The Priorities

This has been quite a week for getting my priorities focused.

Luke and Jackie's best friends, Nick and Laura, became parents to their twin daughters on Wednesday, almost 3 months early. The girls are doing well at last report, but they are so tiny (just over 2 pounds, and just under 2 pounds), and there will be a long row to hoe before they are home and under the "free and clear." I've known Nick for a good long time, and it's been amazing to watch him go from funky youth intern to husband to father with such grace. Laura is an amazing young woman herself, and they have been one of the great blessings in Luke and Jackie's life for sure.

I've also -- along with everybody else in Montgomery and in lots of other places across the country -- been following the progress of First Baptist Church's Pastor Jay Wolf's daughter-in-law, Katherine. A number of weeks ago she suffered a major brain injury due to condition called "AVM." She and her husband, Jason, with whom Luke sang in the Davisinians in high school, live in California, where she was pursing an acting career while he studied law at Pepperdine. They had a baby about 7 months ago -- and life was looking wonderful for them. The daily updates that are posted on a blog they are keeping have listed specific prayer requests, and for days and days the focus of the prayers was that she recover her gag/swallowing reflexes.

Let that sit there a moment. You have the world by a string one day, and the next day the one thing you desire more than anything in the world is that your 26 year old wife and mother of your new baby can learn to gag and swallow again.

Katherine is making tremendous progress, but it's measured in what can only be called micro-inches, and likely will be so for months and years to come.

So, the list of my huge concerns has gone out the window this week, because they really are not that big a deal.