Happy Birthday Daniel!

Since Daniel is 17 years old tomorrow, here I am thinking about him.

There are four words that come to my mind whenever I think of Daniel: meticulous, hard-working, deep, and faithful.

Daniel pays attention to detail, every detail. Whether it's paying attention to ensuring that all the punctuation is correct for an essay he's writing, or correcting some not-exactly-correct method to my driving, life is about the details for Daniel.

Daniel is the epitome of hard-working. I've seen him come home after school sports practice bone weary and just eat dinner and fall into bed, only to set his alarm for 3AM so he can get up and complete all his homework for the up-coming day. I've watched him work hard every single day of football practice, sometimes even staying after practice to work more on some specific thing on his own, only to sit almost all of every game out on the bench; but no matter what the outcome, he gives each practice his all. He understands the worth of the process, the by-product of excellence in general.

When I think of what a deep thinker and feel-er Daniel is I'm reminded of a passage from Psalm 42:6-8:
⁶ My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.
⁷ Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.

⁸ By day the LORD directs his love,
at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.

Have you ever noticed that the deep people struggle more with the "dark side" of life than the happy, care-free, type personalities? I think the word melancholy was coined with these kind of folks in mind. King David was certainly such a person; a man who experienced deep relationship with God, the joy of God, and the depths of sadness. Such is Daniel.
The definition of faithful from dictionary.com is "Loyal, constant, and steadfast: "remain faithful to the principles". That's a rather apt description of Daniel. I know that sometimes it makes life more difficult for him as a young man of faith in Christ in a secular high school. But I also know that he will continue to reap the benefit of his faithfulness.
So I want to wish a Happy Birthday to my meticulous, hard-working, deep, and faithful son!