Why Was Daniel Called ?

We tried to give Daniel as pleasant and as loving a life as possible. However, things on Earth stepped in, and it was less than idyllic, as I suppose it is for most of us.

               


     No mother on Earth will ever accept or truly understand why God chose to call her child home. We may accept that our child belongs to God, and always will. We probably accept that our children came from God in the first place. We may also accept that God certainly has the right to call our child, but we really won't ever really be alright with it. There is simply a level of acceptance to which a human mother will be unable to arrive during her own time on Earth.  Most mothers of children called will arrive where I am, sooner or later, which is, "As the God of all, wasn't there some other way for you to achieve what you needed to, without calling Daniel ?"   The answer is apparently, "No".   To shape the world the way it must go, in ripple fashion, Daniel had to come Home to Him.

               Like most mothers, and as I said, I am mostly not okay with his passing. Although lately I have been seeing the world differently.  The world I grew up in is vastly different from the one in which Daniel would have grown up and ultimately started a young adult life.  I grew up in a middle class home in the Northeast in the nineteen seventies. My youth was without serious illnesses of myself or of siblings. We grew up in a safe place. Our dreams and chances for prosperity were not only intact, they were very possible.
The world Daniel would have grown up in, in the four years since his passing, would not have been so idyllic. Albeit, the world he knew when he was here, was not quite like the childhood I had.

               Daniel was the youngest of four siblings while he was here on Earth. We homeschooled our children, and made use of homeschool groups which offered opportunities for socialization, classes, field days, chemistry classes, etc.  We even hosted some classes at our home.  In a world that was changing fast, we were trying to provide some of that stability that my husband and I knew in earlier times. Still, there was no protecting him from some of the trials of life.  Daniel had a sister who dealt with Type I juvenile diabetes from age nine onward following a virus which destroyed her beta cells of her pancreas.  He had a brother who had Crohn's disease and who ultimately had a major surgery as a result.  In Daniel's short life, he never knew my husband's parents who died in their fifties. He was well aware of the illness and passage of my mother, and he was in attendance of my father when he passed.  As much as I tried to provide a safe and pleasant life, I could not control all of the things which can happen in this life which claws at our sense of safety here. Still, we tried to find joy as a family where we could. So many things happened in Daniel's short life, that we never once took a family vacation, with the exception of day trips.

               It has been four years since Daniel departed this Earth, and since that time, many things have deteriorated here in the US.   Two of our children have graduated from university with student loans. Only one was able to secure a job, and it took a year. The other one still has student loans, but no job.  A third remains in college.  The son we adopted a year after Daniel's passing, is not sure if he should expend the effort or energy by even attempting college. Of course, this is largely his insecurities talking, and he should try.  Our country has added huge debt since Daniel's passing. Many businesses have closed, and many jobs have been lost. The stock market crashed and the US government bailed out many companies they shouldn't have. The Federal Reserve periodically prints more and more paper money, chasing the same amounts of goods and services, which economists agree will fuel inflation.   True unemployment figures are not even correctly tabulated, as they no longer include those who now live with family and have had to give up looking for work.  A great many people consider the United States to have passed its best days. Our leaders remain confused, out of touch and largely self serving.

                Lately, I have wondered whether God called Daniel to spare him seeing the deterioration of our economy and perhaps the loss of our country as it was.  When Daniel was here on Earth, those who felt that a complete economic collapse of the US was a complete and total unlikelihood.  Now, even legitimate newspapers consider how long it will be before our nation collapses.  They cite that our government has not lived within its means or within reality for years.

                Perhaps Daniel was called to spare him from the losses and horrors which were to come in our country. They say that God has a perfect plan, and that we cannot.  Please pray for our nation, our family, our leaders, and your own.  Things in the US, do not appear to be improving.

              All that is left, is to have faith. This is the same faith in God which helped us to survive Daniel's unexpected passing in the first place.