My wife, my hero

I had a lot of other stuff that I originally planned to blog about this week, but I have to take this moment to share that my wife, Tracy, is the best. Just the best. (She's pictured here during her chance "meeting" with Dr. Phil at the Mall of America last weekend.)

Just about a month ago, I volunteered for the Concord, the seminary's student journal. Given my experience as editor of the student newspaper at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, I settled into the role of the Concord's production manager — doing some editing and mostly layout.

This weekend, the rookie staff is putting together our first issue. Although I think it's coming along really well, I think it's safe to say we really underestimated the amount of work involved — particularly on my end. This realization really hit me a little before 7 p.m. today, well after the other staffers had finished up their part of the work and left for the night (we only have one computer with the layout software, so there was no way to share the workload). Not only did I have a lot of work left to do, but I was also facing a minor crisis with the fonts for the publication.

So in a bit of desperation, I called my wife, who was waiting to have dinner with me at home. The only way to salvage not only our Saturday night but also my sanity, it seemed, was for her to come down to the Concord office and help me out. Tracy is a museum curator, but she also has some journalism experience. We met on the aforementioned student newspaper staff, and she was the sports editor. Back in those days, she got me through lots of similar nights by helping me edit or just being there to keep me from going crazy.

Lately, she's been even more crucial. First of all, I couldn't have come to seminary without her support and willingness to change her own life. She's been so patient with all my homework, and she's always there to lean on. As much as we can turn to God when we're overwhelmed, it helps so much to have a spouse to lean on. I know I speak for several other new students at Luther — and, I'm sure, many more across the entire student body — when I say that.

So for about three hours tonight, Tracy sat around in the office with me. She lent some help by critiquing my layouts, helping me settle on headlines and reading over some copy with me. And mostly, she killed a lot of time playing Bejeweled 2 on my laptop, sampling the collection of LP records in the office and amusing herself with the other antiquities that were laying around. And having her there meant the world to me. She gave up her whole night, and it turned into one of those nights I'll never forget. It was a little flashback to our early days together in college.

So if you happen to pick up the new edition of the Concord on Wednesday, Tracy's name won't be in it, but you should know that it wouldn't have turned out the same without her. And if the lyrics from an old Neil Diamond record inexplicably show up in one of the articles I was editing, that was probably because of her, too.

Oh, and if you're a Luther Seminary student and you have some layout experience, you're hired.