Me in Place

I’m conflicted as to whether to do this post or not, but I think the “yes!” is winning out. See, yesterday my in-laws invited my husband and I to come downtown for lunch and to see Candlelight Carols (at Moody, our dear, sweet alma mater). Even though that sounds all very fun in itself, there was an added bonus that we were so excited about – my in-laws were bringing a (now retired) astronaut and his wife along to see the campus and the Carols and would we like to meet them?

Well! May I just say it was a tremendous honor to meet this wonderful couple, who have such a tremendous testimony for the Lord and are able to witness to many many people because of the fact that he was an astronaut! His name is Jack L -o-u-s-m-a. (I’m spelling it out, so it doesn’t come up in search engines when people are randomly looking up astronauts!) His wife was so friendly and gracious and I had a great time talking with her. What experiences they’ve had in their lives.

Col L spent two months on SkyLab, logged eleven hours in a couple of space walks, piloted the third orbital test flight of the space shuttle Columbia, and was on the receiving end (on capcom) when the “Houston, we’ve had a problem” call came in from Apollo 13. In bios of him on the internet, it says he remained calm and cool for hours while he spoke with the astronauts on Apollo 13.

We tried not to act too starstruck (no pun intended) as we spoke with them and I tried not to ask too many questions! But he was willing to talk of his experiences and told us a great story of taking a shower in space – the water just lies on your skin and they had to squeegee it off, then get out a vacuum like tube and suck up the water.

And I admit, when he was talking about his spacewalk and being attached to a tether, a question did slip out of my mouth, “Weren’t you even a little worried about whether that tether was going to hang on?” I didn’t want to embarrass you, my faithful blog readers, (or my in-laws) so I did my best to keep my inner child under control.

(That’s me! Walking in the snow behind an astronaut!)

Anyway, when you come across his name in books or on the internet, know that he is a man who loves the Lord above all else – and isn’t it so cool when you meet people like that?

And, maybe I’ll be able to relate a little better to the people doing this in my house:

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.