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# Dan called at eight
- URL: https://www.rubyskitchentable.com/dan-called-at-eight/
- Published: 2026-10-27T10:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-27T09:59:59.000Z
- Author: Ruby Hayes
- Tags: devotional

*"I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread." — Psalm 37:25*

Dan called at eight.

He talked about work. Something about a deadline and a colleague who does not listen and a meeting that should have been an email, and I listened to the sound of his voice the way I always listen to the sound of his voice, which is for steadiness, and it was steady.

He asked if I was ready for Sunday.

I said I was.

He said, "Mama, do you want me to come?"

I said I did not need him to come. He said he knew. I said I meant it. He said he knew that too. Then he said he and Beth would drive up Saturday afternoon and stay the night and go to church with me Sunday morning, and I said Daniel, and he said it is not a discussion, Mama, and I said all right.

That is Dan. He asks the question that has only one answer and then gives the answer he was always going to give and frames it as if I had a choice, which I did not, which he knows, and the kindness is that he asks anyway.

I told him Ben's birthday is next week — Tuesday — and he said he knew and he would call Ben and I said what are you going to say and he said he would figure it out and I said do not just say happy birthday and hang up, Daniel, talk to the boy, and he said I will, Mama, and I believed him because Dan does what he says he will do, which is the steadiest thing about him.

The psalmist says he has been young and now is old, and I think that is the whole psalm in one verse — the looking back from the place of having arrived. Dan is forty-six. He is not old. But he is arriving, and I can see it in the way he handles his children and his mother and his nephew's birthday and the colleague who does not listen — he handles them all the same way, which is with a patience that is not natural to him and which he learned from his father, who also was not patient by nature and who also learned it.

*Lord, the boy is coming Saturday. He did not ask. Thank you for the boy who does not ask.*