"I jump into a sand pit for a living"
Live your joy
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Live your joy, Bonnie St John, Faith Words, 2009 (205 pages)
In 2009 I was commissioned to write a booklet for the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. I wished to include a Paralympian. My search led to Bonnie St John. We arranged a telephone interview and she proved to be an excellent interviewee. After she had answered all my questions she offered to send me an article she had written "God is my outrigger".
Once I read the article it was obvious that Bonnie wrote infinitely better than I did. I abandoned my article and used "God is my outrigger" instead.
Bonnie is in her own words "a one-legged, African-American girl from San Diego with no money and no snow who went to the Olympics as a ski racer".
Her Olympic achievement is recorded for posterity on a Starbucks mug "everyone falls down, winners get up and gold medal winners just get up faster" – a reference to how in the Olympics she was ahead in the slalom but in the second run everyone fell on a dangerous spot and she was beaten by a woman who got up faster than she did.
Live your joy is a cry to the reader to embrace joy and to seek intentionally to be joyful. Joy is "very different from something like happiness or pleasure...Joy, on the other hand, comes from the inside out. It feels like grace that pours out from me into the world. It is a feeling of goodness, a sense of well-being through thin and thin".
The book offers principles of the joyful life, illustrated by incidents from Bonnie’s full, interesting and challenging life. It is written in a humorous and easy writing style.
It is very practical with (page 22) seven ways to feel joy, by making an effort to "Feel like a kid, feel close to God, feel wonder" etc.
"God is my outrigger" – chapter nine of the book – compares the role of outriggers, which resemble stabilizers of a child's bike, in the life of the disabled skier with the role God plays in Bonnie’s life.
Portfolio of dreams is a wonderful account of Bonnie’s perseverance in landing a dream job in the Clinton White House.
The book finishes with excerpts from Bonnie's previous book, How strong women pray, which underline the role of prayer in her life. There is a confession on page 185, that many of us will recognize: "To give speeches, I knew I needed God’s help. Oddly enough though, I didn’t feel I needed God’s help in my private life. We struggled with parenting, marriage and daily life without any thought that God could help. We believed in God but didn’t understand that he could make a difference on a daily basis. That seems incredible to me now, looking back".
A truly inspirational book.