying, "You are worth it to me. You are worth losing a good night's sleep because I value you above the time and the effort that it takes." I think of that every time a friend wipes my nose or empties my leg bag. Every time a friend lifts me out of my wheelchair and into bed. Every time a friend takes me in for my PET scan or a mammogram or to the hospital for X-rays.

Proverbs 18 describes these friends, for they are the kind that stick closer than a brother. And the wonderful thing is, I get to serve them. I get to pray for them and cheer them on. I get to love and encourage them to be their best. I pray for their children, their grandchildren. I pray for their husbands, their work. I listen to their woes. We talk about the Bible and what we're learning. I love it when my friends need me.

Something beautiful happens in a friendship when, at the center, there is suffering and hardship. The strong help the weak, or the weak pray for or serve the strong, and suffering sets the stage for compassion to blossom. Compassion literally means "with suffering." "Com" means "with," "passion" means "suffering." So I and my friends choose to be with each other in our suffering. Obviously, a disability provides a platform for a special kind of Christian compassion.

Shauna: Listening friend, if this sounds too difficult for you, we want to help you with this by holding you up in prayer. Real compassion awaits you when you reach out and make friends with someone who has a white cane or uses a wheelchair, or someone like my daughter Sarah, who has an intellectual disability.

Sometimes new friendships can feel scary. So go to joniradio.org and let us know that you need prayers for courage and maybe even for some divine appointments when God will bring new friends into your life. Because a sweet intimacy cannot help but blossom when you serve a friend who really needs you.

And one more thing: if you sense the Lord calling you to be a friend to someone with a disability, just go to joniradio.org where you'll find all sorts of opportunities to serve people with disabilities through your friendship, all in the name of Jesus.