A Personal Reminisce

J. Neil Daniels 

I keep this photo on my Amazon author page—not because it’s particularly striking, but because it captures a moment I didn’t understand until much later. Somewhere around 1984 or ’85, I was seven or eight years old, freshly adopted, sitting at our kitchen table in Arlington, Virginia. Sunday mornings meant The Washington Post spread open like a paper tent, ink smudging my hands. My mother—my adoptive mom, though we never used that qualifier—would slide the comics toward me like a teacher presenting a lesson. “Pick one strip and read it aloud,” she’d say. I hated reading; the letters seemed to fight back. But the comics had color, movement, silly facial expressions. Something about Calvin’s mischief or Snoopy’s existential doghouse angst coaxed me along one word at a time.

Looking at that picture now—a lanky boy with a head full of hair leaning over Peanuts and Garfield—it feels like peering into a different lifetime. I was a remedial reader, the kind of kid teachers politely describe as “struggling.” I preferred climbing trees or getting into trouble. Books were too slow; the world outside had motion and adrenaline. Reading required stillness. Attention. A kind of quiet I didn’t yet know how to hold. My mother, though, was stubborn in the best way. She refused to believe any child was beyond growth, beyond possibility. Comics became the back door into literacy she knew I needed. God bless her—she tricked me into loving words.

And now, decades later, it’s almost laughable how the Lord rewrites stories. The boy who resisted reading now drowns in books by the dozens, writes them by the hundreds of pages. I’ve published more than half a dozen volumes, and I’m wrapping up a reference work pushing two hundred thousand words—nearly the size of two doctoral dissertations bound together. Somewhere along the way, the struggle became a calling. Words became both craft and an expression of worship. I think about that sometimes: how grace doesn’t merely improve the weak places… it redeems them into strengths.

So today, I’m giving thanks. For a mother who sat at a table and believed that a child could learn. For comics that became stepping stones. For a God who delights in taking what is broken or barren and causing it to flourish. I used to hate reading. Now I can’t imagine life without it. Somewhere in that transformation is evidence of providence—quiet, persistent, patient. God is good.