Sarah Daniels – Relentless …

I had heard so much about her before I met her, we connected instantly and she has been a big sister and inspiration to me. From the first day, I knew we needed to hear her story. It has taken this long, but again God had a plan because by the time we started this interview, her husband came in and I just couldn’t pass off the chance to get his take on some of the issues especially as they concerned him. So meet our God’s Leading Lady Mrs. Sarah Daniel and also please give a big shout out to her husband Mr. Oluwadare Daniel.

MEET ME

Hi. It is nice to meet you, my name is Sarah Daniel. I am from Akwa Ibom State, a mother of two and an Interior Designer/Decorator. My husband’s name is Oluwadare Daniel.  We used to be Mr.  and Mrs Fayinminu but somewhere down the line in our marriage, we were led by the Lord to change our surname to Daniel.

I first trained as a lawyer and was called to the Nigerian Bar in 1987, even though I never really practiced laws, because just when I was about to take up a job as a lawyer, by His grace, I discovered my passion and decided to stay with it. So my passion is interior design.

I didn’t start practicing interior design as a college trained designer but I am what you will call a self trained designer (on one part) through all the books that I could get, and on the other part(most importantly) by the Holy Spirit Himself. With time I picked up a diploma course in interior Design and Decoration from the prestigious KLC School of Design. When I went into my own business I actually started out in corporate gifts and it was quite a lucrative business back then.

I used to make my own trips abroad to source for my gift items. However, one day God opened my eyes to see that design was His plan for me.

What actually happened was that we had a friend come to our home with the then Director General in the ministry of Finance and it was at a time when the seat of government was moving to Abuja.  It turned out that they were building and furnishing their offices. As they made to leave our home that day, our family friend who had brought the Director General wanted to know if there was anything the director could do for me. Initially, I thought no; since I was into corporate gifts and government has a policy not to give gifts.

My friend however was convinced that I could take on an interior contract and get it done well. He was confident that given what he had seen of my home at various times, I was able to deliver. Upon hearing this, the Director asked us to send in a proposal and by the time we put everything together from start to finish including having to defend our proposal, the rest as they say is history.

It turned out I had a natural God given talent for design and with the various trainings I have received I am a professional interior esigner/Decorator. In spite of all the trainings I have received however, I still depend on the Holy Spirit wholly, the source of creativity and every goodness in all our projects. I thank God for the designing team He has given to us in SD Interiors. Everything is of Him.

I am married to Oluwadare Daniel, an entrepreneur, and we have been married for almost twenty years. He was my friend for a very long time before we got married and has remained my friend since.

THE DAY OUR LIVES CHANGED

The events of this day are always fresh to me considering how much happened because of one single event. We had gone to Akwa Ibom to visit with my parents during the Christmas celebrations of 1994. On the 28th of that December, we had finished what we went to do at my parents and decided to return to Lagos. The driver had taken the car ahead of us and so when we were ready to leave he was going to drop us off at the airport. About half way to Calabar, where the airport was situated, for no reason at all that I can tell till this day, the car just started to somersault, and went on like that for at least seven times. We didn’t run into another vehicle neither did one run into us, but with each somersault we were headed for the ravines. Just at the edge of the ravine a short tree stump stopped the car from toppling into the ravine. The driver was thrown out of the car along with the passenger in the front seat; I had my son with my husband and I at the back. Immediately the car stopped I started to check if we were alright, my son had a few bruises and I had some pain in my chest; I found out later that I had broken a few of the bones in my rib cage and that took all of seven years to heal. By the time I turned to my husband to see what was happening with him, I noticed that he had slumped forward on his seat and the white of his eyes were the only part of his eyes I was able to see.

He wasn’t breathing and I started to scream his name over and over again but there was no response whatsoever from him. As I screamed I heard a voice from beside the car praying and asking God to please have my husband’s name returned into the book of life. Immediately, I realized it was possible my husband was dead.

This man whom we lat er found out was a Mr. Samuel Okon, kept praying and about thirty minutes later, my husband jerked and jerked, and started to open his eyes. Once he opened his mouth he asked, “Where are my legs?” and as I tried to explain that his legs were right where they ought to be, he slipped back into a coma, and he kept slipping in and out of coma for a number of days after this just to ask where his legs were.

By the time we made it to the hospital and the doctors examined him, it was discovered that he had broken his spinal cord. Later, they told us that he was never going to walk again, because he was paralyzed from his waist down. My first instinct was ‘he will walk again’ and I believed God spoke those words to me himself. Even though he is not yet walking, the word of the Lord has been alive in our lives.

A RAY OF HOPE

At the time of the accident, our son was three years old and we has no idea that I was pregnant. We found out a few weeks later I was , and that gave us a lot of hope and joy that everything was not lost.

By this time we had come back to Lagos and my husband was on admission at a great hospital that I believed God had directed us to go. The doctors were great Christians and we kept praying. My family was also supportive of us, but the verdict was the same; my husband will never walk again.

Finding out that I was pregnant became something that gave my husband the inspiration to continue fighting, but at the end of the first trimester, I started to feel some cramps and before I knew what was happening the baby had been declared as unviable in my womb. That was a blow too hard to take; I had no idea how I was going to break that news to my husband where he was lying on the bed. So for about a week I just pretended that everything was fine. One day the doctors decided it was time to tell him and they went to break the news to him.

For the first time since the accident, not out of physical pain, my husband broke down and wept. I still can’t tell why that happened but it did happen, our ray of hope had been dashed!

Eventually, we were discharged from the hospital and we went home.

MY RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD AT THIS POINT

In all this I kept asking God why? I wanted to understand why this had happened to us, I had no anger directed at God in anyway but I really wanted to know why He had allowed this to happen. I was still a pretty young Christian at that point but it never even entered my heart that this should in anyway affect my relationship with God. With hindsight it could only have been God extending His grace to me.

I already knew in my walk with God that even though God isn’t evil, nothing happens that He doesn’t know about or that He does not permit, so if He had allowed all this, then there must be a purpose and that purpose must be for our own good and to lead us to His own expected end for us. This gave me peace for a long while until one day; the enemy came to mess with my head. It came just by a suggestion that maybe some people were responsible for what had happened, and it was one pastor that suggested it to me.

Somehow the thought took hold and I started to look for someone to blame for what had happened. I must say this affected a lot of important relationships in my life at the time, but I never blamed God. It was easier to blame people maybe, and this continued for years until, MERCY visited, and we realized it was a deep deception and we have since reconciled and made peace with all concerned. The Lord came to us through the book of Job. Despite all that happened to Job, neither Job nor his wife nor his three friends nor Elihu arrogated to any-one any such authority except God. They knew who they were in God and that it was only God that had such authority over Job’s life and all that concerned him. The person they had business with was God.

Today, unfortunately a lot of us Christians do not know who we are in Christ Jesus; as a result we arrogate to Satan an authority that he does not have over our lives. Anything that happens to me and my family, whether good or ‘evil’, is permitted by God. Without His permission, it could never have happened and therefore it is with God that we have issues at any point in time, under any circumstances. It is a revelation that has set us free from the bondage of fear.

Believing that lie isolated us for some years and it became a time when we had only each other and God used this time to strengthen our relationship with each other. Even in our ignorance and foolishness, everything works together for our good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

MR DANIEL’S TAKE ON HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD AT THIS POINT

All through it, it never entered my heart to even question God, all I kept doing was asking God for mercy. I felt that maybe I had breached a hedge, and I just wanted God to have mercy. It was a very tough time, especially because I was a man who always was in control, so to get to the point where I had to rely on people to do even the most private things for me, I knew I had to learn a new kind of dependence so I learnt to depend on God absolutely, and he hasn’t failed me even once.

OUR NEW KIND OF NORMAL

Yes, our life isn’t exacting what it was before the accident but we have settled well into our new kind of normal. We live just as normal a life as everyone else. My husband still is the Chief Executive Officer of all our business operation, even where site supervisions are involved. He attends to all the financial aspects too and is very much involved in the day to day running of our lives. I am only the interior designer. Yes, because he is paralyzed from the waist down, sex isn’t a part of our lives anymore, but it also isn’t the all in all of our lives. God has helped us both and it isn’t an issue at all.

DID I EVER THINK TO LEAVE HIM?

Before I married my husband, I had an experience (dream) where the Lord shown him to me as my husband. Three months later I met him in the physical. There is something very instructive in that experience. The Lord told me that He was giving me a man that would give me peace. Paralysis could not take that away from me. I know and I know and I know that Oluwadare is God’s perfect will for me and I will love and cherish him till death do us part. It is the most wonderful experience to know that you are in the will of God as touching your marriage. Nothing can come in between, except death.

My husband may have lost the use of his legs, but he didn’t lose Christ, and in Him we have everything!

People very close to me actually told me to leave him. In their opinion I was too young to stay with a man in his condition, they felt I was committing myself to a life I didn’t need to go through but I knew that it was the most callous and unthinkable thing to do and so I didn’t listen to them. Besides, who was going to be my friend like he has been? To crown it all, whose rib could I possibly be. God, in His mercy and faithfulness had shown me the man whose rib I am. What else could I possibly be looking for? He has every quality that appeals to me; intelligent, disciple, very caring, hard working and loving, my confidant and best friend.

DID I THINK SHE WILL LEAVE ME?

It was not even a consideration for me. I never thought about it at all. Funny enough, people close to me also felt she was responsible for what happened, so she was already taking the fall for what didn’t cause, so how was I going to start to second guess her commitment to me? In all honesty, we discussed anything and everything but this question never arose between us.

WHAT MORE CAN I SAY?

Giving your life to God is the best decision that anybody can make. Learning to hear God for you is the Key to complete joy in Christ. Every one of us should learn to hear God for ourselves, that way men will not lead us as stray and our joy will be full. I also must say that life is complete in Christ. It is not only full of ‘good’ or ‘positive’ things; there can be a dash of negatives from time to time. So whatever God allows, if we will take it with faith in our hearts even though we hurt, He will find a way to use it for His glory. I wouldn’t have had a story to tell today, if God had not allowed us to go through it. But in it all, God has been faithful. What if my husband didn’t jerk and come back to life that day?

For whatever it is that you have, please be thankful. And perfection isn’t about the exterior; it is a frame of mind and a relationship that you build with your father in heaven over time.

MR. DANIEL

Like I said, I was a pretty in control person before all this happened. Through it all, I have learnt how to let God take control of my life and use it all for His glory. So in whatever way God has used this accident to inspire and motivate others toward destiny, I am grateful to Him and give Him all the glory. My prayer is and will remain that my life will continue to give Him glory, wheelchair or not.